Mystery Ranch

"Aw, you mean a Svengali."

"I bet you these spurs against a package of smokin' tobacco I know what I mean," stoutly asserted the cowpuncher whose literary knowledge had been called in question, and then the talk ran along the familiar argumentative channels that had no interest for Bill Talpers.

The trader looked back into the shadowy depths of his store. Besides the cowboys there were several Indians leaning against the counters or sitting lazily on boxes and barrels. Shelves and counters were piled with a colorful miscellany of goods calculated to appeal to primitive tastes. There were bright blankets and shawls, the latter greedily eyed by every Indian woman who came into the store. There were farming implements and boots and groceries and harness. In the corner where Bill Talpers sat was the most interesting collection of all. This corner was called the pawnshop. Here Bill paid cash for silver rings and bracelets, and for turquoise and other semi-precious stones either mounted or in the rough. Here he dickered for finely beaded moccasins and hat-bands and other articles for which he found a profitable market in the East. Here watches were put up for redemption, disappearing after they had hung their allotted time.

Traders on the reservation were not permitted to have such corners in their stores, but Bill, being over the line, drove such bargains as he pleased and took such security as he wished.

As Bill looked over his oft-appraised stock, it seemed to have lost much of its one-time charm. Storekeeping for a bunch of Indians and cowpunchers was no business for a smart, self-respecting man to be in – a man who had ambitions to be somebody in a busier world. The thing to do was to sell out and clear out – after he had married that girl at Morgan's ranch. He had been too lenient with that girl, anyway. Here he held the whip-hand over her and had never used it. He had been waiting from day to day, gloating over his opportunities, and this Indian agent had been calling on her and maybe was getting her confidence.

Maybe it had gone so far that the girl had told Lowell about the letter she had mailed and that Bill had held up. Something akin to a chill moved along Bill's spinal column at the thought. But of course such a thing could not be. The girl couldn't afford to talk about anything like that letter, which was certain to drag her into the murder.

Bill looked at the letter again and then tucked it back in the safe. That was the best place to keep it. It might get lost out of his pocket and then there'd be the very devil to pay. He knew it all by heart, anyway. It was enough to give him what he wanted – this girl for a wife. She simply couldn't resist, with that letter held over her by a determined man like Bill Talpers. After he had married her, he'd sell out this pile of junk and let somebody else haggle with the Injuns and cowpunchers. Bill Talpers'd go where he could wear good clothes every day, and his purty wife'd hold up her head with the best of them! He'd go over and state his case that very night. He'd lay down the law right, so this girl at Morgan's 'd know who her next boss was going to be. If Willis Morgan tried to interfere, Bill Talpers 'd crush him just the way he'd crushed many a rattler!

As a preliminary to his courting trip, Bill took a drink from a bottle that he kept handy in his corner. Then he walked out to his sleeping-quarters in the rear of the store and "slicked up a bit," during which process he took several drinks from another bottle which was stowed conveniently there.

Leaving his store in charge of his clerk, Bill rode over the Dollar Sign highway toward Morgan's ranch. The trader was dressed in black. A white shirt and white collar fairly hurt the eye, being in such sharp contrast with Bill's dark skin and darker beard. A black hat, wide of brim and carefully creased, replaced the nondescript felt affair which Bill usually wore. He donned the best pair of new boots that he could select from his stock. They hurt his feet so that he swung first one and then the other from the stirrups to get relief. There was none to tell Bill that his broad, powerful frame looked better in its everyday habiliments, and he would not have believed, even if he had been told. He had created a sensation as he had creaked through the store after his dressing-up operations had been completed, and he intended to repeat the thrill when he burst upon the vision of the girl at Morgan's.

Wong had cleared away the supper dishes at the Greek Letter Ranch, and had silently taken his way to the little bunkhouse which formed his sleeping-quarters.

In the library a lamp glowed. A gray-haired man sat at the table, bowed in thought. A girl, sitting across from him, was writing. Outside was the silence of the prairie night, broken by an occasional bird call near by.

"It is all so lonely here, I wonder how you can stand it," said the man. There was deep concern in his voice. All sharpness had gone from it.

"It is all different, of course, from the country in which I have been living, and it is lonely, but I could get used to it soon if it were not for this pall – "

Here the girl rose and went to the open window. She leaned on the sill and looked out.

The man's gaze followed her. She was even more attractive than usual, in a house dress of light color, her arms bare to the elbows, and her pale, expressive face limned against the black background of the night.

"I know what you would say," replied the man. "It would be bearable here – in fact, it might be enjoyable were it not for the black shadow upon us. Rather it is a shadow which is blood-red instead of black."

His voice rose, and excitement glowed in his deep-set, clear gray eyes. His face lost its pallor, and his well-shaped, yet strong hands clutched nervously at the arms of his chair.

The girl turned toward him soothingly, when both paused and listened.

"It is some Indian going by," said the man, as hoof-beats became distinct.

"The Indians don't ride this late. Besides, no Indian would stop here."

The man stepped to an adjoining room. As he disappeared, there came the sound of footfalls on the porch and Bill Talpers's heavy knock made the front door panels shake.

The girl hesitated a moment, and then opened the door. The trader walked in without invitation, his new boots squeaking noisily. If he had expected any exhibition of fear on the part of the girl, Talpers was mistaken. She looked at him calmly, and Bill shifted uneasily from one foot to another as he took off his hat.

"I thought I'd drop in for a little social call, seein' as you ain't called on me sence our talk about that letter," said Bill, seating himself at the table.

"It was what I might have expected," replied the girl.

"That's fine," said Bill amiably. "I'm tickled to know that you expected me."

"Yes, knowing what a coward you are, I thought you would come."

Talpers flushed angrily, and then grinned, until his alkali-cracked lips glistened in the lamplight.

"That's the spirit!" he exclaimed. "I never seen a more spunky woman, and that's the kind I like. But there ain't many humans that can call me a coward. I guess you don't know how many notches I've got on the handle of this forty-five, do you?" he asked, touching the gun that swung in a holster at his hip under his coat. "Well, there's three notches on there, and that don't count an Injun I got in a fair fight. I don't count any coups unless they're on white folks."

"I'm not interested in your record of bloodshed." The girl's voice was low, but it stung Bill to anger.

"Yes, you are," he retorted. "You're goin' to be mighty proud of your husband's record. You'll be glad to be known as the wife of Bill Talpers, who never backed down from no man. That's what I come over here for, to have you say that you'll marry me. If you don't say it, I'll have to give that letter over to the authorities at White Lodge. It sure would be a reg'lar bombshell in the case right now."

The trader's squat figure, in his black suit, against the white background made by the lamp, made the girl think of a huge, grotesque blot of ink. His broad, hairy hand rested on the table. She noticed the strong, thick fingers, devoid of flexibility, yet evidently of terrific strength.

"Now you and me," went on Talpers, "could get quietly married, and I could sell this store of mine for a good figger, and I'd be willin' to move anywheres you want – San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or San Diego, or anywheres. And I could burn up that letter, and there needn't nobody know that the wife of Bill Talpers was mixed up in the murder that is turnin' this here State upside down. Furthermore, jest to show you that Bill Talpers is a square sort, I won't ever ask you myself jest how deep and how wide you're in this murder, nor why you wrote that letter, nor what it was all about. Ain't that fair enough?"

The girl laughed.

"It's too fair," she said. "I can't believe you'd hold to such a bargain."

"You try me and see," urged Bill. "All you've got to do is to say you'll marry me."

"Well, I'll never say it."

"Yes, you will," huskily declared Bill, putting his hat on the table. "You'll say it right here, to-night. Your stepfather's sick, I hear. If he was feelin' his best he wouldn't be more'n a feather in my way – not more'n that Chinaman of yours. I've got to have your word to-night, or, by cripes, that letter goes to White Lodge!"

The girl was alarmed. She was colorless as marble, but her eyes were defiant. Talpers advanced toward her threateningly, and she retreated toward the door which opened into the other room. Bill swung her aside and placed himself squarely in front of the door, his arms outspread.

"No hide and seek goes," he said. "You stay in this room till you give me the right answer."

The girl ran toward the door opening into the kitchen. Talpers ran after her, clumsily but swiftly. The girl saw that she was going to be overtaken before reaching the door, and dodged to one side. The trader missed his grasp for her, and pitched forward, the force of his fall shaking the cabin. He struck his head against a corner of the table, and lay unconscious, spread out in a broad helplessness that made the girl think once more of spilled ink.

The white-haired man stood in the doorway to the other room. He held a revolver, with which he covered Talpers, but the trader did not move. The white-haired man deftly removed Talpers's revolver from its holster and put it on the table. Then he searched the trader's pockets.

"I'm glad I didn't have to shoot this swine," he said to the girl. "Another second and it would have been necessary. The letter isn't here, but you can frighten him with these trinkets – his own revolver and this watch which evidently he took from the murdered man on the hill. You know what else of Edward Sargent's belongings were taken."

The girl nodded.

"He will recover soon," went on the gray-haired man. "You will be in no further danger. He will be glad to go when he sees what evidence you have against him."

The white-haired man had taken a watch from one of Talpers's pockets. He put the timepiece on the table beside the trader's revolver. Then the door to the adjoining room closed again, and the girl was alone with the trader waiting for him to recover consciousness.

Soon Bill Talpers sat up. His hand went to his head and came away covered with blood. The world was rocking, and the girl at the table looked like half a dozen shapes in one.

"This is your own revolver pointed at you, Mr. Talpers," she said, "but this watch on the table, by which you will leave this house in three minutes, is not yours. It belonged once to Edward B. Sargent, and you are the man who took it."

Talpers tried to answer, but could not at once.

"You not only took this watch," said the girl slowly, "but you took money from that murdered man."

"It's all a lie," growled Bill at last.

"Wait till you hear the details. You took twenty-eight hundred dollars in large bills, and three hundred dollars in smaller bills."

Talpers looked at the girl in mingled terror and amazement. Guilt was in his face, and his fears made him forget his aching head.

"You kept this money and did not let your half-breed partner in crime know you had found it," went on the girl. "Also you kept the watch, and, as it had no mark of identification, you concluded you could safely wear it."

Talpers struggled dizzily to his feet.

"It's all lies," he repeated. "I didn't kill that man."

"You might find it hard to convince a jury that you did not, with such evidence against you."

The trader looked at the watch as if he intended to make a dash to recover it, but the girl kept him steadily covered with his own revolver. Muttering curses, and swaying uncertainly on his feet, Talpers seized his hat and rushed from the house. He could be heard fumbling with the reins at the gate, and then the sound of hoofs came in diminuendo as he rode away.

CHAPTER IX

In his capacity of Indian agent Walter Lowell often had occasion to scan the business deals of his more progressive wards. He was at once banker and confidant of most of the Indians who were getting ahead in agriculture and stock-raising. He did not seek such a position, nor did he discourage it. Though it cost him much extra time and work, he advised the Indians whenever requested.

One of the reservation's most prosperous stock-raisers, who had been given permission to sell off some of his cattle, came to Lowell with a thousand-dollar bill, asking if it were genuine.

"It's all right," said Lowell, "but where did you get it?"

The Indian said he had received it from Bill Talpers in the sale of some livestock. Lowell handed it back without comment, but soon afterward found occasion to call on Bill Talpers at the trader's store.

Bill had been a frequent and impartial visitor to the bottles that were tucked away at both ends of his store. His hands and voice were shaky. His hat was perched well forward on his head, covering a patch of court-plaster which his clerk had put over a scalp wound, following a painful process of hair-cutting. Bill had just been through the process of "bouncing" Andy Wolters, who remained outside, expressing wonder and indignation to all who called.

"All I did was ask Bill where his favorite gun was gone," quoth Andy in his nasal voice, as Lowell drove up to the store platform. "I never seen Bill without that gun before in my life. I jest started to kid him a little by askin' him who took it away from him, when he fired up and throwed me out of the store."

Lowell stepped inside the store.

"Bill," said Lowell, as the trader rose from his chair behind the screen of letter-boxes, "I want you to help me out in an important matter."

Bill's surprise showed in his swollen face.

"It's this," went on Lowell. "If any of the Indians bring anything here to pawn outside of the usual run of turquoise jewelry and spurs, I want you to let me know. Also, if they offer any big bills in payment for goods – say anything like a thousand-dollar bill – just give me the high sign, will you? It may afford a clue in this murder case."

Talpers darted a look of suspicion at the agent. Lowell's face was serene. He was leaning confidentially across the counter, and his eyes met Bill's in a look that made the trader turn away.

"You know," said Lowell, "it's quite possible that money and valuables were taken from Sargent's body. To be sure, they found his checkbook and papers, but they wouldn't be of use to anyone else. A man of Sargent's wealth must have had considerable ready cash with him, and yet none was found. He would hardly be likely to start out on a long trip across country without a watch, and yet nothing of the sort was discovered. That's why I thought that if any Indians came in here with large amounts of money, or if they tried to pawn valuables which might have belonged to a man in Sargent's position, you could help clear up matters."

Hatred and suspicion were mingled in Talpers's look. The trader had spent most of his hours, since his return from Morgan's ranch, cursing the folly that had led him into wearing Sargent's watch. And now came this young Indian agent, with talk about thousand-dollar bills. There was another mistake Bill had made. He should have taken those bills far away and had them exchanged for money of smaller denomination. But he had been hard-pressed for cash, and suspicion seemed to point in such convincing fashion toward Fire Bear and the other Indians that it did not seem possible that it could be shifted elsewhere. Yet all his confidence had been shaken when Helen Ervin had calmly and correctly recounted to him the exact things that he had taken from that body on the hill. Probably she had been talking to the agent and had told him all she knew.

"I know what you're drivin' at," snarled Bill, his rage getting the better of his judgment. "You've been talkin' to that girl at Morgan's ranch, and she's been tellin' you all she thinks she knows. But she'd better go slow with all her talk about valuables and thousand-dollar bills. She forgets that she's as deep in this thing as anybody and I've got the document to prove it."

The surprise in the Indian agent's face was too genuine to be mistaken. Talpers realized that he had been betrayed into overshooting his mark. The agent had been engaged in a little game of bluff, and Talpers had fallen into his trap.

"All this is mighty interesting to me, Bill," said Lowell, regaining his composure. "I just dropped in here, hoping for a little general cooperation on your part, and here I find that you know a lot more than anybody imagined."

"You ain't got anything on me," growled Bill, "and if you go spillin' any remarks around here, it's your death-warrant sure."

Lowell did not take his elbow from the counter. His leaning position brought out the breadth of his shoulders and emphasized the athletic lines of his figure. He did not seem ruffled at Bill's open threat. He regarded Talpers with a steady look which increased Bill's rage and fear.

"The trouble with you is that you're so dead set on protectin' them Injuns of yours," said the trader, "that you're around tryin' to throw suspicion on innocent white folks. The hull county knows that Fire Bear done that murder, and if you hadn't got him on to the reservation the jail'd been busted into and he'd been lynched as he ought to have been."

Bill waited for an answer, but none came. The young agent's steady, thoughtful scrutiny was not broken.

"You've coddled them Injuns ever sence you've been on the job," went on Bill, casting aside discretion, "and now you're encouragin' them in downright murder. Here this young cuss, Fire Bear, is traipsin' around as he pleases, on nothin' more than his word that he'll appear for trial. But when Jim McFann busts out of jail, you rush out the hull Injun police force to run him down. And now here you are around, off the reservation, tryin' to saddle suspicion on your betters. It ain't right, I claim. Self-respectin' white men ought to have more protection around here."

Talpers's voice had taken on something of a whine, and Lowell straightened up in disgust.

"Bill," he said, "you aren't as much of a man as I gave you credit for being, and what's more you've been in some crooked game, just as sure as thousand-dollar bills have four figures on them."

Paying no attention to the imprecations which Talpers hurled after him, the agent went back to his automobile and turned toward the agency. He had intended going on to the Greek Letter Ranch, but Talpers's words had caused him to make a change in his plans. At the agency he brought out a saddle horse, and, following a trail across the undulating hills on the reservation, reached the wagon-road below the ranch, without arousing Talpers's suspicion.

As he tied his pony at the gate, Lowell noticed further improvement in the general appearance of the ranch.

"Somebody more than Wong has been doing this heavy work," he said to Helen, who had come out to greet him. "It must be that Morgan – your stepfather is well enough to help. Anyway, the ranch looks better every time I come."

"Yes, he is helping some," said Helen uneasily. "But I'm getting to be a first-rate ranch-woman. I had no idea it was so much fun running a place like this."

"I came over to see if you couldn't take time enough off for a little horseback ride," said Lowell. "This is a country for the saddle, after all. I still get more enjoyment from a good horseback ride than from a dozen automobile trips. I'll saddle up the old white horse while you get ready."

Helen ran indoors, and Lowell went to the barn and proceeded to saddle the white horse that bore the Greek Letter brand. The smiling Wong came out to cast an approving eye over the work.

"This old fly-fighter's a pretty good horse for one of his age, isn't he, Wong?" said Lowell, giving a last shake to the saddle, after the cinch had been tightened.

In shattered English Wong went into ecstasies over the white horse. Then he said, suddenly and mysteriously:

"You know Talpels?"

"You mean Bill Talpers?" asked Lowell. "What about him?"

Once more the dominant tongue of the Occident staggered beneath Wong's assault, as the cook described, partly in pantomime, the manner of Bill Talpers's downfall the night before.

"Do you mean to say that Talpers was over here last night and that here is where he got that scalp-wound?" demanded Lowell.

Wong grinned assent, and then vanished, after making a sign calling for secrecy on Lowell's part, as Helen arrived, ready for the ride.

Lowell was a good horseman, and the saddle had become Helen's chief means of recreation. In fact riding seemed to bring to her the only contentment she had known since she had come to the Greek Letter Ranch. She had overcome her first fear of the Indians. All her rides that were taken alone were toward the reservation, as she had studiously avoided going near Talpers's place. Also she did not like to ride past the hill on the Dollar Sign road, with its hints of unsolved mystery. But she had quickly grown to love the broad, free Indian reservation, with its limitless miles of unfenced hills. She liked to turn off the road and gallop across the trackless ways, sometimes frightening rabbits and coyotes from the sagebrush. Several times she had startled antelope, and once her horse had shied at a rattlesnake coiled in the sunshine. The Indians she had learned to look upon as children. She had visited the cabins and lodges of some of those who lived near the ranch, and was not long in winning the esteem of the women who were finding the middle ground, between the simplicity of savage life and the complexities of civilization, something too much for mastery.

Lowell and Helen galloped in silence for miles along the road they had followed in the automobile not many days before. At the crest of a high ridge, Helen turned at right angles, and Lowell followed.

"There's a view over here I had appropriated for myself, but I'm willing to share it with you, seeing that this is your own particular reservation and you ought to know about everything it contains," said Helen.

The ridge dipped and then rose again, higher than before. The plains fell away on both sides – infinite miles of undulations. Straight ahead loomed the high blue wall of the mountains. They walked their horses, and finally stopped them altogether. The chattering of a few prairie dogs only served to intensify the great, mysterious silence.

"Sometimes the stillness seems to roll in on you here like a tide," said Helen. "I can positively feel it coming up these great slopes and blanketing everything. It seems to me that this ridge must have been used by Indian watchers in years gone by. I can imagine a scout standing here sending up smoke signals. And those little white puffs of clouds up there are the signals he sent into the sky."

"I think you belong in this country," Lowell answered smilingly.

"I'm sure I do. You remember when I first saw these plains and hills I told you the bigness frightened me a little when the sun brought it all out in detail. Well, it doesn't any more. Just to be unfettered in mind, and to live and breathe as part of all this vastness, would be ideal."

"That's where you're in danger of going to the other extreme," the agent replied. "You'll remember that I told you human companionship is as necessary as bacon and flour and salt in this country. You're more dependent on the people about you here, even if your nearest neighbor is five or ten miles away, than you would be in any apartment building in a big city. You might live and die there, and no one would be the wiser. Also you might get along tolerably well, while living alone. But you can't do it out here and keep a normal mental grip on life."