The White Desert Part 17

"And his seal."

"I suppose so." Bewildered, Houston was looking at the papers with glazed eyes. "It looks like it."

"Then," and the sheriff's voice went brusque, "what right have you to try to run these men off of property for which you've given them a bona-fide lease, and to which you've just admitted your signature as genuine?"

"I've--I've given no lease. I--"

"Then look 'em over. If that isn't a lease to the lake and flume and flume site, and if the second one isn't a contract for stumpage at a dollar and a half a thousand feet,--well, then, I can't read."

"But I'm telling you that I didn't give it to them." Houston had reached for the papers with a trembling hand. "There's a fraud about it somewhere!"

"I don't see where there can be any fraud when you admit your signature, and there's a notary's seal attached."

"But there is! I can't tell you why--but--"

"Statements like that don't count in law. There are the papers and they're duly signed and you've admitted your signature. If there's any fraud about it, you've got the right to prove it. But in the meanwhile, the court's injunction stands. You've leased this land to these men, and you can't interfere with them. Understand?"

"All right." Houston moved hazily back, away from the flume site.

Ba'tiste stood staring glumly, wondering, at the papers which had been returned to the sheriff. "But I know this, that it's a fakery--somehow--and I'll prove it. I have absolutely no memory of ever signing any such papers as that, or of even talking to any one about selling stumpage at a figure that you should know is ridiculous.

Why, you can't even buy the worst kind of timber from the government at that price! I don't remember--"

"Didn't I tell you?" Thayer had turned to the sheriff. "There he goes pulling that loss of memory stunt again. That's one of his best little bets," he added sneering, "to lose his memory."

"I've never lost it yet!"

"No--then you can forget things awfully easy. Such as coming out here and pretending not to know who you were. Guess you forgot your ident.i.ty for a minute, didn't you? Just like you forgot signing this lease and stumpage contract! Yeh, you're good at that--losing your memory. You never remember anything that happens. You can't even remember the night you murdered your own cousin, can you?"

"That's a--"

"See, sheriff? His memory's bad." All the malice and hate of pent-up enmity was in Fred Thayer's voice now. One gnarled hand went forward in accusation. "He can't even remember how he killed his own cousin.

But if he can't, I can. Ask him about the time when he slipped that mallet in his pocket at a prize fight and then went on out with his cousin. Ask him what became of Tom Langdon after they left that prize fight. He won't be able to tell you, of course. He loses his memory; all he will be able to remember is that his father spent a lot of money and hired some good lawyers and got him out of it. He won't be able to tell you a thing about how his own cousin was found with his skull crushed in, and the b.l.o.o.d.y wooden mallet lying beside him--the mallet that this fellow had stolen the night before at a prize fight! He won't--"

White-hot with anger, Barry Houston lurched forward, to find himself caught in the arms of the sheriff and thrown back. He whirled,--and stopped, looking with glazed, deadened eyes into the blanched, horrified features of a girl who evidently had heard the accusation, a girl who stood poised in revulsion a moment before she turned, and, almost running, hurried to mount her horse and ride away. And the strength of anger left the muscles of Barry Houston. The red flame of indignation turned to a sodden, dead thing. He could only realize that Medaine Robinette now knew the story. That Medaine Robinette had heard him accused without a single statement given in his own behalf; that Medaine, the girl of his smoke-wreathed dreams, now fully and thoroughly believed him--a murderer!

CHAPTER XII

Dully Houston turned back to the sheriff and to the goggle-eyed Ba'tiste, trying to fathom it all. Weakly he motioned toward Thayer, and his words, when they came, were hollow and expressionless:

"That's a lie, Sheriff. I'll admit that I have been accused of murder.

I was acquitted. You say that nothing counts but the court action--and that's all I have to say in my behalf. The jury found me not guilty.

In regard--to this, I'll obey the court order until I can prove to the judge's satisfaction that this whole thing is a fraud and a fake. In the meanwhile--" he turned anxiously, almost piteously, "do you care to go with me, Ba'tiste?"

Heavily, silently, the French-Canadian joined him, and together they walked down the narrow road to the camp. Neither spoke for a long time. Ba'tiste walked with his head deep between his shoulders, and Houston knew that memories were heavy upon him, memories of his Julienne and the day that he came home to find, instead of a waiting wife, only a mound beneath the sighing pines and a stalwart cross above it. As for Houston, his own life had gone gray with the sudden recurrence of the past. He lived again the first days of it all, when life had been one constant repet.i.tion of questions, then solitude, questions and solitude, as the homicide squad brought him up from his cell to inquire about some new angle that they had come upon, to question him regarding his actions on the night of the death of Tom Langdon, then to send him back to "think it over" in the hope that the constant tangle of questions might cause him to change his story and give them an opening wedge through which they could force him to a confession. He lived again the black hours in the dingy courtroom, with its shadows and soot spots brushing against the window, the twelve blank-faced men in the jury box, and the witnesses, one after another, who went to the box in an effort to swear his life away. He went again through the agony of the new freedom--the freedom of a man imprisoned by stronger things than mere bars and cells of steel--when first he had gone into the world to strive to fight back to the position he had occupied before the pall of accusation had descended upon him, and to fight seemingly in vain. Friends had vanished, a father had gone to his grave, believing almost to the last that it had been his money and the astuteness of his lawyers that had obtained freedom for a guilty son, certainly not a self-evidence of innocence that had caused the twelve men to report back to the judge that they had been unable to force their convictions "beyond the shadow of a doubt." A nightmare had it been and a nightmare it was again, as drawn-featured, stoop-shouldered, suddenly old and haggard, Barry Houston walked down the logging road beside a man whose mind also had been recalled to thoughts of murder. A sudden fear went over the younger man; he wondered whether this great being who walked at his side had believed, and at last in desperation, he faced him.

"Well, Ba'tiste," came in strained tones, "I might as well hear it now as at any other time. They've about got me whipped, anyway, so you'll only be leaving a sinking ship."

"What you mean?" The French-Canadian stopped.

"Just the plain facts. I'm about at the end of my rope; my mill's all but gone, my flume is in the hands of some one else, my lake is leased, and Thayer can make as many inroads on my timber as he cares to, as long as he appeases the court by paying me the magnificent sum of a dollar and a half a thousand for it. So, you see, there isn't much left for me."

"What you do?"

"That depends entirely on you--and what effect that accusation made.

If you're with me, I fight. If not--well frankly--I don't know."

"'Member the mill, when he burn down?"

"Yes."

"You no believe Ba'teese did heem. _Oui_, yes? Well, now I no believe either!"

"Honestly, Ba'tiste?" Houston had gripped the other man's arm. "You don't believe it? You don't--"

"Ba'teese believe M'sieu Houston. You look like my Pierre. My Pierre, he could do no wrong. Ba'teese satisfy."

It sent a new flow of blood through the veins of Barry Houston,--that simple, quiet statement of the old trapper. He felt again a surge of the fighting instinct, the desire to keep on and on, to struggle until the end, and to accept nothing except the bitterest, most absolute defeat. He quickened his pace, the French-Canadian falling in with him. His voice bore a vibrant tone, almost of excitement:

"I'm going back to Boston to-night. I'm going to find out about this.

I can get a machine at Tabernacle to take me over the range; it may save me time in catching a train at Denver. There's some fraud, Ba'tiste. I know it.--and I'll prove it if I can get back to Boston.

We'll stop by the cottage down here and see Miss Jierdon; then I'm gone!"

"She no there. She, what-you-say, smash up 'quaintance with Medaine.

She ask to go there and stay day or two."

"Then she'll straighten things out, Ba'tiste. I'm glad of it. She knows the truth about this whole thing--every step of the way. Will you tell her?"

"_Oui_. Ba'teese tell her--about the flume and M'sieu Thayer, what he say. But Ba'teese--"

"What?"

The trapper was silent a moment. At last:

"You like her, eh?"

"Medaine?"

"No--the other."

"A great deal, Ba'teese. She has meant everything to me; she was my one friend when I was in trouble. She even went on the stand and testified for me. What were you going to say?"

"Nothing," came the enigmatical reply. "Ba'teese will wait here. You go Boston to-night?"

"Yes."

And that night, in the moonlight, behind the rushing engine of a motor car, Barry Houston once more rode the heights where Mount Taluchen frowned down from its snowy pinnacles, where the road was narrow and the turns sharp, and where the world beneath was built upon a scale of miniature. But this time, the drifts had faded from beside the highway; nodding flowers showed in the moonlight; the snow flurries were gone. Soon the downward grade had come and after that the straggling little town of Dominion. Early morning found Houston in Denver, searching the train schedules. That night he was far from the mountains, hurrying half across the continent in search of the thing that would give him back his birthright.