Louisiana Lou Part 20

In the morning Solange appeared, dressed for the range. The two young men, who had been smitten by her previously, when she had been clad in the sort of garments they had seen on the dainty town girls, were doubly so when they saw her now. Slim and delicate, she wore breeches and coat of fair, soft leather and a Stetson, set over a vivid silk handkerchief arranged around her hair like a bandeau. The costume was eminently practical, as they saw at once, but it was also picturesquely feminine and dainty. It had the effect of raising her even higher above ordinary mortals. If it had been any other who wore it they would have contemptuously set her down as a moving-picture heroine and laughed behind her back. But Solange set off the costume and it set her off. Besides, it was not new, and had evidently been subjected to severe service.

CHAPTER XV

THE SHERIFF FINDS A CLEW

"Miss Pettis," Captain Wilding remarked to his office attendant, a day or two after he had been summoned to meet Solange and had heard her rather remarkable story, "I'll have to be going to Maryville for a day or two on this D'Albret case. I don't believe there will be anything to discover regarding the mine and the man who killed her father, but, in case we do run into anything, I'd like to be fortified with whatever recollection you may have of the affair."

"I don't know a thing except what I told the dame," said Marian, rather sullenly. "This guy Louisiana b.u.mps the old man off after he leaves our place. Pete was comin' in and was goin' to take granddad in with him on the mine, but he can't even tell where it was except that it was somewhere along the way he had come. You got to remember that I was just a kid and I don't rightly remember anything about it except that this Louisiana was some little baby doll, himself. His looks were sure deceiving."

"Well, how old was he at this time?"

"Oh, pretty young, I guess. Not much more than a kid. Say that French dame has a crust, hasn't she, comin' in here after all these years, swellin' round with her face covered as if she's afraid her complexion wouldn't stand the sun, and expectin' to run onto that mine, which, if she did find it would be as much mine as it is hers. And who's this Delonny guy she's bringin' with her? Looks to me like a bolshevik anarchist or a panhandler."

"Humph!" said Wilding, musingly. "He's nothing like that. Fact is, she's got a gold mine right there, and she wants to divorce it. Now, you're sure Louisiana did this and that he left the country? Ever hear what became of him?"

"Nary a word," said the girl, indifferently. "I reckon everybody has forgotten him around here except Snake Murphy, who works for Johnny the Greek. Snake used to know this guy, and it was for shootin' him that Louisiana was run out of the country. Fact is, I've heard most of what I know from Snake."

"I'd better interview him, I suppose," said Wilding.

"If you can get any info out of him as to where that mine is you ought to tell me as quick as that French dame," said Marian. "Believe me, I'm needing gold mines a lot more than she does. She ain't so hard up that she can't go chasing around the country and livin' at swell hotels and hiring lawyers and things while I got to work for what I get. Anyway, half of that mine belongs to me."

"The mine belongs to whoever finds it," said Wilding. "It was never filed on, and any claim D'Albret might have had was lost at his death.

In any event, I imagine that it has been so long ago that the chance of locating it now is practically nonexistent."

"Me, too," said Marian. "Unless----" and she paused.

"Unless what?"

"Whatever brings this dame clear over from France to look for a mine after twenty years? D'you reckon that any one in their sober senses would squander money on a thing like that if they didn't have some inside info as to where to look? Seems to me this Frog lady must have got some tip that we haven't had."

"Perhaps she has," said Wilding. "In fact, she would hardly come here, as you say, with nothing definite to go on. But I'm not interested in the mine. What I want to know is where this Louisiana went after he left here."

"Maybe Snake Murphy knows," said Marian.

Wilding was inclined to agree with her. At least no other source of information appeared to offer any better prospects, so with some distaste he sought out Murphy at the pool room. He began by tactfully remarking about the changes from the old times, to which Murphy agreed.

"You've lived here since before the Falls was built, haven't you, Murphy?" asked Wilding, after Snake had expressed some contempt for new times and new ways.

"Me!" said Snake, boastfully. "Why, when I come here there wasn't anything here but sunshine and jack rabbits. I _was_ the town of Sulphur Falls. I run a ferry and a road house down here when there wasn't another place within five miles in any direction."

"You knew the old-timers, then?"

"n.o.body knew them any better. They all had to stop at my place whenever they were crossin' the river. There wasn't no ford."

Wilding leaned over and grew confidential.

"Snake," he said, in a low tone, "I've heard that you know something about this old-time gunman, Louisiana, and the killing of French Pete back about the first of the century. Is there anything in that?"

Snake eyed him coolly and appraisingly before he answered.

"There seems to be a lot of interest cropping up in this Louisiana and French Pete all of a sudden," he remarked. "What's the big idea?"

"I'm looking for Louisiana," said Wilding.

"And not fer French Pete's mine?"

"No interest at all in the mine," Wilding a.s.sured him. "I've got an idea that Louisiana could be convicted of that murder if we could lay hands on him."

"Well, you're welcome to go to it if you want," said Snake, dryly. He held up his stiffened right wrist and eyed it cynically. "But, personally, if it was me and I knowed that Louisiana was still kickin', I'd indulge in considerable reflection before I went squanderin' around lookin' to lay anything on him. This here Louisiana, I'm free to state, wasn't no hombre to aggravate carelessly. _I_ found that out."

"How?" Wilding asked.

"Oh, it was my own fault, I'll admit at this day. There was a lady used to frequent my place who wasn't any better than she should be.

She took a grudge against Louisiana and, bein' right fond of her at the time, I was foolish enough to horn in on the ruction. I'll say this for Louisiana: he could just as well have beefed me complete instead of just shootin' the derringer out of my fist the way he done.

Takin' it all together, I'd say he was plumb considerate."

"He was a bad man, then?"

"Why, no, I wouldn't say he was. He was a rattlesnake with a six-shooter, but, takin' it altogether, he never run wild with it. Not until he beefs French Pete--that is, if he did down him. As for me, I never knew anything about that except what I was told because I was nursin' a busted wrist about that time. All I know was that the boys that hung around here was after him for gettin' me and that he headed out south, stoppin' at Twin Forks and then goin' on south toward the mountains. n.o.body ever saw him again, and from that day to this he ain't never been heard of."

"Looks like he had some reason better than shooting you up to keep going and never come back, don't it?"

"It looks like it. But I don't know anything about it. Might have been that he was just tired of us all and decided to quit us. Anyhow, if there's anything rightly known about it I reckon it'll be over at Maryville. There's where they held the inquest at the time."

Snake evidently knew nothing more than he had told and Wilding again decided that his only chance of gaining any real information would be at Maryville. Accordingly, he got an automobile and started for that somnolent village on the next day.

After arriving at the little town, he spent two or three days in preliminary work looking toward filing the pet.i.tion for mademoiselle's divorce and arranging to secure her nominal residence in Nevada. Not until this had been accomplished did he set out to get information regarding the long-forgotten Louisiana.

His first place of call was the coroner's office. A local undertaker held the position at this time and he had been in the country no more than ten years. He knew nothing of his predecessors and had few of their records, none going back as far as this event.

"There seems to be a lot of curiosity cropping up about this old murder," he volunteered, when Wilding broached the subject. "Another man was in here yesterday asking about the same thing. Tall, good-looking fellow, dressed like a cowman and wearing a gun. Know him?"

Wilding asked a few further details and recognized the description as that of De Launay. This satisfied him, as he had no doubt that mademoiselle's nominal husband was employed on the same errand as himself. So he merely stated that it was probably the man in whose interests he was working.

"Well, I didn't know anything about him and didn't discuss the matter with him. Fact is, I never heard of the murder so I couldn't tell him much about it."

"Still, I'm sure there was an inquest at the time," said Wilding.

"There probably was, but that wouldn't mean any too much. In the old days the coroner's juries had a way of returning any old verdict that struck their fancies. I've heard of men being shot tackling some noted gun fighter and the jury bringing in a verdict of suicide because he ought to have known better than to take such a chance. Then it's by no means uncommon to find them laying a murder whose perpetrator was unknown or out of reach against a Chinaman or Indian or some extremely unpopular individual on the theory that, if he hadn't done this one, he might eventually commit one and, anyway, they ought to hang him on general principles and get rid of him. This was in 1900, you say?"

"About then."

"That doesn't sound early enough for one of the freak verdicts. Still, this country was still primitive at that time, and they might have done almost anything. Anyway there are no coroner's records going back to that date, so I'm afraid that I can't help you or your client."