The Fighting Shepherdess Part 20

Again there was silence, and once more Bowers came to the rescue with a feeble witticism, at which he himself laughed hollowly:

"I hearn that a feller eatin' supper with a steel knife got his tongue froze to it, and they had a time thawin' him over the tea kettle."

Kate rose to clear away and wash the dishes, but Bowers motioned her to remain seated.

"You rest yourself, Ma'am. I was a pearl diver in a restauraw fer three months onct so I am, you might say, a professional."

"Uncle Joe and I take turns," Kate laughed, "for neither of us likes it."

"That's the best way," Bowers agreed, breaking the constrained silence which fell each time Mormon Joe's name was mentioned. "More pardners has fell out over dish-washin' and the throwin' of diamond hitches than any other causes."

When, to Kate's horror, Bowers had wiped off the top of the stove with the dishcloth and removed some lingering moisture from the inside of a frying pan with his elbow, she said, rising:

"I'm up at four, so I go to bed early. You can sleep in Uncle Joe's tepee," to Lingle, "and you needn't get up for breakfast when we do. I suppose," to Bowers, "you'll want to start in to-morrow, so I'll go with you and show you the range we're feeding over." With a friendly good night she turned towards the entrance.

Lingle rose with a look of desperation on his countenance.

"Just a minute." There was that in his voice which made her turn quickly and look from one to the other in wonder.

Lingle had a feeling that his vocal cords had turned to wire, they moved so stiffly, when he heard himself saying:

"Guess I'll have to ask you to take a ride with me to-morrow."

"Me?" Her eyes widened. "What for?"

The yellow flame flickered in the smudged chimney of the lantern on the table, a bit of burning wood fell out from the front of the stove and lay smoking on the dirt floor in front of it. Bowers stood rigid by the basin where he had been washing his hands, with the water dripping from his fingers.

In a frenzy to have it over the deputy blurted out harshly:

"Mormon Joe's been murdered!"

The girl gave a cry--sharp, anguished, as one might scream out with a crushed finger.

Bowers advanced a step and demanded fiercely of Lingle:

"Don't you know nothin'--not no d.a.m.ned nothin'?"

Kate's face was marble.

"You mean--he's dead--he won't come back here--ever?"

"You've said it," the deputy replied, huskily.

Kate walked back unsteadily to the seat she had just vacated and her head sank upon her folded arms on the table. She did not cry like a woman, but with deep tearless sobs that lifted her shoulders.

The two men stood with their hands hanging awkwardly, looking at each other. Then Bowers made a grimace and jerked his head towards the tent entrance. The deputy obeyed the signal and went out on tip-toe with the sheepherder following.

"She's got guts," said Bowers briefly.

"She'll need 'em," was the laconic answer.

CHAPTER X

THE BANK PUTS ON THE SCREWS

In the initial excitement it had seemed a simple matter to apprehend the murderer of Mormon Joe with such clues as were furnished by the axe, the rope, the shotgun and the b.u.t.ton, which were found in the snow beneath the window. But investigation showed that the axe and rope were no different from scores of other axes and ropes in Prouty, and it was soon recognized that the solution of the case hinged upon the ownership of the gun and the finding of a motive for this peculiarly cowardly and ingenious murder.

But no one could be found to identify the gun, nor could any amount of inquiry unearth an enemy with a grudge sufficiently deep to inspire murder.

Although the room was packed to the doors, nothing startling was antic.i.p.ated from the coroner's inquest; and while Kate had been summoned as a witness it was not expected that much would be learned from her testimony. The crowd was concerned chiefly in seeing "how she was taking it."

But curiosity became suspicion and suspicion conviction, when Kate, as white as the alabastine wall behind her, admitted that she and Mormon Joe had quarreled the night before the murder, and over money; that she knew how to set a trap-gun and had set them frequently for mountain lions; that she could ride forty miles in a few hours if necessary. The sensation came, however, when the coroner revealed the fact that under the dead man's will she was the sole beneficiary. Her denial of any knowledge of this was received incredulously, and her emphatic declaration that she had never before seen the shotgun carried no conviction.

The coroner and jury, after deliberation, decided that there was not sufficient evidence to hold her, but the real argument which freed her was the cost to the taxpayers of convening a Grand Jury, and the subsequent proceedings, if the jury decided to try her.

Kate would as well have been proven guilty and convicted, for all the difference the verdict of the coroner's jury made in the staring crowd that parted to let her pa.s.s as she came from the inquest. She had untied her horse with the unseeing eyes of a sleep-walker and was about to put her foot in the stirrup when Lingle came up to her.

"I'm goin' to do all I can to clear you," he said, earnestly, "and I got the mayor behind me. He said he'd use every resource of his office to get this murderer. I believe in you--and don't you forget it!"

She had not been able to speak, but the look in her eyes had thanked him.

Two days later, Kate was disinfecting the wound of a sheep that an untrained dog had injured when a note from the Security State Bank was handed her by one of Neifkins' herders. It was signed by its President, Mr. Vernon Wentz, late of the White Hand Laundry, and there was something which filled her with forebodings in the curt request for an immediate interview.

It was too late to start for Prouty that day, but she would leave early in the morning, so she went on applying a solution of permanganate of pota.s.sium to the wound and sprinkling it with a healing powder while she conjectured as to what Wentz might want of her.

In her usual work Kate found an outlet for the nervous tension under which she was still laboring. It helped a little, though it seemed impossible to believe that she ever again would be serene of mind and able to think clearly. Her thoughts were a jumble; as yet she could only feel and suffer terribly. Remorse took precedence over all other emotions, over the sense of loneliness and loss, over the appalling accusation. Her writhing conscience was never quiet. She would gladly have exchanged every hope of the future she dared harbor for five minutes of the dead man's life in which to beg forgiveness.

In the short interval since the coroner's inquest public opinion had crystallized in Prouty, and Kate's guilt was now a certainty in the minds of its citizens.

"She done it, all right, only they can't prove it on her." Hiram Butefish merely echoed the opinion of the community when he made the a.s.sertion, upon seeing Kate turn the corner by the Prouty House and ride down the main street the day following the delivery of Mr. Wentz's summons.

Suffering had made Kate acutely sensitive and she was quick to feel the atmosphere of hostility. She read it in the countenances of the pa.s.sersby on the sidewalk, in the cold eyes staring at her from the windows, in the bank president's uncompromising att.i.tude, even in the cashier's supercilious inventory as he looked her over.

Kate had entered the wide swinging doors of the bank simultaneously with Mr. Abram Pantin, at whom Mr. Wentz had waved a long white hand and requested him languidly to be seated. Since he already had motioned Kate to the only chair beside the one he himself occupied in his enclosure, it was clear there was no way for Mr. Pantin to accept the invitation unless he sat on the floor. It chafed Pantin exceedingly to be patronized by one who so recently had done his laundry, but since his business at the bank was of an imperative nature he concealed his annoyance with the best grace possible and waited.

Temporarily, at least, Mr. Wentz had lost his equilibrium. From washing the town's soiled linen to loaning it money was a change so sudden and radical that the rise made him dizzy; he was apt, therefore, to be a little erratic, his manner varying during a single conversation from the cold austerity of a bloodless capitalist to the free and easy democracy of the days when he had stood in the doorway of his laundry in his undershirt and "joshed" the pa.s.sersby.

Mr. Wentz had a notion, fostered by his wife, that he was rather a handsome fellow. True, years of steaming had given to his complexion a look not unlike that of an evaporated apple, but this small defect was more than offset by a luxuriant brown mustache which he had trained carefully. His hair was sleek and neatly trimmed, and he used his brown eyes effectively upon occasions. His long hands with their supple fingers were markedly white, also from the steaming process. Being tall and of approximately correct proportions, his ready-made clothes fitted him excellently--as a matter of fact, Vernon Wentz would have pa.s.sed for a "gent" anywhere.

Not unmindful of the presence of Mr. Pantin, of whom he secretly stood in awe, although he knew of his own knowledge that Pantin sheared his collars, Wentz swung about in his office chair and said abruptly:

"Didn't expect I'd have to send for you."

Kate's troubled eyes were fixed upon him.