The Delafield Affair Part 15

"You're not reasonable about Dell. Why should he want you a.s.sa.s.sinated?"

"The only reason I can see is that I've been talking pretty plain about him. But if he doesn't like the kind of things I say he'll have to get used to it, or else reform."

"Nonsense, Curt. And even if he does think you're handling the Castleton money against--"

Curtis made a gesture of impatience. "I hope you don't take any stock in that talk, Aleck. The Castletons don't care a hang about this campaign, and Dell knows it. They're not putting up a cent, or, if Ned is doing anything for his wife's sake, he's dealing with Johnny Martinez direct."

Bancroft looked at him narrowly. "Is that right, Curt? Are you sure of it?"

"As sure as I am of anything," the cattleman responded with emphasis.

"They've never mentioned the subject to me."

After Conrad had gone the banker walked the floor in anxious thought.

What, then, did that five-hundred-dollar check mean that Curtis had given to Jenkins? Perhaps he was holding the young man off, saying he was not yet sure of Delafield's ident.i.ty and needed money to carry on his investigation, intending to give up his secret if he should find that he could bleed Bancroft no longer. That would be like Jenkins, he decided. As soon as he could get away he would go to Las Vegas and see if the fellow could be cowed by the knowledge that had come to him so opportunely. As for Conrad, it would be better to wait until he could learn whether those checks would produce the effect desired.

In front of the court-house the ranchman met Tillinghurst and Little Jack Wilder. The Sheriff had a subpoena commanding him to appear as a witness for the State in the Melgares trial, set for June. Curtis remarked, as they talked of the case: "I reckon you'll have Pendleton as a witness; he'll want to take in the whole thing. Have you seen anything of him? He promised to meet me here. He's going back with me; says he wants to take in a round-up and see a steer on the prod. I sure reckon I'll have my hands full if I keep the boys from taking him in."

"Let 'em run him, Curt, let 'em run him," said the Sheriff. "He's good-natured, and he'll soon strike their gait. He was never outside of New England before, and he's tryin' mighty hard to be tougher than anybody else on the border. He's been in town three weeks, and he calls everybody by their first names, from Judge Banks down to my Mexican stable-boy. He writes down all the slang he hears every day, sits up nights to study it, and the next day slings it around as free and easy as an old-timer. Is that him comin' yonder? Say, Curt, he'll stampede every cow-brute you've got on the range!"

Pendleton, short, stout, and large of girth, had dressed himself for roughing it according to his own idea of custom and comfort. He wore a Mexican straw sombrero tied down over his ears with a red bandanna, a red flannel shirt, a long linen coat, huge spurs, and sheepskin _chaparejos_.

"Oh, where did you get that coat?" the three men sang out as he came within hearing distance. Pendleton caught the tails in his finger tips and danced some sidewise steps.

"Ain't she a beaut?" he shouted. "I found it in a store down in Dobytown."

"Say, Pendy," called the Sheriff, "if you go pervadin' and pesterin'

around among Curt's steers in those duds I'll have to send Jack down there to arrest you for breach of the peace."

"All right, Tilly! I'm here for my health, but I'm takin' in on the side everything that comes my way!"

Conrad found a letter at the ranch addressed to Jose Gonzalez, in his care, and grinned with satisfaction as he recognized Baxter's handwriting. "He's buffaloed all right and is calling off his man," he thought as he opened with eager curiosity a missive from Baxter for himself:

"MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND:--I a.s.sure you that you are barking up the wrong tree when you try to connect me with any attack the Mexican, Jose Gonzalez, may have made upon you. In fact, it is so much up the wrong tree that I feel pretty sure there isn't any tree there at all! His a.s.sault was probably the result of sudden anger. The man has worked for me a good deal, and I know that such is his character. I have some influence with him, and I shall write him at once and give him a lecture on the necessity of controlling his temper. I have had occasion to do this several times in the past, not without effect. I shall tell him that you are a man of your word, and a crack shot, and that if he doesn't keep cool he's likely to die with his boots on. n.o.body could blame you, my dear Mr. Conrad, if you should shoot him under such a necessity of self-defence. I take it ill, however, that you should connect me with this greaser's outrageous temper and crazy actions. I a.s.sure you again that you are entirely mistaken in your a.s.sumption, which, permit me to say, is what might very well be called gratuitous.

"I congratulate Johnny Martinez upon having the support of a gentleman so energetic, influential, and enthusiastic as yourself, and I remain,

"Yours very cordially, "DELLMEY BAXTER."

Conrad laughed aloud over the letter, exclaiming as he finished it, "He's a slick one, he is!"

Another letter bore the imprint of Tremper & Townsend, and contained a check for five hundred dollars and a brief note saying that their client, Sumner L. Delafield, wished them to send him this money as a second instalment of the amount due his father's estate, and to add that like sums would follow in rapid succession. Conrad scowled and gnawed his moustache as he read the letter the second time. He was considering whether he had any right to accept the money and continue his quest of vengeance. Delafield evidently meant to buy him off with it and, if he accepted, did he not tacitly accept that condition?

"I'll send it back to him," was his first thought, as he reached for a pen. But another idea stayed his hand. The former check he had divided between his brother and sisters, and, as they knew nothing of his scheme of revenge, this also ought to go to them. But Delafield must know upon what terms he accepted the money. With a grim look on his face he wrote to the Boston attorneys:

"I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a second check for five hundred dollars from your client, Sumner L. Delafield. I am reasonably grateful that an unexpected sense of remorse has led him to loose his purse-strings, even at this late day, and on behalf of my brother and sisters will ask you to send him their thanks. As for myself, you may tell him that I hope the sending of the money has eased his conscience, for it will procure him no other benefit.

Every cent of money he sees fit to send me I shall turn over to my father's other children, while I shall find entire satisfaction in following out my revenge. What that is he doubtless knows, for the sending of these checks convinces me that he is moved, not by the honest wish to do what he can toward righting a dastardly wrong, but by the desire to save his own skin. Please tell him, from me, that he cannot buy immunity from my purpose, even though he should send me the whole of the debt three times over."

CHAPTER XV

VILLAINY UNMASKED

Pendleton, bouncing in his saddle as they galloped southward, bent admiring glances upon the erect figure of his companion, whose seat was as steady as if horse and rider had been welded together. "Say, Curt,"

he finally called out, "how do you do it? I'd give my bad lung if I could ride like you."

Conrad gave him some instruction, and Pendleton turned all his attention toward learning how to bring his body into rhythmic accord with the movements of his horse. The cattleman, pounding along in silence, thought with satisfaction of the progress his search for Delafield was making and planned how he should carry it on after the round-up, when he would have more leisure. He would make a list of the men in New Mexico rich and prominent enough to come under suspicion, investigate their records, one by one, and so by elimination discover the person he wanted. Then would come the meeting!

His thoughts full of the climax of his search, he rode on in a sort of exaltation, unconsciously humming a song he and Lucy Bancroft had been practising. Presently, through the silence, the sound entered his conscious hearing, and took his thoughts back to the pleasant hour he and she had spent over it. But a vague uneasiness stirred his feelings as the image of Lucy floated past the background of that grisly, dominating purpose. The thought of her persisted; as it clung there, along the edge of his absorption, it brought a sharp and curious suggestion of the maimed bird he had carried in his bosom. He was suddenly conscious of discomfort, as if he had hurt some helpless thing, when his reverie was broken by a series of wild yells from his companion. Pendleton had been lagging behind, but he now came dashing forward, giving vent to his delight because he had so far mastered the art of riding that he no longer bounced all over the horse's back nor fell forward and seized its mane at each change of gait.

A spring welled alluringly from a dimple in the hillside. Pendleton dismounted, saying he was thirsty. "Don't drink from that spring, Pendy," Conrad admonished him. "It's alkali, and you'll wish you hadn't."

"It looks all right, and it's cool," said the tenderfoot, dipping his hand in the water. "My throat's as hot and dry as that road. What harm will it do?"

"Well, pretty soon you'll think you're chewing cotton; and it may make you sick, though this spring isn't strong enough of alkali to do you much harm."

"I'll risk it," Pendleton declared, scooping up some water in his hat-brim. "It's wet when it goes down, anyway. And I reckon I might as well take in an alkali spring, too, while I've got the chance.

Everything goes!" An hour later he galloped alongside of Conrad, working his jaws and licking his lips. "Say, Curt," he mumbled, "I know a fellow back home who'd give a thousand dollars for such a thirst as I've got!"

It was midnight when they pa.s.sed Rock Springs, where the superintendent had left his outfit. Two hours later, when Brown Betty put out her nose and neighed, an answering whinny came back from beyond the next hill.

"That's only Five Cottonwoods," thought Curtis. "It can't be they've got no farther than that!" They gained the top of the hill and below them, in the light of the waning moon, they saw the white top of the chuck-wagon, the dark patch of sleeping cattle patrolled by a single horseman, and the figures of the men sprawled on the ground around the dying coals of their evening fire.

"Here we are, Pendy!" said Curtis. "I thought they would have got farther than this, and that we'd have at least two hours more of travel.

Now we'll have time for a little sleep before you begin busting those broncs."

They stretched themselves on the ground and almost instantly fell asleep. But it was not long before Conrad, rousing suddenly, sprang to his feet, realizing even before he was fairly awake that the cattle were stampeding. From down the hill came a thundering, rushing sound, the noise of hundreds of hoofs pounding the ground. He called his foreman, seized his saddle, and rushed to the bunch of tethered cow-ponies, Peters, Texas Bill, Red Jack, and Jose Gonzalez close behind. As they dashed after the flying herd Curtis could see in the dim light the figure of the cowboy who had been patrolling the sleeping cattle. He was following the stampede at what his employer thought a leisurely pace.

"Who was riding herd?" he yelled to Peters, who replied, "Andy Miller."

"Is he trying to drive them farther away?" Conrad muttered angrily, pressing home his spur.

The cattle tore wildly down the hill, but at its foot their leaders turned up the course of the dry shallow valley instead of pressing up the other side. The men saw the movement, and by cutting across the hillside gained rapidly upon the fleeing animals. As they pa.s.sed Andy Miller, Curtis shouted to him that he might return to the camp, as they should not need him. The draw soon began to grow deeper and narrower, and the dense ma.s.s of cattle was forced to lessen its pace. Conrad remembered that farther on the valley came to an abrupt end against a steep rise. If the brutes stayed in it a little longer they would not be able to get out, and when they came to the end of this blind alley of the hills they would have to stop. So he and his companions galloped easily along beside the shadowy stream of moving backs with its spray of tossing horns that filled the draw, and presently found the leaders, their heads to the bluff, chewing their cuds as quietly as if they had never been frightened in all their lives.

As they rode back to camp behind the staidly moving herd, Conrad asked Peters if he knew what caused the stampede. The foreman did not know, he had been sound asleep when it began. But he went on to tell an excited tale of mysterious accidents that had followed close upon one another ever since the morning of the superintendent's departure. Only the edge of the sand-storm through which he had ridden touched them, though it had kept them in camp all day. Nevertheless, there had been two stampedes, and they had had much trouble getting the brutes together again. Every day since there had been at least one stampede of the herd.

He and the others had been kept busy gathering in the flying cattle.

This was why they had got no farther than Five Cottonwoods. It seemed as if the devil himself had taken possession of every cow-brute on the range; never in all his years as a cow-puncher had he had such a time.

"Don't you know what starts them?"

"That's the mischief of it. n.o.body ever knows. The darned critters just get up and hike. Some of the boys are gettin' skeery about it, and they're likely to pull their freight if it keeps up. They're tellin'

ghost stories now after supper, and Andy Miller has been reelin' off the whoppin'est yarns ever you heard. Between the ghost stories and the way the cow-brutes act the boys are gettin' plumb fidgety, and I'm mighty glad you've got back."

"How does Andy get on with the work? Does he _sabe_?"

"Yes; he's first rate; the best we've got, except Jose. But Andy does have main bad luck with the cow-brutes. This makes four times they've stampeded under him."

Promise of day was flushing the eastern sky and faintly warming the gray semi-darkness when Pendleton's eyes flew open, to instant conviction of illness. From head to foot he ached with weariness, and he felt wretchedly sick. For a moment he kept quiet, feeling that it would be more comfortable to lie still and die than to try to move. But presently he thought, "I'll never live to die of consumption if I don't get up quick and find my whiskey!"