Mystery Ranch Part 12

Talpers looked at the girl in mingled terror and amazement. Guilt was in his face, and his fears made him forget his aching head.

"You kept this money and did not let your half-breed partner in crime know you had found it," went on the girl. "Also you kept the watch, and, as it had no mark of identification, you concluded you could safely wear it."

Talpers struggled dizzily to his feet.

"It's all lies," he repeated. "I didn't kill that man."

"You might find it hard to convince a jury that you did not, with such evidence against you."

The trader looked at the watch as if he intended to make a dash to recover it, but the girl kept him steadily covered with his own revolver. Muttering curses, and swaying uncertainly on his feet, Talpers seized his hat and rushed from the house. He could be heard fumbling with the reins at the gate, and then the sound of hoofs came in diminuendo as he rode away.

CHAPTER IX

In his capacity of Indian agent Walter Lowell often had occasion to scan the business deals of his more progressive wards. He was at once banker and confidant of most of the Indians who were getting ahead in agriculture and stock-raising. He did not seek such a position, nor did he discourage it. Though it cost him much extra time and work, he advised the Indians whenever requested.

One of the reservation's most prosperous stock-raisers, who had been given permission to sell off some of his cattle, came to Lowell with a thousand-dollar bill, asking if it were genuine.

"It's all right," said Lowell, "but where did you get it?"

The Indian said he had received it from Bill Talpers in the sale of some livestock. Lowell handed it back without comment, but soon afterward found occasion to call on Bill Talpers at the trader's store.

Bill had been a frequent and impartial visitor to the bottles that were tucked away at both ends of his store. His hands and voice were shaky.

His hat was perched well forward on his head, covering a patch of court-plaster which his clerk had put over a scalp wound, following a painful process of hair-cutting. Bill had just been through the process of "bouncing" Andy Wolters, who remained outside, expressing wonder and indignation to all who called.

"All I did was ask Bill where his favorite gun was gone," quoth Andy in his nasal voice, as Lowell drove up to the store platform. "I never seen Bill without that gun before in my life. I jest started to kid him a little by askin' him who took it away from him, when he fired up and throwed me out of the store."

Lowell stepped inside the store.

"Bill," said Lowell, as the trader rose from his chair behind the screen of letter-boxes, "I want you to help me out in an important matter."

Bill's surprise showed in his swollen face.

"It's this," went on Lowell. "If any of the Indians bring anything here to p.a.w.n outside of the usual run of turquoise jewelry and spurs, I want you to let me know. Also, if they offer any big bills in payment for goods--say anything like a thousand-dollar bill--just give me the high sign, will you? It may afford a clue in this murder case."

Talpers darted a look of suspicion at the agent. Lowell's face was serene. He was leaning confidentially across the counter, and his eyes met Bill's in a look that made the trader turn away.

"You know," said Lowell, "it's quite possible that money and valuables were taken from Sargent's body. To be sure, they found his checkbook and papers, but they wouldn't be of use to anyone else. A man of Sargent's wealth must have had considerable ready cash with him, and yet none was found. He would hardly be likely to start out on a long trip across country without a watch, and yet nothing of the sort was discovered.

That's why I thought that if any Indians came in here with large amounts of money, or if they tried to p.a.w.n valuables which might have belonged to a man in Sargent's position, you could help clear up matters."

Hatred and suspicion were mingled in Talpers's look. The trader had spent most of his hours, since his return from Morgan's ranch, cursing the folly that had led him into wearing Sargent's watch. And now came this young Indian agent, with talk about thousand-dollar bills. There was another mistake Bill had made. He should have taken those bills far away and had them exchanged for money of smaller denomination. But he had been hard-pressed for cash, and suspicion seemed to point in such convincing fashion toward Fire Bear and the other Indians that it did not seem possible that it could be shifted elsewhere. Yet all his confidence had been shaken when Helen Ervin had calmly and correctly recounted to him the exact things that he had taken from that body on the hill. Probably she had been talking to the agent and had told him all she knew.

"I know what you're drivin' at," snarled Bill, his rage getting the better of his judgment. "You've been talkin' to that girl at Morgan's ranch, and she's been tellin' you all she thinks she knows. But she'd better go slow with all her talk about valuables and thousand-dollar bills. She forgets that she's as deep in this thing as anybody and I've got the doc.u.ment to prove it."

The surprise in the Indian agent's face was too genuine to be mistaken.

Talpers realized that he had been betrayed into overshooting his mark.

The agent had been engaged in a little game of bluff, and Talpers had fallen into his trap.

"All this is mighty interesting to me, Bill," said Lowell, regaining his composure. "I just dropped in here, hoping for a little general cooperation on your part, and here I find that you know a lot more than anybody imagined."

"You ain't got anything on me," growled Bill, "and if you go spillin'

any remarks around here, it's your death-warrant sure."

Lowell did not take his elbow from the counter. His leaning position brought out the breadth of his shoulders and emphasized the athletic lines of his figure. He did not seem ruffled at Bill's open threat. He regarded Talpers with a steady look which increased Bill's rage and fear.

"The trouble with you is that you're so dead set on protectin' them Injuns of yours," said the trader, "that you're around tryin' to throw suspicion on innocent white folks. The hull county knows that Fire Bear done that murder, and if you hadn't got him on to the reservation the jail'd been busted into and he'd been lynched as he ought to have been."

Bill waited for an answer, but none came. The young agent's steady, thoughtful scrutiny was not broken.

"You've coddled them Injuns ever sence you've been on the job," went on Bill, casting aside discretion, "and now you're encouragin' them in downright murder. Here this young cuss, Fire Bear, is traipsin' around as he pleases, on nothin' more than his word that he'll appear for trial. But when Jim McFann busts out of jail, you rush out the hull Injun police force to run him down. And now here you are around, off the reservation, tryin' to saddle suspicion on your betters. It ain't right, I claim. Self-respectin' white men ought to have more protection around here."

Talpers's voice had taken on something of a whine, and Lowell straightened up in disgust.

"Bill," he said, "you aren't as much of a man as I gave you credit for being, and what's more you've been in some crooked game, just as sure as thousand-dollar bills have four figures on them."

Paying no attention to the imprecations which Talpers hurled after him, the agent went back to his automobile and turned toward the agency. He had intended going on to the Greek Letter Ranch, but Talpers's words had caused him to make a change in his plans. At the agency he brought out a saddle horse, and, following a trail across the undulating hills on the reservation, reached the wagon-road below the ranch, without arousing Talpers's suspicion.

As he tied his pony at the gate, Lowell noticed further improvement in the general appearance of the ranch.

"Somebody more than Wong has been doing this heavy work," he said to Helen, who had come out to greet him. "It must be that Morgan--your stepfather is well enough to help. Anyway, the ranch looks better every time I come."

"Yes, he is helping some," said Helen uneasily. "But I'm getting to be a first-rate ranch-woman. I had no idea it was so much fun running a place like this."

"I came over to see if you couldn't take time enough off for a little horseback ride," said Lowell. "This is a country for the saddle, after all. I still get more enjoyment from a good horseback ride than from a dozen automobile trips. I'll saddle up the old white horse while you get ready."

Helen ran indoors, and Lowell went to the barn and proceeded to saddle the white horse that bore the Greek Letter brand. The smiling Wong came out to cast an approving eye over the work.

"This old fly-fighter's a pretty good horse for one of his age, isn't he, Wong?" said Lowell, giving a last shake to the saddle, after the cinch had been tightened.

In shattered English Wong went into ecstasies over the white horse. Then he said, suddenly and mysteriously:

"You know Talpels?"

"You mean Bill Talpers?" asked Lowell. "What about him?"

Once more the dominant tongue of the Occident staggered beneath Wong's a.s.sault, as the cook described, partly in pantomime, the manner of Bill Talpers's downfall the night before.

"Do you mean to say that Talpers was over here last night and that here is where he got that scalp-wound?" demanded Lowell.

Wong grinned a.s.sent, and then vanished, after making a sign calling for secrecy on Lowell's part, as Helen arrived, ready for the ride.

Lowell was a good horseman, and the saddle had become Helen's chief means of recreation. In fact riding seemed to bring to her the only contentment she had known since she had come to the Greek Letter Ranch.

She had overcome her first fear of the Indians. All her rides that were taken alone were toward the reservation, as she had studiously avoided going near Talpers's place. Also she did not like to ride past the hill on the Dollar Sign road, with its hints of unsolved mystery. But she had quickly grown to love the broad, free Indian reservation, with its limitless miles of unfenced hills. She liked to turn off the road and gallop across the trackless ways, sometimes frightening rabbits and coyotes from the sagebrush. Several times she had startled antelope, and once her horse had shied at a rattlesnake coiled in the sunshine. The Indians she had learned to look upon as children. She had visited the cabins and lodges of some of those who lived near the ranch, and was not long in winning the esteem of the women who were finding the middle ground, between the simplicity of savage life and the complexities of civilization, something too much for mastery.

Lowell and Helen galloped in silence for miles along the road they had followed in the automobile not many days before. At the crest of a high ridge, Helen turned at right angles, and Lowell followed.