They Of The High Trails Part 44

His baseness was well known to the town, for he was one of those whose tongues reveal their degradation as soon as they are intoxicated. He boasted of his exploits in the city and of the women he had brought to his ranch, and these revelations made him the hero of a certain type of loafer. His cabin was recognized as a center of disorder and was generally avoided by decent people.

As he felt his dominion slipping away, as he saw the big farmers come in down below him and recognized the rule of the Federal government above him, he grew reckless in his roping and branding. He had not been convicted of dishonesty, but it was pretty certain that he was a rustler; in fact, the whole Sh.e.l.lfish community was under suspicion. As the ranger visited these cabins and came upon five or six big, hulking, sullen men, he was glad that he had little business with them. They were in a chronic state of discontent with the world and especially with the Forest Service.

With the almost maniacal persistency of the drunkard, Watson now fixed his mind upon the mysterious woman at the head of the valley. He talked of no one else, and his vile words came to Hanscom's ears. Watson's cronies considered his failure to secure even a word with the woman a great joke and reported that he had found the door locked when he finally followed her home.

Hanscom, indignant yet helpless to interfere, heard with pleasure that the old man had threatened Watson with bodily harm if he came to his door again, that with all his effrontery Watson had not yet been able to set his foot across the threshold, and that he had gone to Denver on business. "He'll forget that poor woman, maybe," he said.

Thereafter he thought of her as freed from persecution, although he knew that others of the valley held her in view as legitimate quarry.

His was a fine, serious, though uncultivated nature. A genuine lover of the wilderness, he had reached that time of life when love is cleansed of its devastating selfishness, and his feeling for the lonely woman of the Sh.e.l.lfish held something akin to great poetry.

His own solitary, vigorous employment, his constant warfare with wind and cloud, had made him a little of the seer and something of the poet.

Woman to him was not merely the female of his species; she was a marvelous being, created for the spiritual as well as for the material need of man.

In this spirit he had lived, and, being but a plain, rather shy farmer and prospector, he had come to his thirtieth year with very little love history to his credit or discredit. He was, therefore, peculiarly susceptible to that sweet disease of the imagination which is able to transform the rudest woman into beauty. In this case the very slightness of the material on which his mind dwelt set the wings of his fancy free.

He brooded and dreamed as he rode his trail as well as when he sat beside his rude fireplace at night, listening to the wind in the high firs. In all his thought he was honorable.

II

One day in early autumn, as he was returning to his station, Hanscom met Abe Kitsong just below Watson's cabin, riding furiously down the hill.

Drawing his horse to a stand, the rancher called out:

"Just the man I need!"

"What's the trouble?"

"Ed Watson's killed!"

Hanscom stared incredulously. "No! Where--when?"

"Last night, I reckon. You see, Ed had promised to ride down to my place this morning and help me to raise a shed, and when he didn't come I got oneasy and went up to see what kept him, and the first thing I saw when I opened the door was him layin' on the floor, shot through and through." Here his voice grew savage. "And by that Kauffman woman!"

"Hold on, Abe!" called the ranger, sharply. "Go slow on that talk. What makes you think that woman--any woman--did it?"

"Well, it jest happened that Ed had spilled some flour along the porch, and in prowling around the window that woman jest naturally walked over it. You can see the print of her shoes where she stopped under the window. You've got to go right up there--you're a gover'ment officer--and stand guard over the body while I ride down the valley and get the coroner and the sheriff."

"All right. Consider it done," said Hanscom, and Kitsong continued his frenzied pace down the valley.

The ranger, his blood quickening in spite of himself, spurred his horse into a gallop and was soon in sight of the Sh.e.l.lfish Ranch, where Watson had lived for several years in unkempt, unsavory bachelorhood, for the reason that his wife had long since quit him, and only the roughest cowboys would tolerate the disorder of his bed and board. Privately, Hanscom was not much surprised at the rustler's death (although the manner of it seemed unnecessarily savage), for he was quarrelsome and vindictive.

The valley had not yet emerged from the violent era, and every man in the hills went armed. The canons round about were still safe harbors for "lonesome men," and the herders of opposition sheep and cattle outfits were in bitter compet.i.tion for free gra.s.s. Watson had many enemies, and yet it was hard to think that any one of them would shoot him at night through an open window, for such a deed was contrary to all the established rules of the border.

Upon drawing rein at the porch the ranger first examined the footsteps in the flour and under the window, and was forced to acknowledge that all signs pointed to a woman a.s.sailant. The marks indicated small, pointed, high-heeled shoes, and it was plain that the prowler had spent some time peering in through the gla.s.s.

For fear that the wind might spring up and destroy the evidence, Hanscom measured the prints carefully, putting down the precise size and shape in his note-book. He studied the position of the dead man, who lay as he had fallen from his chair, and made note of the fact that a half-emptied bottle of liquor stood on the table. The condition of the room, though disgusting, was not very different from its customary disorder.

Oppressed by the horror of the scene, the ranger withdrew a little way, lit his pipe, and sat down to meditate on the crime.

"I can't believe a woman did it," he said. And yet he realized that under certain conditions women can be more savage than men. "If Watson had been shot on a woman's premises it wouldn't seem so much like slaughter. But to kill a man at night in his own cabin is tolerably fierce."

That the sad, lonely woman in the ranch above had anything to do with this he would not for a moment entertain.

He turned away from the problem at last and dozed in the sunshine, calculating with detailed knowledge of the trail and its difficulties just how long it would take Kitsong to reach the coroner and start back up the hill.

It was nearly four o'clock when he heard the feet of horses on the bridge below the ranch, and a few minutes later Kitsong came into view, heading a motley procession of hors.e.m.e.n and vehicles. It was evident that he had notified all his neighbors along the road, for they came riding in as if to a feast, their eyes alight with joyous interest.

The coroner, a young doctor named Carmody, took charge of the case with brisk, important pomp, seconded by Sheriff Throop, a heavy man with wrinkled, care-worn brow, who seemed burdened with a sense of personal responsibility for Watson's death. He was all for riding up and instantly apprehending the Kauffmans, but the coroner insisted on looking the ground over first.

"You study the case from the outside," said he, "and I'll size it up from the inside."

As the dead man had neither wife nor children to weep for him, Mrs.

Kitsong, his sister, a tall, gaunt woman, a.s.sumed the role of chief mourner, while Abe went round uttering threats about "stringing the Kauffmans up," till the sheriff, a good man and faithful officer, jealous of his authority, interfered.

"None of that lynching talk! There'll be no rope work in this county while I am sheriff," he said, with noticeable decision.

In a few moments Carmody, having finished his examination of the body, said to the sheriff: "Go after this man Kauffman and his daughter. It seems they've had some trouble with Watson and I want to interrogate them. Search the cabin for weapons and bring all the woman's shoes," he added. And while the sheriff rode away up the trail on his sinister errand, Hanscom with sinking heart remained to testify at the inquest.

A coroner in the mountains seven thousand feet above the sea-level and twenty miles from a court-house must be excused for slight informalities in procedure, and Carmody confidentially said to the ranger:

"I don't expect for a minute the sheriff will find the Kauffmans. If they did for Watson, they undoubtedly pulled out hotfoot. But we've got to make a bluff at getting 'em, anyway."

To this the ranger made no reply, but a sense of loss filled his heart.

As soon as the jury was selected the condition of the body was noted, and Abe Kitsong, as witness, was in the midst of his testimony (and the shadows of the great peaks behind the cabin had brought the evening chill into the air) when the sheriff reappeared, escorting a mountain wagon in which Kauffman and his daughter were seated.

Hanscom stared in mingled surprise and dismay--surprise that they had not fled and dismay at the girl's predicament--and muttered: "Now what do you think of that! It takes an Eastern tenderfoot to kill a man and then go quietly home and wait for results."

Kauffman glared about him defiantly, but the face of the girl remained hidden in her bonnet; only her bowed head indicated the despair into which she had fallen.

With a deep sense of pity and regret, Hanscom went to meet her. "Don't be scared," he said. "I'll see that you have a square deal."

She peered down into his face as he spoke, but made no reply, and he conceived of her as one burdened with grief and shame and ready for any fate.

The sheriff, his face showing an agony of perplexity, turned over to the coroner all the weapons and other "plunder" he had brought from the house, and querulously announced that he couldn't find a shotgun anywhere around, and only one small rifle. "And there wasn't a pointed shoe on the place," he added, forcibly.

"That proves nothing," insisted Abe. "They've had time to hide 'em or burn 'em."

"Well, bring them both over here and let's get to business," said the coroner. "It's getting late."

As Hanscom a.s.sisted the accused woman from the wagon he detected youth and vigor in her arm. "Don't be afraid," he repeated. "I will see that you are treated right."

Her hand clung to his for an instant as she considered the throng of hostile spectators, for she apprehended their hatred quite as clearly as she perceived the chivalrous care of the ranger, and she kept close to his side as he led the way to the cabin.

Kauffman was at once taken indoors, but the young woman, under guard of a deputy, was given a seat on the corner of the porch just out of hearing of the coroner's voice.

Carmody, who carried all the authority, if not all the forms, of a court into his interrogation, sharply questioned the old man, who said that his name was Frederick Kauffman and that he was a teacher of music.

"I was born near Munich," he added, "but I have lived in this country forty years, mostly in Cincinnati. This young lady is my stepdaughter.