The Rider of Golden Bar Part 41

Rafe did his best to return the stare, but his eyes would drop despite his best effort.

"You know that letter from Miss Walton Judge Driver threw in the fire--the one you heard me telling Judge Donelson about?" went on Billy. "Yeah, that one. It might have fooled me--I'm only human, you know, if----"

"You're too modest," Tip interrupted dryly.

"If it hadn't been for one or two li'l things," resumed Billy. "The handwriting was a fine imitation--you couldn't beat it. But I knew she hadn't written it." He paused, and began to roll a cigarette.

Rafe Tuckleton pa.s.sed his tongue across his lips. The district attorney looked down at his locked hands. Of the three Tip O'Gorman was the only one to remain his natural self.

"G'on," urged Tip, "give it a name."

"You see," said Billy, "Skinny Shindle told me Miss Walton gave him the note about 2.30 P.M. Now on that afternoon I happened to be at the Prescott ranch. Miss Walton was there visiting Miss Prescott. I didn't leave the Prescotts' till nearly three o'clock, and Miss Walton was still there and intending to spend the night. That's how I knew she couldn't have written that note."

"Nine miles from Prescott's to Walton's," said Tip.

"Nearer ten," corrected Billy. "Skinny was sure careless. So were several other men. You've got to make things fit."

He nodded kindly to the company and abruptly departed with his companion.

"I wonder what he meant by 'making things fit,'" mused the district attorney, following five minutes' silence.

"I dunno," Rafe mumbled in accents of the deepest gloom, "but you can put down a bet he meant something."

"He did," declared Tip O'Gorman, "and I'm telling you two straight, flat and final, you ain't fit to play checkers with a blind man. It makes a feller ashamed to do business with you, you're so thumb-handed, tumble-footed foolish. At the time the note was written from Walton's the girl was at Prescott's. Oh, great! And he knew it alla time. And you two jokes wondered why your scheme fell through! You know now, don't you? Gawd! What a pair you are! Oh, I've always believed that a man makes his own li'l h.e.l.l. Whatever devilishness he does on this earth he pays for on this earth. You fellers are already beginning to pay."

Thus Tip O'Gorman, the moralist. He departed wrapped in a virtuous silence. He did not dare let the others know the actual worry that rode his soul. He knew it was only a matter of time when Billy Wingo would be camping on his trail too. Lord, how he'd been fooled! He had never suspected that the sheriff possessed such capabilities. And how had the sheriff learned of that flour deal between Rafe and the Indian agent. The flour supposed to have been bought through another man.

Rafe had not appeared in the affair at all, yet Billy Wingo knew all about it.

And the bribe taken by the district attorney. There was another odd chance. Besides the two princ.i.p.als, Rafe Tuckleton and himself, Tip had not supposed that any one knew of the matter. It was very mysterious.

Tip could have kicked himself. He alone was the individual responsible for the whole trouble. If only he had not proposed the election of Billy Wingo-- But he had proposed it, and now look at the result!

"Say, Bill," said the greatly impressed Riley Tyler on the way to the office, "what's this about that deal of Rafe's with the Indian agent?

You never said anything about it before."

"Good reason," grinned Billy, "it just occurred to me."

"Occurred to you?" puzzled Riley.

"Yeah, I don't actually know of any deal between Rafe and that thief of an agent; but knowing Rafe and knowing the agent, I guessed likely they had been mixed up together in a business way. Seems I guessed right.

Same with the district attorney, only easier. If he's taken one bribe, he's taken forty. Wouldn't be Arthur Rale if he hadn't."

Riley Tyler chuckled. "Poker is one fine game," said Riley Tyler.

At the office they found Shotgun Shillman.

"What luck?" asked Billy.

"Plenty," was the reply. "We went to the Cayley cabin first. n.o.body livin' there. Ashes in the fireplace might have been a week or a month old. But the balsam tips in the bunks were older than that. They were last summer's cutting--all stiffer than a porcupine's quills."

"As I remember that cabin," reflected Billy, "the balsam grew all around it."

"They still do. We found a quarter of beef hanging on a stub back of the house. 'There,' says Simon, 'there's proof for you.' 'Yes,' I says, 'let's see the cow it came off of.' 'Whatsa use?' says Simon.

"'Lots,' I says. 'C'mon.' He did reluctant, bellowing alla time how we'd oughta follow the tracks leading away from the house toward the Hillsville trail a mile away."

"Were those tracks made by one man?" inquired Billy.

"Looked so to me--anyway, we went along on the line of tracks leading to the dead cow. It had been shot all right enough. It oughta been shot. It had big-jaw."

"'You mean to tell me them fellers cut that quarter off a big-jaw cow?'

I says to Simon. 'Sure,' he says. 'Aw right,' I says. 'Let it go at that.' I poked around to find the other cow. Simon raising objections alla time to me wastin' so much time and trying to get me off the trail. Oh, he didn't care a whoop about me finding the second cow.

Wasn't one enough? Oh, sure, to hear him talk! But I found the cow.

It hadn't been shot a-tall. Died of the yallers last fall. And it had just about half rotted before freezing weather set in. 'I suppose,' I says sarcastic, 'both cows were killed about the same time.' 'You've guessed it,' says Simon, bold as bra.s.s. 'Now all you gotta do is chase right along back to the cabin and take up the trail like I wanted you to do in the first place and trail 'em down.' He acted real disappointed when I left him standin' there and came away. I'd have arrested him right then only you said not to."

"Good enough," approved Billy. "Plenty of time to arrest him later. I want to give him plenty of rope. One of these days I'll get a subpoena from Judge Donelson and serve it on him. That'll give him plenty of time to think things over between now and the trial."

"Simon ain't the kind to take things easy," mused Shotgun Shillman.

"He'll fret his head off. About the time Slike is well enough to stand prosecution, Simon Reelfoot will be ready to bust."

But the well-known best-laid plans are more breakable than the equally well-known best-laid eggs.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WHEN THIEVES FALL OUT

"I tell you, Rafe," said Reelfoot in a panic, "they suspect me--they think I'm mixed up in this murder business."

"Accessory before and after the fact," slipped in the district attorney. A reptile himself, he relished the wrigglings of another reptile. "If they prove it on you, you'll be hanged sure as Dan Slike will hang."

"I ain't the only one they can prove it on," snarled Simon Reelfoot.

"Who have you got in mind?" Rafe Tuckleton said in a colorless voice.

"Both of you, for instance," Reelfoot informed him.

"You do us a grave injustice." Thus the district attorney solemnly.

Rafe Tuckleton shook his head at Simon. "Wrong tree. You don't know anything about us."

Simon Reelfoot gaped at both of them. "Why, we fixed it up between us.

You know we did. You even wanted two cows killed so's to make it look lifelike to the deputies."

Rafe looked at the district attorney. "The man's mad."