The Last Straw Part 32

"My gosh, Tommy, they acted funny. Have you done anything?" the cowboy asked in an undertone as they left the house.

"A lot, Two-Bits. I sure hope they don't go proddin' into my awful past! There's some terrible things they might find!"

He hooked his arm through the other's and laughed at the boy's apprehension.

But Beck knew that something of grave consequence impended the instant he set foot in the bunk house for the men, who had been talking lowly, stopped and eyed him in sober silence. Afterward he had a distinct recollection of Two-Bits slipping along the wall, looking at him over his shoulder with the freckles showing in great blotches against his white skin. Hepburn, Riley and Webb sat on one bed. The foreman was leaning back, hands clasping a knee, but he chewed his tobacco with nervous vigor.

"The Reverend about to offer prayer?" Tom asked easily.

There was no responsive smile on any face. Someone coughed loudly and sharply as if it had been an unnecessary cough. Tom halted.

"I'm here. What's up?" he asked quietly. "This is like a funeral ... or a trial."

At that Hepburn cleared his throat.

"Want to ask you somethin', Beck. I want you to tell these other men what you said to me this noon."

Tom hitched up his belt.

"If you want 'em to know, why don't you speak the piece yourself? You recall it, don't you?"

"Better talk, Tom," Riley advised.

"I don't know what this is all about; I don't know what difference what I said to Hepburn can make to the rest of you, but I respect your opinions, Riley, and if he's willing for you to know what I said, I sure am willing to repeat it.

"Hepburn and I've had a little argument. It's been goin' on for some time. He'd be pleased to have me move on, I take it, but I sort of like this outfit."

"Go on," Hepburn said impatiently.

"I told you, Hepburn, and I'll tell you again that this ranch is gettin' a little small to hold both of us. It seems to shrink every day and I don't get good elbow room any more, but so far as I'm concerned I'm more or less permanent."

Webb nodded and Riley shifted uneasily, looking from Beck to Hepburn, frankly puzzled.

"Yes, that's what you said to me. Now will you tell the boys where you rode this afternoon?"

Beck eyed him a long moment and the foreman stared back, a.s.sured but not quite composed, his little eyes dark. Once he bit his chew savagely but his expression did not change.

"I rode out of here straight up Sunny Gulch, climbed out at the head, rode those little dry gulches as far down as Twenty Mile and came up the far ridge. Then I took a circle to the east and came home by the road."

"You admit bein' at the head of Twenty Mile, then?"

"Admit it? Yes."

"What time?"

"Three o'clock or thereabouts,"--after a pause in which he considered.

"See any other men?"

"Not a man until I got back."

Hepburn looked about. Two-Bits muttered lowly to himself. Riley dragged a spur across the floor slowly. Every eye in the room was on Beck, and Beck's eyes were on Hepburn.

"Then will you tell the boys how come this?"

The foreman drew a gun and holster from behind him. It was Beck's gun.

He drew it from the scabbard, broke it and dropped the cartridges into his palm.

Three of the sh.e.l.ls were empty.

The two gave one another stare for stare. Hepburn was breathing rapidly but his look was of a man who faces a crisis with all confidence. Beck did not move or speak. His eyes smouldered and his face settled into stern lines. Then that smouldering burst into blaze and before the glare of will the foreman's hand, holding the contents of the revolver chambers, trembled. He closed it quickly and looked away and where a moment before he had been the accuser he was now on the defense. It was determination against determination and in the conflict words were wrung from him.

"Somebody fired three shots at me at the head of Twenty Mile at three o'clock this afternoon."

And that sentence, though it was an indictment, was voiced more in a manner of defense than in accusation. With it Beck's expression changed; it became alert, as though following some play upon which great stakes hung, but following intelligently, not blind to the way of the game.

"I can explain those empty sh.e.l.ls. I took a shot at a coyote on the way back. I didn't see you, Hepburn, after I left here this afternoon until I got back."

Webb got up.

"I guess that makes the case," he said to no one in particular.

Then to Tom: "I was with Dad; he was ten rod ahead of me. Th' shots come from above and landed all around him.

"_We_ didn't have to look very hard for somebody who wants to get rid of Dad, but we wanted it from you, Beck."

Triumph was in his little beady eyes and on his mottled face. There was a shuffling of feet and Tom hooked one thumb in his belt, with a slow, uncertain movement. His eyes held on Hepburn's face, prying, searching, striving to force a meeting but the other would not look at him, he busied himself stuffing the evidence into his shirt pocket.

Riley rose and the low stir which had followed the revelation subsided.

"Isn't there something else you want to say, Beck?" he asked. "Didn't you see any other man? Can't you say something for yourself?"

"I didn't see another man this afternoon," the other replied, still striving to make Hepburn meet his gaze, "an' besides there don't seem to be much to say. I've told my story. It's simple enough.... You've heard the other story, which seems simple enough. Now it's my word against Hepburn's ... an' Webb's,"--as though the last were in afterthought, and of little matter.

Riley faced the circle of listeners.

"This is no boy's play," he said grimly. "The foreman of the biggest outfit in this country has been shot at, shot at by somebody who didn't come from cover and give him even a fair show for a fight. We know that there's been bad blood between these two men; Tommy's admitted that. I hate like h.e.l.l to think he lost his head over a quarrel and that he'd fight a man from cover, but it looks bad.

"We can't have this go on! There's been stealing and rumors of stealing for months. There's trouble comin' over water and fence. We've gotten along like good neighbors for years but now trouble seems to be in the air. I don't see that there's much to it but to take Tom to town an'

turn him over to the sheriff.

"Unless,"--facing Beck. "Tommy, ain't there anything you want to say?

You've refused once but I keep thinkin' you've got something else you could tell us."

"No, Riley, I'd be taking a chance by doing more talkin' tonight. I'll do it when it'll do me more good," he said, but at his own words, brave though they sounded, his heart sank and a rage boiled up in him.

"Then I'm afraid it's jail for you, son," Riley said. "I can--"