They watched the new arrival with languid interest. Smith walked stiffly over toward the saloon to size up the men before he should enter it. The middle man of the group, with a thin red face and very blue eyes, was chewing tobacco in an unpromising way. Before Smith was half-way across the street he saw the hands of the three men falling to their hips. Taking care, however, only to keep the men between him and the saloon door, Smith walked directly toward them. "Boys, have you happened to see Gene or Bob Johnson to-day, any of you?" He threw back the brim of his Stetson as he spoke.
"Hold your hand right there--right where it is," said the blue-eyed man sharply.
Whispering Smith smiled, but held his hand rather awkwardly upon his hat-brim.
"No," continued the spokesman, "we ain"t none of us happened to see Bob or Gene Johnson to-day; but we happen to seen Whispering Smith, and we"ll blow your face off if you move it an inch."
Smith laughed. "I never quarrel with a man that"s got the drop on me, boys. Now, this is sudden but unexpected. Do I know any of you?" He looked from one face to another before him, with a wide reach in his field of vision for the three hands that were fast on three pistol-b.u.t.ts. "Hold on! I"ve met you somewhere," he said with easy confidence to the blue-eyed man with the weather-split lip. "Williams Cache, wasn"t it? All right, we"re placed. Now what have you got in for me?"
"I"ve got forty head of steers in for you," answered the man in the middle, with a splitting oath. "You stole forty head of my steers in that round-up, and I"m going to fill you so full of lead you"ll never run off no more stock for n.o.body. Don"t look over there to your horse or your rifle. Hold your hands right where they are."
"Certainly, certainly!"
"When I pull, I shoot!"
"I don"t always do it, but it is business, I acknowledge. When a man pulls he ought to shoot--very often it"s the only chance he ever gets to shoot. Well, it isn"t every man gets the drop on me that easy, but you boys have got it," continued Whispering Smith in frank admiration.
"Only I want to say you"re after the wrong man. That round-up was all Rebstock"s fault, and Rebstock is bound to make good all loss and damage."
"You"ll make good my share of it right now and here," said the man with the wash-blue eyes.
"Why, of course," a.s.sented Whispering Smith, "if I must, I must. I suppose I may light a cigarette, boys, before you turn loose the fireworks?"
"Light it quick!"
Laughing at the humor of the situation, Whispering Smith, his eyes beaming with good-nature, put the finger and thumb of his right hand into his waistcoat pocket, drew out a package of cigarette paper, and, bantering his captors innocently the while, tore out a sheet and put the packet back. Folding the paper in his two hands, he declared he believed his tobacco was in his saddle-pocket, and asked leave to step across the street to get it. The trick was too transparent, and leave was refused with scorn and some hard words. Whispering Smith begged the men in front of him in turn for tobacco. They cursed him and shook their heads.
For an instant he looked troubled. Still appealing to them with his eyes, he tapped lightly the lower outside pockets of his coat with his fingers, shifting the cigarette paper from hand to hand as he hunted.
The outside pockets seemed empty. But as he tapped the inside breast pocket on the left side of the coat--the three men, lynx-eyed, watching--his face brightened. "Stop!" said he, his voice sinking to a relieved whisper as his hand rested lightly on the treasure. "There"s the tobacco. I suppose one of you will give me a match?"
All that the three before him could ever afterward recollect--and for several years afterward they cudgelled their brains pretty thoroughly about that moment--was that Whispering Smith took hold of the left lapel of his coat to take the tobacco out of the breast pocket. An excuse to take that lapel in his left hand was, in fact, all that Whispering Smith needed to put not alone the three men before him but all Oroville at his mercy. The play of his right hand in crossing the corduroy waistcoat to pull his revolver from its scabbard and throw it into their faces was all too quick for better eyes than theirs. They saw only the muzzle of the heavy Colt"s playing like a snake"s tongue under their surprised noses, with the good-natured smile still behind it. "Or will one of you roll a cigarette?" asked Whispering Smith, without a break between the two questions. "I don"t smoke. Now don"t make faces; go right ahead. Do anything you want to with your hands. I wouldn"t ask a man to keep his hands or feet still on a hot day like this," he insisted, the revolver playing all the time. "You won"t draw? You won"t fight? Pshaw! Then disengage your hands gently from your guns. You fellows really ought not to attempt to pull a gun in Oroville, and I will tell you why--there"s a reason for it." He looked confidential as he put his head forward to whisper among the crestfallen faces. "At this alt.i.tude it is too fast work. I know you now," he went on as they continued to wilt. "You are Fatty Filber," he said to the thin chap. "Don"t work your mouth like that at me; don"t do it. You seem surprised. Really, have you the asthma? Get over it, because you are wanted in Pound County for horse-stealing. Why, hang it, Fatty, you"re good for ten years, and of course, since you have reminded me of it, I"ll see that you get it. And you, Baxter," said he to the man on the right, "I know I spoke to you once when I was inspector about altering brands; that"s five years, you know. You," he added, scrutinizing the third man to scare him to death--"I think you were at Tower W. No? No matter; you two boys may go, anyway. Fatty, you stay; we"ll put some state cow on your ribs. By the way, are you a detective, Fatty? Aren"t you? See here! I can get you into an a.s.sociation. For ten dollars, they give you a German-silver star, and teach the j.a.panese method of pulling, by correspondence. Or you might get an electric battery to handle your gun with. You can get pocket dynamos from the mail-order houses. Sure! Read the big book!"
When Gene and Bob Johnson rode into town, Whispering Smith was sitting in a chair outside the Blackbird, still chatting with Filber, who stood with his arms around a hitching-post, holding fast a mail-order house catalogue. A modest crowd of hangers-on had gathered.
"Here we are, Gene," exclaimed Smith to the deputy sheriff. "I was looking for steers, but some calves got into the drive. Take him away."
While the Johnsons were laughing, Smith walked into the Blackbird. He had lost thirty minutes, and in losing them had lost his quarry.
Sinclair had disappeared, and Whispering Smith made a virtue of necessity by taking the upsetting of his plans with an unruffled face.
There was but one thing more, indeed, to do, and that was to eat his supper and ride away. The street encounter had made so much talk in Oroville that Smith declined Gene Johnson"s invitation to go back to the house. It seemed a convenient time to let any other ambitious rustlers make good if they were disposed to try, and Whispering Smith went for his supper to the hotel where the Williams Cache men made their headquarters.
There was a rise in the atmospheric pressure the moment he entered the hotel office door, and when he walked into the dining-room, some minutes later, the silence was oppressive. Smith looked for a seat.
The only vacant place chanced to be at a table where nine men from the Cache sat busy with ham and eggs. It was a trifle awkward, but the only thing to do was to take the vacant chair.
The nine men were actively engaged with knives and forks and spoons when Whispering Smith drew out the empty chair at the head of the table; but nine pairs of hands dropped modestly under the table when he sat down. Coughing slightly to hide his embarra.s.sment and to keep his right hand in touch with his necktie, Whispering Smith looked around the table with the restrained air of a man who has bowed his head and resolved to ask the blessing, but wants to make reasonably sure that the family is listening. A movement at the other tables, among the regular boarders of the hostelry, was apparent almost at once. Appet.i.tes began to fail all over the dining-room. Whispering Smith gave his order genially to the confused waitress:
"Bring me two eggs--one fried on one side and one on the other--and coffee."
There was a general sc.r.a.ping of chairs on the floor as they were pushed back and guests not at the moment interested in the bill of fare started, modestly but firmly, to leave the dining-room. At Whispering Smith"s table there were no second calls for coffee. To stimulate the eating he turned the conversation into channels as rea.s.suring as possible. Unfortunately for his endeavor, the man at the far end of the table reached for a toothpick. It seemed a pleasant way out of the difficulty, and when the run on toothpicks had once begun, all Whispering Smith"s cordiality could not check it. Every man appeared to want a toothpick, and one after another of Whispering Smith"s company deserted him. He was finally left alone with a physician known as "Doc," a forger and a bigamist from Denver. Smith tried to engage Doc in medical topics. The doctor was not alone frightened but tipsy, and when Smith went so far as to ask him, as a medical man, whether in his opinion the high water in the mountains had any direct connection with the prevalence of falling of the spine among old "residenters" in Williams Cache, the doctor felt of his head as if his brain were turning turtle.
When Whispering Smith raised his knife ostentatiously to bring out a feature of his theory, the doctor raised his knife higher to admit the force of it; and when Whispering Smith leaned his head forward impressively to drive home a point in his a.s.sertion, the doctor stretched his neck till his face grew apoplectic. Releasing him at length from the strain, Whispering Smith begged of the staring maid-servant the recipe for the biscuit. When she came back with it he sat all alone, pouring catsup over his griddle-cakes in an abstracted manner, and it so flurried her that she had to go out again to ask whether the gasolene went into the dough or under it.
He played out the play to the end, but when he rode away in the dusk his face was careworn. John Rebstock had told him why Sinclair dodged: there were others whom Sinclair wanted to meet first; and Whispering Smith was again heading on a long, hard ride, and after a man on a better horse, back to the Crawling Stone and Medicine Bend. "There"s others he wants to see first or you"d have no trouble in talking business to-day. You nor no other man will ever get him alive." But Whispering Smith knew that.
"See that he doesn"t get you alive, Rebstock," was his parting retort.
"If he finds out Kennedy has got the Tower W money, the first thing he does will be to put the Doxology all over you."
CHAPTER XL
A SYMPATHETIC EAR
When Whispering Smith rode after Sinclair, Crawling Stone Ranch, in common with the whole countryside, had but one interest in life, and that was to hear of the meeting. Riders across the mountain valleys met with but one question; mail-carriers brought nothing in their pouches of interest equal to the last word concerning Sinclair or his pursuer. It was commonly agreed through the mountains that it would be a difficult matter to overhaul any good man riding Sinclair"s steel-dust horses, but with Sinclair himself in the saddle, unless it pleased him to pull up, the chase was sure to be a stern one. Against this to feed speculation stood one man"s record--that of the man who had ridden alone across Deep Creek and brought Chuck Williams out on a buckboard.
Business in Medicine Bend, meantime, was practically suspended. As the centre of all telephone lines the big railroad town was likewise the centre of all rumors. Officers and soldiers to and from the Fort, stage-drivers and cowmen, homesteaders and rustlers, discussed the apprehension of Sinclair. Moreover, behind this effort to arrest one man who had savagely defied the law were ranged all of the prejudices, sympathies, and hatreds of the high country, and practically the whole population tributary to Medicine Bend and the Crawling Stone Valley were friends either to Sinclair or to his pursuer. Behind Sinclair were nearly all the cattlemen, not alone because he was on good terms with the rustlers and protected his friends, but because he warred openly on the sheepmen. The big range interests, as a rule, were openly or covertly friendly to Sinclair, while against him were the homesteaders, the railroad men, the common people, and the men who everywhere hate cruelty and outrage and the making of a lie.
Lance Dunning had never concealed his friendliness for Sinclair, even after hard stories about him were known to be true, and it was this confidence of fellowship that made Sinclair, twenty-four hours after he had left Oroville, ride down the hill trail to Crawling Stone ranch-house.
The morning had been cold, with a heavy wind and a dull sky. In the afternoon the clouds lowered over the valley and a misting rain set in. d.i.c.ksie had gone into Medicine Bend on the stage in the morning, and, after a stolen half-hour with McCloud at Marion"s, had ridden home to escape the storm. Not less, but much more, than those about her she was alive to the situation in which Sinclair stood and its danger to those closest to her. In the morning her one prayer to McCloud had been to have a care of himself, and to Marion to have a care of herself; but even when d.i.c.ksie left them it seemed as if neither quite felt the peril as she felt it.
In the afternoon the rain, falling steadily, kept her in the house, and she sat in her room sewing until the light failed. She went downstairs. Puss had lighted the grate in the living-room, and d.i.c.ksie threw herself into a chair. The sound of hoofs aroused her and she went to a window. To her horror, she saw Sinclair walking with her cousin up to the front door. She ran into the dining-room, and the two men entered the hall and walked into the office. Choking with excitement, d.i.c.ksie ran through the kitchen and upstairs to master her agitation.
In the office Sinclair was sitting down before the hot stove with a tumbler of whiskey. "Lance"--he shook his head as he spoke hoa.r.s.ely--"I want to say my friends have stood by me to a man, but there"s none of them treated me squarer through thick and thin than you have. Well, I"ve had some bad luck. It can"t be helped.
Regards!"
He drank, and shook his wet hair again. Four days of hard riding had left no trace on his iron features. Wet to the bone, his eyes flashed with fire. He held the gla.s.sful of whiskey in a hand as steady as a spirit-level and tossed it down a throat as cool as dew.
"I want to say another thing, Lance: I had no more intention than a child of hurting Ed Banks. I warned Ed months ago to keep out of this fight; and I never knew he was in it till it was too late. But I"m hoping he will pull through yet, if they don"t kill him in the hospital to spite me. I never recognized the men at all till it was too late. Why, one of them used to work for me! A man with the whole railroad gang in these mountains after him has got to look out for himself or his life ain"t worth a gla.s.s of beer. Thank you, Lance, not any more. I saw two men, with their rifles in their hands, looking for me. I hollered at them; but, Lance, I"m rough and ready, as all my friends know, and I will let no man put a drop on me--that I will never do. Ed, before I ever recognized him, raised his rifle; that"s the only reason I fired. Not so full, Lance, not so full, if you please. Well," he shook his black hair as he threw back his head, "here"s to better luck in worse countries!" He paused as he swallowed, and set the tumbler down. "Lance, I"m saying good-by to the mountains."
"You"re not going away for good, Murray?"
"I"m going away for good. What"s the use? For two years these railroad cutthroats have been trying to put something on me; you know that.
They"ve been trying to mix me up with that bridge-burning at Smoky Creek; Sugar b.u.t.tes, they had me there; Tower W--nothing would do but I was there, and they"ve got one of the men in jail down there now, Lance, trying to sweat enough perjury out of him to send me up. What show has a poor man got against all the money there is in the country?
I wouldn"t be afraid of a jury of my own neighbors--the men that know me, Lance--any time. What show would I have with a packed jury in Medicine Bend? I could explain anything I"ve done to the satisfaction of any reasonable man. I"m human, Lance; that"s all I say. I"ve been mistreated and I don"t forget it. They"ve even turned my wife against me--as fine a woman as ever lived."
Lance swore sympathetically. "There"s good stuff in you yet, Murray."
"I"m going to say good-by to the mountains," Sinclair went on grimly, "but I"m going to Medicine Bend to-night and tell the man that has hounded me what I think of him before I leave. I"m going to give my wife a chance to do what is right and go with me. She"s been poisoned against me--I know that; but if she does what"s fair and square there"ll be no trouble--no trouble at all. All I want, Lance, is a square deal. What?"
d.i.c.ksie with her pulses throbbing at fever-heat heard the words. She stood half-way down the stairs, trembling as she listened. Anger, hatred, the spirit of vengeance, choked in her throat at the sinister words. She longed to stride into the room and confront the murderer and call down retribution on his head. It was no fear of him that restrained her, for the Crawling Stone girl never knew fear. She would have confronted him and denounced him, but prudence checked her angry impulse. She knew what he meant to do--to ride into Medicine Bend under cover of the storm, murder the two he hated, and escape in the night; and she resolved he should never succeed. If she could only get to the telephone! But the telephone was in the room where he sat. He was saying good-by. Her cousin was trying to dissuade him from riding out into the storm, but he was going. The door opened; the men went out on the porch, and it closed. d.i.c.ksie, lightly as a shadow, ran into the office and began ringing Medicine Bend on the telephone.
CHAPTER XLI
d.i.c.kSIE"S RIDE