The Killer.
by Stewart Edward White.
CHAPTER I
I want to state right at the start that I am writing this story twenty years after it happened solely because my wife and Senor Buck Johnson insist on it. Myself, I don"t think it a good yarn. It hasn"t any love story in it; and there isn"t any plot. Things just happened, one thing after the other. There ought to be a yarn in it somehow, and I suppose if a fellow wanted to lie a little he could make a tail-twister out of it. Anyway, here goes; and if you don"t like it, you know you can quit at any stage of the game.
It happened when I was a kid and didn"t know any better than to do such things. They dared me to go up to Hooper"s ranch and stay all night; and as I had no information on either the ranch or its owner, I saddled up and went. It was only twelve miles from our Box Springs ranch--a nice easy ride. I should explain that heretofore I had ridden the Gila end of our range, which is so far away that only vague rumours of Hooper had ever reached me at all. He was reputed a tough old devil with horrid habits; but that meant little to me. The tougher and horrider they came, the better they suited me--so I thought. Just to make everything entirely clear I will add that this was in the year of 1897 and the Soda Springs valley in Arizona.
By these two facts you old timers will gather the setting of my tale.
Indian days over; "nester" days with frame houses and vegetable patches not yet here. Still a few guns packed for business purposes; Mexican border handy; no railroad in to Tombstone yet; cattle rustlers lingering in the Galiuros; train hold-ups and homicide yet prevalent but frowned upon; favourite tipple whiskey toddy with sugar; but the old fortified ranches all gone; longhorns crowded out by shorthorn blaze-head Herefords or near-Herefords; some indignation against Alfred Henry Lewis"s _Wolfville_ as a base libel; and, also but, no gasoline wagons or pumps, no white collars, no tourists pervading the desert, and the Injins still wearing blankets and overalls at their reservations instead of bead work on the railway platforms when the Overland goes through. In other words, we were wild and wooly, but sincerely didn"t know it.
While I was saddling up to go take my dare, old Jed Parker came and leaned himself up against the snubbing post of the corral. He watched me for a while, and I kept quiet, knowing well enough that he had something to say.
"Know Hooper?" he asked.
"I"ve seen him driving by," said I.
I had: a little humped, insignificant figure with close-cropped white hair beneath a huge hat. He drove all hunched up. His buckboard was a rattletrap, old, insulting challenge to every little stone in the road; but there was nothing the matter with the horses or their harness. We never held much with grooming in Arizona, but these beasts shone like bronze. Good sizeable horses, clean built--well, I better not get started talking horse! They"re the reason I had never really sized up the old man the few times I"d pa.s.sed him.
"Well, he"s a tough bird," said Jed.
"Looks like a harmless old cuss--but mean," says I.
"About this trip," said Jed, after I"d saddled and coiled my rope--"don"t, and say you did."
I didn"t answer this, but led my horse to the gate.
"Well, don"t say as how I didn"t tell you all about it," said Jed, going back to the bunk house.
Miserable old coot! I suppose he thought he _had_ told me all about it!
Jed was always too loquacious!
But I hadn"t racked along more than two miles before a man cantered up who was perfectly able to express himself. He was one of our outfit and was known as Windy Bill. Nuff said!
"Hear you"re goin" up to stay the night at Hooper"s," said he. "Know Hooper?"
"No, I don"t," said I, "are you another of these Sunbirds with glad news?"
"Know about Hooper"s boomerang?"
"Boomerang!" I replied, "what"s that?"
"That"s what they call it. You know how of course we all let each other"s strays water at our troughs in this country, and send "em back to their own range at round up."
"Brother, you interest me," said I, "and would you mind informing me further how you tell the dear little cows apart?"
"Well, old Hooper don"t, that"s all," went on Windy, without paying me any attention. "He built him a chute leading to the water corrals, and half way down the chute he built a gate that would swing across it and open a hole into a dry corral. And he had a high platform with a handle that ran the gate. When any cattle but those of his own brands came along, he had a man swing the gate and they landed up into the dry corral. By and by he let them out on the range again."
"Without water?"
"Sure! And of course back they came into the chute. And so on. Till they died, or we came along and drove them back home."
"Windy," said I, "you"re stuffing me full of tacks."
"I"ve seen little calves lyin" in heaps against the fence like drifts of tumbleweed," said Windy, soberly; and then added, without apparent pa.s.sion, "The old----!"
Looking at Windy"s face, I knew these words for truth.
"He"s a bad _hombre_," resumed Windy Bill after a moment. "He never does no actual killing himself, but he"s got a bad lot of oilers[A] there, especially an old one named Andreas and another one called Ramon, and all he has to do is to lift one eye at a man he don"t like and that man is as good as dead--one time or another."
This was going it pretty strong, and I grinned at Windy Bill.
"All right," said Windy, "I"m just telling you."
"Well, what"s the matter with you fellows down here?" I challenged. "How is it he"s lasted so long? Why hasn"t someone shot him? Are you all afraid of him or his Mexicans?"
"No, it ain"t that, exactly. I don"t know. He drives by all alone, and he don"t pack no gun ever, and he"s sort of runty--and--I do"no _why_ he ain"t been shot, but he ain"t. And if I was you, I"d stick home."
Windy amused but did not greatly persuade me. By this time I was fairly conversant with the cowboy"s sense of humour. Nothing would have tickled them more than to bluff me out of a harmless excursion by means of scareful tales. Shortly Windy Bill turned off to examine a distant bunch of cattle; and so I rode on alone.
It was coming on toward evening. Against the eastern mountains were floating tinted mists; and the canons were a deep purple. The cattle were moving slowly so that here and there a nimbus of dust caught and reflected the late sunlight into gamboge yellows and mauves. The magic time was near when the fierce, implacable day-genius of the desert would fall asleep and the soft, gentle, beautiful star-eyed night-genius of the desert would arise and move softly. My pony racked along in the desert. The ma.s.s that represented Hooper"s ranch drew imperceptibly nearer. I made out the green of trees and the white of walls and building.
CHAPTER II
Hooper"s ranch proved to be entirely enclosed by a wall of adobe ten feet high and whitewashed. To the outside it presented a blank face.
Only corrals and an alfalfa patch were not included. A wide, high gateway, that could be closed by ma.s.sive doors, let into a stable yard, and seemed to be the only entrance. The buildings within were all immaculate also: evidently Old Man Hooper loved whitewash. Cottonwood trees showed their green heads; and to the right I saw the sloped shingled roof of a larger building. Not a living creature was in sight.
I shook myself, saying that the undoubted sinister feeling of utter silence and lifelessness was compounded of my expectations and the time of day. But that did not satisfy me. My aroused mind, casting about, soon struck it: I was missing the swarms of blackbirds, linnets, purple finches, and doves that made our own ranch trees vocal. Here were no birds. Laughing at this simple explanation of my eerie feeling, I pa.s.sed under the gate and entered the courtyard.
It, too, seemed empty. A stable occupied all one side; the other three were formed by bunk houses and necessary out-buildings. Here, too, dwelt absolute solitude and absolute silence. It was uncanny, as though one walked in a vacuum. Everything was neat and shut up and whitewashed and apparently dead. There were no sounds or signs of occupancy. I was as much alone as though I had been in the middle of an ocean. My mind, by now abnormally sensitive and alert, leaped on this idea. For the same reason, it insisted--lack of life: there were no birds here, not even _flies_! Of course, said I, gone to bed in the cool of evening: why should there be? I laughed aloud and hushed suddenly; and then nearly jumped out of my skin. The thin blue curl of smoke had caught my eye; and I became aware of the figure of a man seated on the ground, in the shadow, leaning against the building. The curl of smoke was from his cigarette. He was wrapped in a _serape_ which blended well with the cool colour of shadow. My eyes were dazzled with the whitewash--natural enough--yet the impression of solitude had been so complete. It was uncanny, as though he had materialized out of the shadow itself. Silly idea! I ranged my eye along the row of houses, and I saw three other figures I had missed before, all broodingly immobile, all merged in shadow, all watching me, all with the insubstantial air of having as I looked taken body from thin air.
This was too foolish! I dismounted, dropped my horse"s reins over his head, and sauntered to the nearest figure. He was lost in the dusk of the building and of his Mexican hat. I saw only the gleam of eyes.
"Where will I find Mr. Hooper?" I asked.
The figure waved a long, slim hand toward a wicket gate in one side of the enclosure. He said no word, nor made another motion; and the other figures sat as though graved from stone.
After a moment"s hesitation I pushed open the wicket gate, and so found myself in a smaller intimate courtyard of most surprising character. Its centre was green gra.s.s, and about its border grew tall, bright flowers.
A wide verandah ran about three sides. I could see that in the numerous windows hung white lace curtains. Mind you, this was in Arizona of the "nineties!
I knocked at the nearest door, and after an interval it opened and I stood face to face with Old Man Hooper himself.
He proved to be as small as I had thought, not taller than my own shoulder, with a bent little figure dressed in wrinkled and baggy store clothes of a snuff brown. His bullet head had been cropped so that his hair stood up like a short-bristled white brush. His rather round face was brown and lined. His hands, which grasped the doorposts uncompromisingly to bar the way, were lean and veined and old. But all that I found in my recollections afterward to be utterly unimportant.