"Put up your .45, my friend. It"s a peaceable conference I want with you."
The level eyes of the young man fastened on those of the cattleman, and, before he spoke again, were satisfied. For both of these men belonged to the old West whose word is as good as its bond, that West which will go the limit for a cause once under taken without any thought of retreat, regardless of the odds or the letter of the law. Though they had never met before, each knew at a glance the manner of man the other was.
"All right, seh. If you want me I reckon I"m here large as life," the ranger said,
"We"ll adjourn to the poker room upstairs then, Mr. O"Connor."
Bucky laid a hand on the shoulder of the boy. "This kid goes with me.
I"m keeping an eye on him for the present."
"My business is private, but I expect that can be arranged. We"ll take the inner room and let him have the outer."
"Good enough. Break trail, seh. Come along, Frank."
Having reached the poker room upstairs, that same private room which had seen many a big game in its day between the big cattle kings and mining men of the Southwest, Bucky"s host ordered refreshments and then unfolded his business.
"You don"t know me, lieutenant, do you?"
"I haven"t that pleasure, seh."
"I am Major Mackenzie"s brother."
"Webb Mackenzie, who came from Texas last year and bought the Rocking Chair Ranch?"
"The same."
"I"m right glad to meet you, seh."
"And I can say the same."
Webb Mackenzie was so distinctively a product of the West that no other segment of the globe could have produced him. Big, raw-boned, tanned to a leathery brick-brown, he was as much of the frontier as the ten thousand cows he owned that ran the range on half as many hills and draws. He stood six feet two and tipped the beam at two hundred twelve pounds, not an ounce of which was superfluous flesh. Temperamentally, he was frank, imperious, free-hearted, what men call a prince. He wore a loose tailor-made suit of brown stuff and a broad-brimmed light-gray Stetson. For the rest, you may see a hundred like him at the yearly stock convention held in Denver, but you will never meet a man even among them with a sounder heart or better disposition.
"I"ve got a story to tell you, Lieutenant O"Connor," he began. "I"ve been meaning to see you and tell it ever since you made good in that Fernendez matter. It wasn"t your gameness. Anybody can be game. But it looked to me like you were using the brains in the top of your head, and that happens so seldom among law officers I wanted to have a talk with you. Since yesterday I"ve been more anxious. For why? I got a letter from my brother telling me Sheriff Collins showed him a locket he found at the place of the T. P. Limited hold-up. That locket has in it a photograph of my wife and little girl. For fifteen years I haven"t seen that picture. When I saw it last "twas round my little baby"s neck.
What"s more, I haven"t seen her in that time, either."
Mackenzie stopped, swallowed hard, and took a drink of water.
"You haven"t seen your little girl in fifteen years," exclaimed Bucky.
"Haven"t seen or heard of her. So far as I know she may not be alive now. This locket is the first hint I have had since she was taken away, the very first news of her that has reached me, and I don"t know what to make of that. One of the robbers must have been wearing it, the way I figure it out. Where did he get it? That"s what I want to know."
"Suppose you tell me the story, seh," suggested the ranger gently.
The cattleman offered O"Connor a cigar and lit one himself. For a minute he puffed slowly at his Havana, leaning far back in his chair with eyes reminiscent and half shut. Then he shook himself back into the present and began his tale.
"I don"t reckon you ever heard tell of Dave Henderson. It was back in Texas I knew him, and he"s been missing sixteen years come the eleventh of next August. For fifteen years I haven"t mentioned his name, because Dave did me the dirtiest wrong that one man ever did another. Back in the old days he and I used to trail together. We was awful thick, and mostly hunted in couples. We began riding the same season back on the old Kittredge Ranch, and we went in together for all the kinds of spreeing that young fellows who are footloose are likely to do. Fact is, we suited each other from the ground up. We frolicked round a-plenty, like young colts will, and there was nothing on this green earth Dave could have asked from me that I wouldn"t have done for him. Nothing except one, I reckon, and Dave never asked that of me."
Mackenzie puffed at his cigar a silent moment before resuming. "It happened we both fell in love with the same girl, little Frances Clark, of the Double T Ranch. Dave was a better looker than me and a more taking fellow, but somehow Frances favored me from the start. Dave stayed till the finish, and when he seen he had lost he stood up with me at the wedding. We had agreed, you see, that whoever won it wasn"t to break up our friendship.
"Well, Frankie and I were married, and in course of time we had two children. My boy, Tom, is the older. The other was a little girl, named after her mother." The cattleman waited a moment to steady his voice, and spoke through teeth set deep in his Havana. "I haven"t seen her, as I said, since she was two years and ten months old--not since the night Dave disappeared."
Bucky looked up quickly with a question on his lips, but he did not need to word it.
Mackenzie nodded. "Yes, Dave took her with him when he lit out across the line for Mexico."
But I"ll have to go back to something that happened earlier. About three months before this time Dave and me were riding through a cut in the Sierra Diablo Mountains, when we came on a Mexican who had been wounded by the Apaches. I reckon we had come along just in time to scare them off before they finished him. We did our best for him, but he died in about two hours. Before dying, he made us a present of a map we found in his breast pocket. It showed the location of a very rich mine he had found, and as he had no near kin he turned it over to us to do with as we pleased.
"Just then the round-up came on, and we were too busy to pay much attention to the mine. Each of us would have trusted the other with his life, or so I thought. But we cut the paper in half, each of us keeping one part, in order that n.o.body else could steal the secret from the one that held the paper. The last time I had been in El Paso I had bought my little girl a gold chain with two lockets pendent. These lockets opened by a secret spring, and in one of them I put my half of the map. It seemed as safe a place as I could devise, for the chain never left the child"s neck, and n.o.body except her mother, Dave, and I knew that it was placed there. Dave hid his half under a rock that was known to both of us. The strange thing about the story is that my false friend, in the hurry of his flight, forgot to take his section of the map with him. I found it under the rock next day, so that his vile treachery availed him nothing from a mercenary point of view."
"Didn"t take his half of the map with him. That"s right funny," Bucky mused aloud.
"We never could understand why he didn"t."
"Mebbe if you understood that a heap of things might be clear that are dark now."
"Mebbe. Knowing Dave Henderson as I did, or, rather, as I thought I did, such treachery as his was almost unbelievable. He was the sweetest, sunniest soul I ever knew, and no two brothers could have been as fond of each other as we seemed to be. But there was no chance of mistake. He had gone, and taken our child with him, likely in accordance with a plan of revenge long cherished by him. We never heard of him or the child again. They disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up. Our cook, too, left with him that evil night."
"Your cook?" It was the second comment Bucky had ventured, and it came incisively. "What manner of man was he?"
"A huge, lumbering braggart. I could never understand why Dave took the man with him."
"If he did."
"But I tell you he did. They disappeared the same night, and the trail showed they went the same road. We followed them for about an hour next day, but a heavy rain came up and blotted out the tracks."
"What was the cook"s name?"
"Jeff Anderson."
"Have you a picture of him, or one of your friend?"
"Back at the ranch I had pictures of Dave, but I burned them after he left. Yes, I reckon we have one of Anderson, standing in front of the chuck wagon."
"Send it to me, please."
"All right."
The ranger asked a few questions that made clearer the situation on the day of the kidnapping, and some more concerning Anderson, then fell again into the role of a listener while Mackenzie concluded his story.
"All these years I have kept my eyes open, confident that at last I would discover something that would help me to discover the whereabouts of my child, or, at least, give me a chance to punish the scoundrel who betrayed my confidence. Yesterday my brother"s letter gave the first clue we have had. I want that lead worked. Ferret this thing out to the bottom, lieutenant. Get me something definite to go on. That"s what I want you to do. Run the thing to earth, get at the facts, and find my child for me. I"ll give you carte blanche up to a hundred thousand dollars. All I ask of you is to make good. Find the little girl, or else bring me face to face with that villain Henderson. Can you do it?"
O"Connor was strangely interested in this story of treachery and mystery. He rose with shining eyes and held out his hand. "I don"t know, seh, but I"ll try d.a.m.ned hard to do three things: find out what has become of the little girl, of Dave Henderson, and of the scoundrel who stole your baby because he thought the map was in the pocket."
"You mean that you don"t think Dave--"
"That is exactly what I mean. Your cook, Anderson, kidnapped the child, looks like to me. I saw that locket Collins found. My guess was that the marks on the end of the chain were deep teeth marks. The man that stole your baby tried first to cut the chain with his teeth so as to steal the chain. You see, he could not find the clasp in the dark. Then the child wakened and began to cry. He clapped a hand over its mouth and carried the little girl out of the room. Then he heard somebody moving about, lost his nerve, and jumped on the horse that was waiting, saddled, at the door. He took the child along simply because he had to in order to get the chain and the secret he thought it held."
"Perhaps; but that does not prove it was not Dave."