Troublesome Range Part 4

"It'll do you good to cry, Ruth," Jean said softly.

In the following minutes she was humble before the knowledge that Ruth Merrill wasn't the cold and unapproachable woman she had always appeared to be. She was but a girl, tragically lost in a malstrom of grief, bewildered and afraid. And, when that spasm of grief had worn itself out, Ruth Merrill showed the tough fiber of her make-up. Gently she pulled away from Jean, dried her eyes, and said: "You are kind, Jean. Now tell me how it happened, all of it."

Jean told what she knew, of the robbery, what Keech had told her father, omitting only the hotel clerk's lurid details of Ed's death. Ruth listened without once interrupting, dispa.s.sionately now, as though the well of emotion within her had been drained dry.

As Jean finished, an enigmatic smile touched the other girl's face. Catching Jean's puzzled look, she said in a tense and low voice: "I'm only thinking how typical this is of everything that's ever happened to Ed. In a way I can be sorry for him. In another way I can't. Tonight I hated him, loathed him for what he tried to do to Joe. Is it cruel of me to say that? I was glad he got that beating."

"I don't know, Ruth."

"He's always hated Joe. Tonight he must have heard that Joe's father had turned him out again. He must have decided to kick the man while he was down. Well, it didn't turn out that way. Ed must have been thinking of that, of the beating he took, when he died." In the silence that followed, Ruth seemed to be staring through Jean, not seeing her, as an imaginary picture blocked out of the real one. "Ed could never understand that I loved Joe, that I still do love him."

"You love Joe Bonnyman?" Jean breathed incredulously. "I thought you and Clark . . ."

Ruth laughed uneasily and turned to walk to the bed and sit on it. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, so tightly that her slender fingers were white at the knuckles. She eyed Jean squarely, intently, as she said: "It shouldn't matter to me that you understand how I feel. But it does. Someone must understand. Ever since I can remember, Joe Bonnyman has stirred up a feeling in me that's like the run of a gra.s.s fire before the wind. He's the only man who ever affected me that way. He's everything Ed wasn't. Perhaps that's why I liked him so much. He's kind and impulsive, and maybe a little wild. But he was never cruel, even in what he did to his father. Ed was cruel. He was calculating. All his life he hated Joe. And because we were so opposite, I suppose he drove me toward Joe."

Jean caught the touch of hysteria in Ruth's voice. "You'd better lie down," she said. "I'll see if the doctor won't let you have some sleeping tablets."

"I don't want to sleep." Ruth said. "I want to think, to get things straight. Seeing Joe tonight has changed things as much as Ed's not being here to hound me any longer will change them." There came again that strange smile of a moment ago, one that did little to heighten Ruth's good looks. "You wonder how I can talk of Joe in the face of things as they stand between Clark and me? Jean, I have a little of the devil in me. Joe was mine once, and I wouldn't have him. Now that I have Clark, I'm not the least surprised that it's Joe I'm thinking of. But can't you see, it always has been Joe? There was never anyone . . ."

They both turned at a knock on the door. A quick change came over Ruth, and once more she gave momentary attention to her appearance, lifting her hands to smooth her hair, to gather the robe closer at her neck. Then she called: "Come in!"

It was Bill Lyans who stood in the doorway as the panel swung open. His hat was in his hand, and there was an uncomfortable look on his face at having invaded the privacy of a woman's bedroom. He gave Ruth a quick glance, and his eye went to the floor, defensive in his embarra.s.sment.

"I wanted to stop in and tell you how sorry I am this happened," he said tonelessly. "We'll all miss Ed."

"It's nice of you to say that, Bill. Yes, we'll miss him."

"We found something that may help us," the deputy went on hastily. He dipped a hand in a coat pocket and brought out the horsehair hatband. Before he had a chance to continue, Ruth gave an audible gasp and his eyes went to hers, intercepting their startled expression. For a moment he was puzzled, then he asked: "Know whose it is?"

"Joe's," Ruth breathed. "Where did you find it?"

"In Ed's hand." he told her. "It looks like pretty clear proof that Bonnyman killed him."

"No!" Ruth was up off the bed, fists clenched, eyes blazing defiance. "It couldn't be! Joe wouldn't kill that way. Ed wasn't that important to him."

"He knocked Ed through a saloon window not three hours ago," Lyans reminded her.

"That!" Ruth was breathing deeply, as though from violent exertion. "It was some silly argument they had."

"Did Ed tell you what it was?"

Jean Vanover's glance was fully on the other girl, waiting for her answer. Strangely enough, she hoped that Ruth would have that answer, one that would clear Joe Bonnyman of guilt in this murder. She didn't know why that hope struck her, but it was there.

But Lyans's question brought a look of uncertainty to Ruth's face. "Of course he did," she answered evasively.

"What was it?"

Ruth hesitated a moment, as though deciding something. Then: "Ed had once warned Joe to stay away from me. He warned him again tonight. Joe wouldn't take it, so they fought."

Lyans shrugged and put the hatband back in his pocket. "It won't hurt to check up," he said. "Johns is wirin' the agent at Junction to find out if Joe's on that late freight. If he is, he's cleared." The deputy paused a moment before adding: "And I'm hopin' he is on it." He looked again at the two girls in the same embarra.s.sed way he had at first entering the room and muttered: "I'd better be goin'."

"Wait." Ruth's word stopped him. "What if Joe isn't on the train?"

"Then we'll have to get out and hunt him."

"But you can't believe he would murder a man!"

"If it was him, he not only committed murder, but robbery as well. Whoever did it got close to nine thousand from Acme's safe."

Peculiarly enough, Jean felt little emotion beyond a curious anger as her fear of Acme's loss was substantiated. She was too engrossed in Ruth Merrill's strange determination to defend the man who might be her brother's murderer, too wrapped in her own odd wish to see Joe cleared, to take in the full significance of what the robbery might mean to her father.

"So you've already found a victim?" Ruth gave a laugh edged with hysteria. "Why would Joe steal?"

"A lot can happen to a man in five years," Lyans said mildly but pointedly. "Maybe he figured Middle Arizona got his layout for a song. Fact is, they did."

There was loathing and contempt in the look Ruth gave the lawman. But she had herself well under control now, and, when she spoke, her voice was firmer. "Will you promise me one thing? To let me know before you go ahead on this?"

"That's fair enough," he agreed. "After all, you got the right to know before we . . ."

He broke off in mid-sentence as steps sounded on the stairs coming up out of the lobby. He turned into the doorway and looked along the hall.

"Clark . . . and Johns," he said shortly. "Johns has probably talked with Junction."

Jean could see the tension that ripped Ruth as they waited for the approach of Clark Dunne and the station agent along the hallway. Although her instinct was to side with this girl, she was disturbed by the contradiction in Ruth's reasons for wanting to prove Joe Bonnyman innocent. Here was a girl who, on the surface at least, had everything she wanted. Yet she was pushing aside all the ethics of convention to protect the man who might be her brother's murderer. It was bewildering to Jean to understand Ruth's real feelings in the face of everything she knew about her, of her feeling for Clark Dunne, for instance. It was even more bewildering to understand her own feelings at this moment.

Clark was first in the door. He came over at once to Ruth, taking her in his arms. But in the moment she should have answered his embrace, she pushed away and looked at Johns.

"What did you find out?" she asked.

"Looks like it was Bonnyman," Johns answered respectfully. What he next said was directed to the deputy. "They don't know where he left the train, or when. The conductor hit the blankets right after he left here, and the brakeman was sittin' look-out."

Lyans looked at Clark, and the rancher said: "That's still not proof."

"We'll see." The deputy started out the door.

"Where are you going?" Ruth spoke so sharply that Lyans stopped in mid-stride.

When he faced her again, his face bore a hara.s.sed look. "To look for him, I reckon. It ain't that I want to do this, Miss Merrill. But a man's been murdered, your brother. Bonnyman could've left that train close to a dozen places where he could find a horse and get back here. The time checks pretty close. What I'm scared of is that he's got away."

Ruth gave no answer to that, and Lyans, sensing her antagonism toward his line of reasoning, went out into the hallway and along it, followed by Johns. They heard Johns ask-"You want me anymore, Bill?"-and the deputy answered: "Yeah. You're to wire Gap and Junction and tell 'em to be on the lookout for . . ." There his words became lost in an unintelligible mutter as he went down the stairs.

Jean was feeling uncomfortable at having witnessed the contradictions of these past twenty minutes. She felt sorry for Ruth, and at the same time angry at her for having so openly defied all the conventions that should govern her action and thought at a moment like this.

"I mustn't stay, Ruth," she said now. "We'd like to have you come to the house if it would be any more comfortable for you."

"Don't go yet, please." Ruth turned to Clark. "Will you do something for me, Clark?"

"Name it," he said.

"They'll send out a posse, won't they?"

He nodded soberly, frowning in his effort to see what she was leading up to.

"And Joe would naturally head for Anchor, wouldn't he? To see Blaze and get an outfit for the ride out across the hills."

Clark's look sharpened. "Joe didn't do this, Ruth. He couldn't have . . ."

Jean wondered why he didn't complete his thought.

"But Bill Lyans thinks he did. So will the others," Ruth insisted. "It's up to you to get out there and warn him, warn him to keep out of sight, to get out of the country, anything to avoid arrest."

"I tell you Joe didn't do it."

"Of course he didn't." The perfunctory way Ruth gave her denial made it plain to Clark that she didn't believe what she was saying, and Jean caught his look of astonished bewilderment. "You must tell Lyans you're riding out to break the news to Father. You might even start with the posse. But you're to get to Anchor before them. Do you understand, Clark? You mustn't let them take Joe."

His look underwent a slow change, one Jean couldn't understand. It hardened out of perplexity into a cool restraint. "You still care for him, don't you, Ruth?" he asked tonelessly.

"Of course I do. He's an old friend. I don't want to see him made a victim by all these people who hate him."

"But supposing he really killed Ed?" Clark's question demanded an answer.

"Then he must have had a good reason."

Clark let a moment's silence run out before he said: "You're defending him, even if he's guilty?"

"But he isn't. You say so yourself." Ruth laid her hand on his arm and gave him a warm smile as she gently turned him toward the door. "Come back as soon as you can, Clark. I'll want to know."

He hesitated, seeming about to protest. But in the end he left without a word.

Jean was trying to think of a way to excuse herself when Ruth gave her a look that was relieved, almost happy. "You really wouldn't mind staying with me tonight?" she asked. "You can get your things and come back. I don't think I could bear it to stay here alone. They'll think they have to come and sit with me, talk with me . . . all these women who hate me. You're very kind, Jean." Having thus put Jean to an inconvenience, rather than herself, Ruth put her arm around the other girl, ushered her to the door, and said: "Don't be long, will you?"

Down on the street, walking toward the jail where a dozen riders were already gathered, Clark Dunne faced the sober fact that his guess of earlier tonight had been proved correct. Excitement and nerve strain had robbed Ruth of a measure of her subtlety; otherwise, she would have sent him on this errand without betraying the fact that tonight had seen a revival of her former feeling for Joe. The realization of how exactly the facts were matching with the somber picture of his earlier imagining did nothing to improve Clark's frame of mind.

A loose board on the high-galleried front of a store across the way banged before a gust of wind. Dust was lifted from the street and swirled across to fog the light of the posse lanterns. The wind cut through Clark's coat, laying a cold touch along his back. Glancing skyward, he couldn't see the stars, and judged that it would be snowing before long. He would have to get his sheepskin before he started out.

As Clark approached, Bill Lyans came onto the walk, four rifles under his arm. He handed them out to the waiting men, saying brusquely: "We'll stick together as far as Bonnyman's, and then split up in twos. Sparling leave?"

One of the men gave an affirmative. Clark saw his chance to speak, and said casually: "Someone ought to swing off to Merrill's. Reckon that's my job. Wait for me at Anchor, Bill." Lyans gave him a brief look that held a meaning Clark didn't grasp until the deputy said: "Sparling's already left for Brush. It'll save you the trip."

Thus, offhandedly, did Bill Lyans let Clark know where he stood. The deputy had delegated another man to a task that was logically Clark's. Clark was a friend of Joe's, and was therefore to be watched until the hunt was well organized.

"As you say, Bill," Clark answered, only faintly irritated by the studied unconcern of the others, who understood well enough what was going on. He found satisfaction in not being able to follow Ruth's wishes. What he didn't like, though, was the prospect of having to be under Lyans's orders during the hunt for Joe. Certain private matters needed his urgent attention, and this misdirected manhunt might prove a costly waste of time. However, there was nothing he could do about it.

Manhunt.

The wind came out of the east, its first fitful gusts bringing snow. It whipped down the washes below the mesa rim, kicking up a scud of dust so thick that Joe Bonnyman tilted his head against it, eyes squinted. But that wind bore a sweet smell of gra.s.s, and drove out the tang of sage that had been in his nostrils these past two hours. He welcomed it. He would always a.s.sociate that fresh sweet odor with home.

He had quit the roan two miles back, not wanting to lame the animal too badly. He'd left his saddle and war bag back there, pausing only long enough to get his gun and strap it about his waist. He had chosen to wear the weapon out of habit that had lately become too strong to ignore, an instinct that warned him never to travel a strange country without it.

He was, he judged, still some seven miles short of Anchor. Somewhere east of him, into the wind and close, lay the trail that climbed gradually toward Tom Sommers's place and, beyond that, led to Anchor. He could get a horse at Sommers's.

He heard the faint drum of hoofs at almost the exact moment that he saw the faint ribbons of the road's wheel marks directly ahead and downward over the rim of a high bank. Then a gust of wind brought the sound of voices. They came from downward and to his right. Someone was coming up the trail.

Joe's first inclination was to call out. His second, the stronger, was to step back into the tree shadows and wait, trusting to luck to identify the riders, for the increasing volume of sound had by now told him that there were several, and he knew that wherever several men gathered there would be at least one or two who wasted no love on him.

A pair of moving shapes came into sight suddenly, almost directly below him, so dense was the darkness. One he made out as a gray horse and its rider; the second man was astride a darker animal. Close behind came three more, then another pair, then a single horseman. As this last lone rider came abreast him, Joe decided to call out.

But at the moment he was about to hail the man, one of the pair directly ahead said distinctly: "How'll we know this gent Bonnyman after we split up, Sid? You 'n' me have never set eyes on him."

The single rider answered that question, and, when he spoke, Joe recognized Al Corwine's voice. "He's about your size, Mel, only bigger through. But don't worry. You ain't goin' to see him. If it was him, he's hightailed."

"You reckon it really was him?" the man who had spoken first queried.

"Search me," Corwine replied. "He's sure changed a lot if it was. Time was when me and him . . ." A gust of wind whipped away his further words and shortly he was swallowed by the darkness.

The words he had heard had turned Joe rigid, so that he stood for a long moment in the shocked paralysis of complete surprise. And now he remembered the gray colt Bill Lyans had bought shortly before his leaving, five years ago. This was a posse. These men were out looking for him. Lyans was in the lead.

Joe had but a brief moment to weigh the implications behind this realization when other riders pa.s.sed below, many of them. He stopped counting when their number totaled fifteen, knowing that something momentous and awful had taken place to put so many men on the trail in the beginnings of this unseasonable storm. Then they were gone, and he was left standing there in a futile attempt to fathom the reason for their search. He'd fought Ed Merrill, given him a bad licking. But was that any reason for men to be out searching the country for him? It could be a reason if Ed had died without regaining consciousness. But if that had happened, how could they know he wasn't on that freight, somewhere far west of Junction by now?

The moan of the wind abruptly eased off, leaving a stillness so complete and empty as to give him an uneasy feeling. It was as though that wild rush of wind had formed the background for a violent upheaval of his very foundations and, now that he was thoroughly shaken, was giving him a brief respite in which to gather strength. He couldn't think in this strange stillness, couldn't decide what to do, even to move on down into the trail. He knew that he would have to plan carefully, to find his way out of the country somehow. Or he might yet get to Anchor and to Blaze. Blaze would know what was wrong.

Into the jumble of his thoughts came a sound, the nervous stomping of a horse close below, the irritated expelling of a man's breath as he muttered: "Whoa, you loco Jughead!" Someone was down there, downtrail, beyond the limits of Joe's vision. And because there were no other voices, he concluded that the rider was alone.

He started down the steep incline to the trail, digging boot heels into the sandy clay to keep from slipping. At the foot of the slope he wheeled sharply to the right. Within five paces he came within sight of two vague shapes, a horse and a rider out of the saddle. The man was hunched down alongside the horse.

Sensing Joe's stealthy approach, the animal shied nervously, and the man said irritably: "Stand, blast you!"

Joe could see now that the man was working at a broken stirrup leather. He lifted his gun clear of holster when he was two paces away. Peering hard into the darkness, he tried to be sure of the exact outline of the man's head against the dark background of the horse. He was rea.s.sured at seeing the reins looped over the rider's arm as he took the final step in.

He struck sharply downward with the .38's long barrel. The man's Stetson cushioned the shock nicely. Joe could feel that the blow was expertly struck even before his victim's outline melted into the shadows toward the ground. The horse reared, but was checked by the taut reins. Joe knelt and unwound the reins from the arm of the unconscious man. He found himself looking down into the face of a man he knew, Sam Thrall, owner of the Emporium in Lodgepole.

An unamused smile was on Joe's face as he straightened after his brief inspection of Thrall to finish the task the man had nearly completed, the repairing of a broken latigo. The horse was a big black animal with good legs and a light mouth. That much Joe discovered before the horse had taken a dozen prancing steps. This was the kind of horseflesh Joe would have expected Sam Thrall to travel on, high-spirited, probably a good part thoroughbred, the kind of animal the average cowpuncher would give his right arm to own, but rarely did.

A scabbard was laced to the saddle and held a .30-30 carbine. A canvas bag filled with light provisions was tied to the cantle; there was also a poncho, and, as the wind resumed its fitful whine, bringing a stronger spitting of snow now, Joe unlaced the poncho and pulled it on. Reining the black left out of the trail, he headed into the southwest at a steady trot.

He had gone less than fifty rods when he pulled the animal in sharply, only then fully aware that his instinct for self-preservation had automatically started him on a line that would take him around the southward spur of hills and out of this country. He was running again. From what, he had no way of knowing. It was the very thing he had rebelled against when he jumped the train. No, this was even worse, for now he didn't know what he was running from. And for the second time tonight a strong rebellion and anger was in him. In the next few minutes there was a stiffening of his pride, an unconscious realization that, if he was ever to fight this hang-dog instinct, he would have to fight it now. Just as quickly as he had stopped, he had seen the fallacy of his move and was reining the pony around, heading him north.

He knew this country well, even in pitch-black darkness. Topping the low hill to the west of Sommers's place, he angled obliquely to the left, farther west, knowing the trail lay half a mile to his right. He put the black into an easy lope, judging that the posse would hold its steady pace and that shortly he could angle back into the trail and ahead of it.

Blaze couldn't be quite sure of the exact moment the change came over Yace, but it was there, a fading of his first helpless bewilderment and the gathering of a fury that put a cold gleam of defiance in his pale-gray eyes. Had the light been better, had Bill Lyans and these others concentrated more on Yace and less on giving the last gruesome detail of their story, they would have been less emphatic.

Finally the outburst came. Lyans was speaking when Yace cut in on him with an explosive: "Hang it, watch your tongue! Leave Joe out of this!"