Mystery Ranch

"My, what a lecture!" laughed the girl, though there was no merriment in her voice. "But it hardly applies to me, for the reason that I always depend upon my neighbors in the ordinary affairs of life. I'm sure I love to be sociable to my Indian neighbors, and even to their agent. Haven't I ridden away out here just to be sociable to you?"

"No dodging! I promised I wouldn't say anything more about the matters that have been disturbing you so, but that promise was contingent on your playing fair with me. I understand Bill Talpers has been causing you some annoyance, and you haven't said a word to me about it."

Helen flashed a startled glance at Lowell. He was impassive as her questioning eyes searched his face. Amazement and concern alternated in her features. Then she took refuge in a blaze of anger.

"I don't know how you found out about Talpers!" she cried. "It is true that he did cause a – a little annoyance, but that is all gone and forgotten. But I am not going to forget your impertinence quite so easily."

"My what?"

"Your impertinence?"

The girl was trembling with anger, or apprehension, and tapped her boot nervously with her quirt as she spoke.

"You've been lecturing me about various things," she went on, "and now you bring up Talpers as a sort of bugaboo to frighten me."

"You don't know Bill Talpers. If he has any sort of hold on you or on Willis Morgan, he'll try to break you both. He is as innocent of scruples as a lobo wolf."

"What hold could he possibly have on me – on us?"

She looked at Lowell defiantly as she asked the question, but he thought he detected a note of concern in her voice.

"I didn't say he had any hold. I merely pointed out that if he were given any opportunity he'd make life miserable for both of you."

Lowell did not add that Talpers, in a fit of rage and suspicion, augmented by strong drink, had hinted that Helen knew something of the murder. He had been inclined to believe that Talpers had merely been "fighting wild" when he made the veiled accusation – that the trader, being very evidently only partly recovered from a bout with his pet bottles, had made the first counter-assertion that had come into his head in the hope of provoking Lowell into a quarrel. But there was a quality of terror in the girl's voice which struck Lowell with chilling force. Something in his look must have caught Helen's attention, for her nervousness increased.

"You have no right to pillory me so," she said rapidly. "You have been perfectly impossible right along – that is, ever since this crime happened. You've been spying here and there – "

"Spying!"

"Yes, downright spying! You've been putting suspicion where it doesn't belong. Why, everybody believes the Indians did it – everybody but you. Probably some Indians did it who never have been suspected and never will be – not the Indians who are under suspicion now."

"That's just about what another party was telling me not long ago – that I was coddling the Indians and trying to fasten suspicion where it didn't rightfully belong."

"Who else told you that?"

"No less a person than Bill Talpers."

"There you go again, bringing in that cave man. Why do you keep talking to me about Talpers? I'm not afraid of him."

Most girls would have been on the verge of hysteria, Lowell thought, but, while Helen was plainly under a nervous strain, her self-command returned. The agent was in possession of some information – how much she did not know. Perhaps she could goad him into betraying the source of his knowledge.

"I know you're not afraid of Talpers," remarked Lowell, after a pause, "but at least give me the privilege of being afraid for you. I know Bill Talpers better than you do."

"What right have you to be afraid for me? I'm of age, and besides, I have a protector – a guardian – at the ranch."

Lowell was on the point of making some bitter reply about the undesirability of any guardianship assumed by Willis Morgan, squaw man, recluse, and recipient of common hatred and contempt. But he kept his counsel, and remarked, pleasantly:

"My rights are merely those of a neighbor – the right of one neighbor to help another."

"There are no rights of that sort where the other neighbor isn't asking any help and doesn't desire it."

"I'm not sure about your not needing it. Anyway, if you don't now, you may later."

The girl did not answer. The horses were standing close together, heads drooping lazily. Warm breezes came fitfully from the winds' playground below. The handkerchief at the girl's neck fluttered, and a strand of her hair danced and glistened in the sunshine. The graceful lines of her figure were brought out by her riding-suit. Lowell put his palm over the gloved hand on her saddle pommel. Even so slight a touch thrilled him.

"If a neighbor has no right to give advice," said Lowell, "let us assume that my unwelcome offerings have come from a man who is deeply in love with you. It's no great secret, anyway, as it seems to me that even the meadow-larks have been singing about it ever since we started on this ride."

The girl buried her face in her hands. Lowell put his arm about her waist, and she drooped toward him, but recovered herself with an effort. Putting his arm away, she said:

"You make matters harder and harder for me. Please forget what I have said and what you have said, and don't come to see me any more."

She spoke with a quiet intensity that amazed Lowell.

"Not come to see you any more! Why such an extreme sentence?"

"Because there is an evil spell on the Greek Letter Ranch. Everybody who comes there is certain to be followed by trouble – deep trouble."

The girl's agitation increased. There was terror in her face.

"Look here!" began Lowell. "This thing is beyond all promises of silence. I – "

"Don't ask what I mean!" said the girl. "You might find it awkward. You say you are in love with me?"

"I repeat it a thousand times."

"Well, you are the kind of man who will choose honor every time. I realize that much. Suppose you found that your love for me was bringing you in direct conflict with your duty?"

"I know that such a thing is impossible," broke in Lowell.

Helen smiled, bitterly.

"It is so far from being impossible that I am asking you to forget what you have said, and to forget me as well. There is so much of evil on the Greek Letter Ranch that the very soil there is steeped in it. I am going away, but I know its spell will follow me."

"You are going?" queried Lowell. "When?"

"When these men now charged with the murder are acquitted. They will be acquitted, will they not?"

The eager note in her question caught Lowell by surprise.

"No man can tell," he replied. "It's all as inscrutable as that mountain wall over there."

Helen shaded her eyes with her gauntleted hand as she looked in the direction indicated by Lowell. Black clouds were pouring in masses over the mountain-range. The sunshine was being blotted out, as if by some giant hand. The storm-clouds swept toward them as they turned the horses and started back along the ridge. A huge shadow, which Helen shudderingly likened to the sprawling figure of Talpers in the lamplight, raced toward them over the plains.

"There isn't a storm in all that blackness," Lowell assured her. "It's all shadow and no substance. Perhaps your fears will turn out that way."

The girl regarded him gravely.

"I've tried to hope as much, but it's no use, especially when you've felt the first actual buffetings of the storm."

The approaching cloud shadow seemed startlingly solid. The girl urged her horse into a gallop, and Lowell rode silently at her side. The shadow overtook them. Angry winds seemed to clutch at them from various angles, but no rain came from the cloud mass overhead. When they rode into the ranch yard, the sun was shining again. They dismounted near the barn, and Wong took the white horse. Lowell and the girl walked through the yard to the front gate, the agent leading his horse. As they passed near the porch there came through the open door that same chilling, sarcastic voice which stirred all the ire in Lowell's nature.

"Helen," the voice said, "that careless individual, Wong, must be reprimanded. He has mislaid one of my choicest volumes. Perhaps it would be better for you to attend to replacing the books on the shelves after this."

Every word was intended to humiliate, yet the voice was moderately pitched. There was even a slight drawl to it.

Lowell's face betrayed his anger as he glanced at the girl. He made a gesture of impatience, but Helen motioned to him, in warning.

"Some day you're going to let me take you away from this," he said grimly, looking at her with an intensity of devotion which brought the red to her cheeks. "Meantime, thanks for taking me out on that magic ridge. I'll never forget it."

"It will be better for you to forget everything," answered the girl.

Lowell was about to make a reply, when the voice came once more, cutting like a whiplash in a renewal of the complaint concerning the lost book. The girl turned, with a good-bye gesture, and ran indoors. Lowell led his horse outside the yard and rode toward Talpers's place, determined to have a few definite words with the trader.

When Lowell reached Talpers's, the usual knot of Indians was gathered on the front porch, with the customary collection of cowpunchers and ranchmen discussing matters inside the store.

"Bill ain't been here all the afternoon," said Talpers's clerk in answer to Lowell's question. "He sat around here for a while after you left this morning, and then he saddled up and took a pack-horse and hit off toward the reservation, but I don't know where he went or when he'll be back."

Lowell rode thoughtfully to the agency, trying in vain to bridge the gap between Talpers's cryptic utterances bearing on the murder, and the not less cryptic statements of Helen in the afternoon – an occupation which kept him unprofitably employed until far into the night.

CHAPTER X

Bill Talpers's return to sobriety was considerably hastened by alarm after the trader's words with Lowell. As long as matters were even between Bill Talpers and the girl, the trader figured that he could at least afford to let things rest. The letter in his possession was still a potent weapon. He could at least prevent the girl from telling what she seemed to know of the trader's connection with the murder. He had figured that the letter would be the means of bringing him a most engaging bride. It would have done so if he had not been such a fool as to drink too much. Talpers usually was a canny drinker, but when a man goes asking – or, in this case, demanding – a girl's hand in marriage, it is not to be wondered at if he oversteps the limit a trifle in the matter of fortifying himself with liquor. But in this case Bill realized that he had gone beyond all reasonable bounds. That fall had been disastrous in every way. She was clever and quick, that girl, or she never would have been able to turn an incident like that to such good advantage. Most girls would have sniveled in a corner, thought Bill, until he had regained his senses, but she started right in to look for that letter. He had been smart enough to leave the letter in the safe at the store, but she had found plenty in that watch!

Another thought buzzed disturbingly in Bill's head. How did she know just how much money had been taken from Sargent's body? Also, how did she know that the watch was Sargent's, seeing that it had no marks of identification on it? If there had been so much as a scratch on the thing, Talpers never would have worn it. She might have been making a wild guess about the watch, but she certainly was not guessing about the money. Her certainty in mentioning the amount had given Bill a chill of terror from which he was slow in recovering. Another thing that was causing him real agony of spirit was the prominence of Lowell in affairs at the Greek Letter Ranch. It would be easy enough to hold the girl in check with that letter. She would never dare tell the authorities how much she knew about Talpers, as Bill could drag her into the case by producing his precious documentary evidence. But the agent – how much was he learning in the course of his persistent searching, and from what angle was he going to strike? Would the girl provide him with information which she might not dare give to others? Women were all weaklings, thought Bill, unable to keep any sort of a secret from a sympathetic male ear, especially when that ear belonged to as handsome a young fellow as the Indian agent! Probably she would be telling the agent everything on his next trip to the ranch. Bill had been watching, but he had not seen the young upstart from the agency go past, and neither had Bill's faithful clerk. But the visit might be made any day, and Talpers's connection with the tragedy on the Dollar Sign road might at almost any hour be falling into the possession of Lowell, whose activity in running down bootleggers had long ago earned him Bill's hatred.

Something would have to be done, without delay, to get the girl where she would not be making a confidant of Lowell or any one else. Scowlingly Bill thought over one plan after another, and rejected each as impractical. Finally, by a process of elimination, he settled on the only course that seemed practical. A broad fist, thudding into a leather-like palm, indicated that the Talpers mind had been made up. With his dark features expressing grim resolve, Bill threw a burden of considerable size on his best pack-animal. This operation he conducted alone in the barn, rejecting his clerk's proffer of assistance. Then he saddled another horse, and, without telling his clerk anything concerning his prospective whereabouts or the length of his trip, started off across the prairie. He often made such excursions, and his clerk had learned not to ask questions. Diplomacy in such matters was partly what the clerk was paid for. A good fellow to work for was Bill Talpers if no one got too curiously inclined. One or two clerks had been disciplined on account of inquisitiveness, and they would not be as beautiful after the Talpers methods had been applied, but they had gained vastly in experience. Some day he would do even more for this young Indian agent. Bill's cracked lips were stretched in a grin of satisfaction at the very thought.

The trader traveled swiftly toward the reservation. He often boasted that he got every ounce that was available in horseflesh. Traveling with a pack-horse was little handicap to him. Horses instinctively feared him. More than one he had driven to death without so much as touching the straining animal with whip or spur. Nothing gave Bill such acute satisfaction as the knowledge that he had roused fear in any creature.

With the sweating pack-animal close at the heels of his saddle pony, Talpers rode for hours across the plains. Seemingly he paid no attention to the changes in the landscape, yet his keen eyes, buried deeply beneath black brows, took in everything. He saw the cloud masses come tumbling over the mountains, but, like Lowell, he knew that the drought was not yet to be ended. The country became more broken, and the grade so pronounced that the horses were compelled to slacken their pace. The pleasant green hills gave place to imprisoning mesas, with red sides that looked like battlements. Beyond these lay the foothills – so close that they covered the final slopes of the mountains.

It was a lonely country, innocent of fences. The cattle that ran here were as wild as deer and almost as fleet as antelope. Twice a year the Indians rounded up their range possessions, but many of these cattle had escaped the far-flung circles of riders. They had become renegades and had grown old and clever. At the sight of a human being they would gallop away in the sage and greasewood.

Once Talpers saw the gleam of a wagon-top which indicated the presence of a wolf hunter in the employ of the leasers who were running cattle on the reservations and who suffered much from the depredations of predatory animals. By working carefully around a hill, the trader continued on his way without having been seen.

Passing the flanking line of mesas, Bill pushed his way up a watercourse between two foothills. The going became rougher, and all semblance of a trail was lost, yet the trader went on unhesitatingly. The slopes leading to the creek became steeper and were covered with pine and quaking aspen, instead of the bushy growths of the plains. The stream foamed over rocks, and its noise drowned the sound of the horses' hoofs as the animals scrambled over the occasional stretches of loose shale. With the dexterity of the born trailsman, Talpers wormed his way along the stream when it seemed as if further progress would be impossible. In a tiny glade, with the mountain walls rising precipitously for hundreds of feet, Talpers halted and gave three shrill whistles. An answer came from the other end of the glade, and in a few minutes Talpers was removing pack and saddle in Jim McFann's camp.

Since his escape from jail the half-breed had been hiding in this mountain fastness. Talpers had supplied him with "grub" and weapons. He had moved camp once in a while for safety's sake, but had felt little fear of capture. As a trailer McFann had few equals, and he knew every swale in the prairie and every nook in the mountains on the reservation.

Talpers brought out a bottle, which McFann seized eagerly.

"There's plenty more in the pack," said the trader, "so drink all you want. Don't offer me none, as I am kind o' taperin' off."

"Did you see any Indian police on the way?" asked the half-breed.

"No – nothin' but Wolfer Joe's wagon, 'way off in the hills. I guess the police ain't lookin' for you very hard. That ain't the fault of the agent, though," added Talpers meaningly. "He's promised he'll have you back in Tom Redmond's hands in less'n a week."

The half-breed scowled and muttered an oath as he took another drink. Talpers had told the lie in order to rouse McFann's antagonism toward Lowell, and he was pleased to see that his statement had been accepted at face value.

"But that ain't the worst for you, nor for me either," went on the trader. "That girl at the Greek Letter Ranch knows that you and me took the watch from the man on the Dollar Sign road."

"How did she know that?" exclaimed McFann in amazement.

"That's somethin' she won't tell, but she knows that you and me was there, and that the story you told in court ain't straight. I'm satisfied she ain't told any one else – not yet."

"Do you think she will tell any one?"

"I'm sure of it. You see, she sorter sprung this thing on me when I was havin' a little argyment about her marryin' me. She got spiteful and come at me with the statement that the watch I was wearin' belonged to that feller Sargent."

Bill did not add anything about the money. It was not going to do to let the half-breed know he had been defrauded.

McFann squatted by the fire, the bottle in his hand and his gaze on Talpers's face.

"She mentioned both of us bein' there," went on the trader. "She give the details in a way that I'll admit took me off my feet. It's an awkward matter – in fact, it's a hangin' matter – for both of us, if she tells. You know how clost they was to lynchin' you, over there at White Lodge, with nothin' so very strong against you. If that gang ever hears about us and this watch of Sargent's, we'll be hung on the same tree."

Talpers played heavily on the lynching, because he knew the fear of the mob had become an obsession with McFann. He noticed the half-breed's growing uneasiness, and played his big card.

"I spent a long time thinkin' the hull thing over," said Talpers, "and I've come to the conclusion that this girl is sure to tell the Indian agent all she knows, and the best thing for us to do is to get her out of the way before she puts the noose around our necks."

"Why will she tell the Indian agent?"

"Because he's callin' pretty steady at the ranch, and he's made her think he's the only friend she's got around here. And as soon as he finds out, we might as well pick out our own rope neckties, Jim. It's goin' to take quick action to save us, but you're the one to do it."

"What do you want me to do?" asked McFann suspiciously.

"Well, you're the best trailer and as good a shot as there is in this part of the country. All that's necessary is for you to drop around the ranch and – well, sort of make that girl disappear."

"How do you mean?"

Talpers rose and came closer to McFann.

"I mean kill her!" he said with an oath. "Nothin' else is goin' to do. You can do it without leavin' a track. Willis Morgan or that Chinaman never'll see you around. Nobody else but the agent ever stops at the Greek Letter Ranch. It's the only safe way. If she ever tells, Jim, you'll never come to trial. You'll be swingin' back and forth somewheres to the music of the prairie breeze. You know the only kind of fruit that grows on these cotton woods out here."

Jim McFann had always been pliable in Talpers's hands. Talpers had profited most by the bootlegging operations carried on by the pair, though Jim had done most of the dangerous work. Whenever Jim needed supplies, the trader furnished them. To be sure, he charged them off heavily, so there was little cash left from the half-breed's bootlegging operations. Talpers shrewdly figured that the less cash he gave Jim, the more surely he could keep his hold on the half-breed. McFann had grown used to his servitude. Talpers appeared to him in the guise of the only friend he possessed among white and red.

Jim rose slowly to his moccasined feet.

"I guess you're right, Bill," he said. "I'll do what you say."

The trader's eyes glowed with satisfaction. The desire for revenge had come uppermost in his heart. The girl at the ranch had outwitted him in some way which he could not understand. Twenty-four hours ago he had confidently figured on numbering her among the choicest chattels in the possession of William Talpers. But now he regarded her with a hatred born of fear. The thought of what she could do to him, merely by speaking a few careless words about that watch and money, drove all other thoughts from Talpers's mind. Jim McFann could be made a deadly and certain instrument for insuring the safety of the Talpers skin. One shot from the half-breed's rifle, either through a cabin window or from some sagebrush covert near the ranch, and the trader need have no further fears about being connected with the Dollar Sign murder.

"I thought you'd see it in the right light, Jim," approved Talpers. "It won't be any trick at all to get her. She rides out a good deal on that white horse."

Jim McFann did not answer. He had begun preparations for his trip. Swiftly and silently the half-breed saddled his horse, which had been hidden in a near-by thicket. From the supply of liquor in Talpers's pack, Jim took a bottle, which he was thrusting into his saddle pocket when the trader snatched it away.

"You've had enough, Jim," growled Talpers. "You do the work that's cut out for you, and you can have all I've brought to camp. I'll be here waitin' for you."

McFann scowled.

"All right," he said sullenly, "but it seems as if a man ought to have lots for a job like this."

"After it's all done," said Talpers soothingly, "you can have all the booze you want, Jim. And one thing more," called the trader as McFann rode away, "remember it ain't goin' to hurt either of us if you get a chance to put the Indian agent away on this same little trip."

Jim McFann waved an assenting sign as he disappeared in the trees, and the trader went back to the camp-fire to await the half-breed's return. He hoped McFann would find the agent at the Greek Letter Ranch and would kill Lowell as well as the girl. But, if there did not happen to be any such double stroke of luck in prospect, the removal of the Indian agent could be attended to later on.

When he reached the mesas beyond the foothills, the half-breed turned away from the stream and struck off toward the left. He kept a sharp lookout for Indian police as he traveled, but saw nothing to cause apprehension. Night was fast coming on when he reached the ridge on which Lowell and Helen had stood a few hours before. Avoiding the road, the half-breed made his way to a gulch near the ranch, where he tied his horse. Cautiously he approached the ranch-house. The kitchen door was open and Wong was busy with the dishes. The other doors were shut and shades were drawn in the windows. Making his way back to the gulch, the half-breed rolled up in his blanket and slept till daybreak, when he took up a vantage-point near the house and waited developments. Shortly after breakfast Wong came out to the barn and saddled the white horse for Helen. The half-breed noticed with satisfaction that the girl rode directly toward the reservation instead of following the road that led to the agency. Hastily securing his horse the half-breed skirted the ranch and located the girl's trail on the prairie. Instead of following it he ensconced himself comfortably in some aspens at the bottom of a draw, confident that the girl would return by the same trail.