"IT TAKES NERVE JUST TO HANG ON"
Brit was smoking his pipe after supper and staring at nothing, though his face was turned toward the closed door. Lorraine had washed the dishes and was tidying the room and looking at her father now and then in a troubled, questioning way of which Brit was quite oblivious.
"Dad," she said abruptly, "who is the man at Whisper?"
Brit turned his eyes slowly to her face as if he had not grasped her meaning and was waiting for her to repeat the question. It was evident that his thoughts had pulled away from something that meant a good deal to him.
"Why?"
"A man came this morning, and said he was the man at Whisper, and that he would come again to see you."
Brit took his pipe from his mouth, looked at it and crowded down the tobacco with a forefinger. "He seen me ride away from the ranch, this morning," he said. "He was coming down the Whisper trail as I was taking the fork over to Sugar Spring, Frank and me. What did he say he wanted to see me about?"
"He didn"t say. He asked for you and Frank." Lorraine sat down and folded her arms on the oilcloth-covered table. "Dad, what _is_ Whisper?"
"Whisper"s a camp up against a cliff, over west of here. It belongs to the Sawtooth. Is that all he said? Just that he wanted to see me?"
"He--talked a little," Lorraine admitted, her eyebrows pulled down. "If he saw you leave, I shouldn"t think he"d come here and ask for you."
"He knowed I was gone," Brit stated briefly.
With a finger nail Lorraine traced the ugly, brown pattern on the oilcloth. It was not easy to talk to this silent man who was her father, but she had done a great deal of thinking during that long, empty day, and she had reached the point where she was afraid not to speak.
"Dad!"
"What do you want, Raine?"
"Dad, was--has any one around here died, lately?"
"Died? n.o.body but Fred Thurman, over here on Granite. He was drug with a horse and killed."
Lorraine caught her breath, saw Brit looking at her curiously and moved closer to him. She wanted to be near somebody just then, and after all, Brit was her father, and his silence was not the inertia of a dull mind, she knew. He seemed bottled-up, somehow, and bitter. She caught his hand and held it, feeling its roughness between her two soft palms.
"Dad, I"ve got to tell you. I feel trapped, somehow. Did his horse have a white face, dad?"
"Yes, he"s a blaze-faced roan. Why?" Brit moved uncomfortably, but he did not take his hand away from her. "What do you know about it, Raine?"
"I saw a man shoot Fred Thurman and push his foot through the stirrup.
And, dad, I believe it was that man at Whisper. The one I saw had on a brown hat, and this man wears a brown hat--and I was advised not to tell any one I had been at that place they call Rock City, when the storm came. Dad, would an innocent man--one that didn"t have anything to do with a crime--would he try to cover it up afterwards?"
Brit"s hand shook when he removed the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the table. His face had turned gray while Lorraine watched him fearfully. He laid his hand on her shoulder, pressing down hard--and at last his eyes met her big, searching ones.
"If he wanted to _live_--in this country--he"d have to. Leastways, he"d have to keep his mouth shut," he said grimly.
"And he"d try to shut the mouths of others----"
"If he cared anything about them, he would. You ain"t told anybody what you saw, have yuh?"
Lorraine hid her face against his arm. "Just Lone Morgan, and he thought I was crazy and imagined it. That was in the morning, when he found me.
And he--he wanted me to go on thinking it was just a nightmare--that I"d imagined the whole thing. And I did, for awhile. But this man at Whisper tried to find out where I was that night----"
Brit pulled abruptly away from her, got up and opened the door. He stood there for a time, looking out into the gloom of early nightfall.
He seemed to be listening, Lorraine thought. When he came back to her his voice was lower, his manner intangibly furtive.
"You didn"t tell him anything, did you?" he asked, as if there had been no pause in their talk.
"No--I made him believe I wasn"t there. Or I tried to. And dad! As I was going to cross that creek just before you come to Rock City, two men came along on horseback, and I hid before they saw me. They stopped to water their horses, and they were talking. They said something about the TJ had been here a long time, but they would get theirs, and it was like sitting into a poker game with a nickel. They said the little ones aren"t big enough to fight the Sawtooth, and they"d carry lead under their hides if they didn"t leave. Dad, isn"t your brand the TJ? That"s what it looks like on Yellowjacket."
Brit did not answer, and when Lorraine was sure that he did not mean to do so, she asked another question. "Dad, why didn"t you want me to leave the ranch to-day? I was nervous after that man was here, and I did go."
"I didn"t want you riding around the country unless I knew where you went," Brit said. "My brand is the TJ up-and-down. We never call it just the TJ."
"Oh," said Lorraine, relieved. "They weren"t talking about you, then.
But dad--it"s horrible! We simply _can"t_ let that murder go and not do anything. Because I know that man was shot. I heard the shot fired, and I saw him start to fall off his horse. And the next flash of lightning I saw----"
"Look here, Raine. I don"t want you talking about what you saw. I don"t want you _thinkin"_ about it. What"s the use? Thurman"s dead and buried.
The cor"ner come and held an inquest, and the jury agreed it was an accident. I was on the jury. The sheriff"s took charge of his property.
You couldn"t prove what you saw, even if you was to try." He looked at her very much as Lone Morgan had looked at her. His next words were very nearly what Lone Morgan had said, Lorraine remembered. "You don"t know this country like I know it. Folks live in it mainly because they don"t go around blatting everything they see and hear and think."
"You have laws, don"t you, dad? You spoke about the sheriff----"
"The sheriff!" Brit laughed harshly. "Yes, we got a sheriff, and we got a jail, and a judge--all the makin"s of law. But we ain"t got one thing that goes with it, and that"s justice. You"d best make up your mind like the cor"ner"s jury done, that Fred Thurman was drug to death by his horse. That"s all that"ll ever be proved, and if you can"t prove nothing else you better keep your mouth shut."
Lorraine sprang up and stood facing her father, every nerve taut with protest. "You don"t mean to tell me, dad, that you and Frank Johnson and Lone Morgan and--everybody in the country are _cowards_, do you?"
Brit looked at her patiently. "No," he said in the tone of acknowledged defeat, "we ain"t cowards, Raine. A man ain"t a coward when he stands with his hands over his head. Most generally it"s because some one"s got the drop on "im."
Lorraine would not accept that. "You think so, because you don"t fight,"
she cried hotly. "No one is holding a gun at your head. Dad! I thought Westerners never quit. It"s fight to the finish, always. Why, I"ve seen one man fight a whole outfit and win. He couldn"t be beaten because he wouldn"t give up. Why----"
Brit gave her a tolerant glance. "Where"d you see all that, Raine?" He moved to the table picked up his pipe and knocked out the ashes on the stove hearth. His movements were those of an aging man,--yet Brit Hunter was not old, as age is reckoned.
"Well--in stories--but it was reasonable and logical and possible, just the same. If you use your brains you can outwit them, and if you have any nerve----"
Brit made a sound somewhat like a snort. "These days, when politics is played by the big fellows, and the law is used to make money for "em, it takes nerve just to hang on," he said. "n.o.body but a dang fool would fight." Slow anger grew within him. He turned upon Lorraine almost fiercely. "D"yuh think me and Frank could fight the Sawtooth and get anything out of it but a coffin apiece, maybe?" he demanded harshly.
"Don"t the Sawtooth _own_ this country? Warfield"s got the sheriff in his pocket, and the cor"ner, and the judge, and the stock inspector--he"s _Senator_ Warfield, and what he wants he gets. He gets it through the law that you was talking about a little while ago. What you goin" to do about it? If I had the money and the land and the political pull he"s got, mebby I"d have me a sheriff and a judge, too.
"Fred Thurman tried to fight the Sawtooth over a water right he owned and they wanted. They had the case runnin" in court till they like to of took the last dollar he had. He got bull-headed. That water right meant the hull ranch--everything he owned. You can"t run a ranch without water. And when he"d took the case up and up till it got to the Supreme Court, and he stood some show of winnin" out--he had an accident. He was drug to death by his horse."
Brit stooped and opened the stove door, seeking a live coal; found none and turned again to Lorraine, shaking his pipe at her for emphasis.
"We try to prove Fred was murdered, and what"s the result? Something happens: to me, mebby, or Frank, or both of us. And you can"t say, "Here, I know the Sawtooth had a hand in that." You got to _prove_ it!
And when you"ve proved it," he added bitterly, "you got to have officers that"ll carry out the law instead of using it to hog-tie yuh."
His futile, dull anger surged up again. "You call us cowards because we don"t git up on our hind legs and fight the Sawtooth. A lot _you_ know about courage! You"ve read stories, and you"ve saw moving pictures, and you think that"s the West--that"s the way they do it. One man hold off a hunderd with his gun--and on the other hand, a hunderd men, mebby, ridin" h.e.l.l-whoopin" after one. You think that"s it--that"s the way they do it. Hunh!" He lifted the lid of the stove, spat into it as if he were spitting in the face of an enemy, and turned again to Lorraine.
"What you seen--what you say you seen--that was done at night when there wasn"t no audience. All the fighting the Sawtooth does is done under cover. _You_ won"t see none of it--they ain"t such fools. And what us small fellers do, we do it quiet, too. We ain"t ridin" up and down the trail, flourishin" our six-shooters and yellin" to the Sawtooth to come on and we"ll clean "em up!"