CHAPTER IX—EVIDENCE TO CONVICT
Meanwhile, Lex Sangerly met the two railroad detectives and, after a short conference in the hotel office, the three motored out to the Huntington ranch. It was around four o’clock when they admitted themselves into the house with the key Lemuel had placed under the doormat. The sleuths, Ray Coates and Harry Tyler—former plain-clothes men of the Los Angeles police department—began an exhaustive investigation of the grounds and outhouses. They found the tracks of Billy Gee approaching the ranch from across the plains and even traced the outlaw’s progress into the dwelling. It required painstaking effort to do this last, and the continued use of a magnifying glass by which they followed the disconnected, faint trail of blood specks, from the spot where Dot had dragged the wounded bandit out of the saddle until she finally got him indoors. These two Mohave & Southwestern bloodhounds also established the incriminating fact that Billy Gee had occupied the parlor lounge. To them, it was a cinch case, circumstantial evidence pointing conclusively to the outlaw having received aid either from Lemuel or his daughter.
As for Lex, he had lingered inside. He had made two discoveries, both impressive ones. Wandering into Huntington’s room, he had come upon a photograph of a girl. It was standing on the bureau—a photograph of Dot taken a year before in Geerusalem and showing her in the first full bloom of charming womanhood. He picked up the picture and looked at it for a long time. It engrossed him in an odd way, for he was struck by the freshness and sensitiveness of the face, by the wholesome, gentle expression in the great eyes, withal, by that indefinable charm that attaches only to things of desert life, be they a humble wild flower, a mocking bird’s nest in a cactus, or a daughter of the range.
Curiosity led him at last to steal a glance into the room this remarkably pretty girl occupied. He entered it rather hesitatingly and surveyed its interior. It was a clean little room, plainly furnished, but there were artistic touches of color here and there that gave it a peculiar cheer and warmth, and in a frame against the wall was a picture of Mrs. Agatha Liggs! The sight of that picture pleased him. It did more. The longer he gazed at it, the greater became that pleasure and, though he did not pause to ascertain the cause, he felt himself grow kindly inclined toward this stranger girl, as if, in some unknown way, he already knew her.
Presently he made his second discovery. Inspecting the scarcely visible, bloody finger prints of a man on the window sill, he straightway satisfied himself that their owner had climbed out of Dot’s room through the window. Further investigation of the soft soil of the garden beneath that window revealed not only a man’s tracks, but a woman’s, the latter’s showing that she had both left and reëntered the house by the same route.
For some moments Lex stood and thought gravely over this new angle in the case. There was no blinking the fact that Billy Gee had been befriended and that his benefactor was quite obviously Dot Huntington. It seemed incredible, judging from the high praise Mrs. Liggs had accorded the girl—and he knew Mrs. Liggs’ stanch regard for the truth.
Yet here was irrefutable proof pointing to a wounded man escaping from the house, assisted by a woman, who—it was a natural deduction in the circumstances—after she had seen him safely away, returned to her room by a route plainly intended to conceal her actions; and the only apparent reason for secrecy, as far as he could see, appeared to be fear of discovery by some one in the house, that some one being Lemuel Huntington. Granting this were true, it was more than probable that a love affair existed between this notorious desperado and the rancher’s daughter, of which her father was ignorant; for, Lex argued, no girl, unless she were deeply interested in him, would be so indiscreet as to clamber through a window, out of her own bedroom, with a man, shot and bleeding, a man, whose presence in the house she dared not reveal to her father.
The footsteps of the two detectives on the back porch, disturbed his train of thought. Presently he heard the pair tramping about the kitchen. A few moments later, Coates—a hard-eyed, poker-faced individual, never without a cigar in his mouth—threw open the door and walked in.
“We found the saddlebags, saddle and bridle, Mr. Sangerly. They’re smeared over with blood. Somebody hid ’em pretty carefully,” he announced, with a cocksure jerk of his head.
“Where?”
“In the barn. The bags were in the loft, covered over with hay. The saddle, Tyler dug up from under a pile of old gunny sacks. There’s a bed been made in the loft, and somebody ate lunch there not later’n yesterday. There’s soft bread crumbs layin’ around.”
“Then our theory that Billy Gee cached the money here is about right, isn’t it?” said Lex quietly.
“I’ll tell the world,” sniggered Coates. “And what’s more, he had a swell little accomplice to help him put it over.”
Tyler entered the room at this juncture. He was a ferretlike, wiry man, smileless and resolute of eye, with a close-cropped, iron-gray mustache and a permanent frown.
“There’s nothing to it, Mr. Sangerly. We’ve got enough evidence to pinch Huntington and his daughter on suspicion,” he said crisply. “It’s a cinch Billy Gee got all kinds of help here. We’ve established the fact he rode up here from across country and was dragged into the house by a woman who doctored him on the parlor couch. At the back of the barn, just outside the door, we find a coupla rolled-up blankets tied for slinging over the shoulder with this,” holding up two strips of calico for the other’s inspection; “and in the kitchen is the apron this cloth was torn from. Now my theory is that Huntington’s daughter——”
“I can’t see that it makes much difference, now that this bandit has been captured, whether he received aid or not,” interrupted Lex. “It’s not improbable that he was given help. When a man is wounded, people as a rule don’t stop to ask questions. But I don’t think it follows that Billy Gee would tell any one what was in his saddlebags. You seem to forget you’re dealing with a cold-blooded professional highwayman with a price on his head, not a sentimental novice. This chap isn’t a movie bad man. He’s the real thing, as we have good reason to know. If he cached that money on this ranch, he did it alone——”
“I was going to say, Mr. Sangerly,” broke in Tyler respectfully, in his turn, “that we can’t be too awful sure of this girl not being wise. Billy Gee’s record shows he’s a damn fool with his coin—gives it away like a drunken Indian, that’s what they say around camp.”
“After we have satisfied ourselves completely that the money cannot be found, it will be time enough to confront the girl, Tyler. It doesn’t seem quite fair to me to accuse people of a thing of this sort, to brand them accomplices of a criminal, when they have opened their home to us as hospitably as the Huntingtons have. Besides, Huntington is the man whom we have to thank for capturing Billy Gee when every one else failed. You might as well say that this rancher made a double clean-up—got away with the bandit’s swag and also collected the reward.”
“That’s just exactly what I’ve been thinking,” declared Coates stoutly; “and I agree with Tyler that the girl is in on the deal. There’s some pretty slick birds among these desert rats, Mr. Sangerly, let me tell you. It’s damned funny to me why they beat it out of the country, so all of a sudden. It’s the Bunker Hill, if you want my opinion on the matter.”
Lex gazed thoughtfully across the room, at the picture of Mrs. Liggs.
“And supposing they’re sweethearts, sir,” ventured Tyler. “It ain’t impossible. The police records are crammed with stranger cases than that. If they’re intimate, she’d be in on the game, wouldn’t she? And it’d be the easiest thing going for her to hide that twenty thousand where nobody’d find it. Another thing, Billy Gee, according to all reports, has either relatives or mighty close friends in Soapweed Plains.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, men,” said Lex finally. “I’m going back to town to-night, and I’ll ascertain all about Miss Huntington—if she has a sweetheart, the type of girl she is, everything regarding the family. In the meantime, drop this accomplice business and settle down to a systematic, thorough search.”
It was dusk when Lex stopped his machine before Mrs. Liggs’ dry-goods store. The night life of Geerusalem was beginning to waken, stretching itself like some blinking giant making ready to be off on his rampant adventuring. For five crooked blocks down the wide gulch which sloped gently out of the hills, onto the smooth floor of Soapweed Plains, the main street was ablaze with lights, pouring from business houses, saloons, gambling houses, and dance halls. Already the sidewalks were packed with as heterogeneous a stream of humanity as may be seen only in those out-of-the-way places of earth where men have discovered fabulous wealth bursting from the rock.
Here swaggered the hordes of miners coming off shift from a hundred working properties in the neighboring hills, grimy, spattered with candle grease, and adding to the bustle and confusion of the gold-mad crowd, was the torrent of traffic that surged up and down the rough, rocky thoroughfare—wagons of every description from the slim rattletrap buckboard, up through the various stages of all known vehicles, great freighter’s outfits, horse-drawn hacks, carts, automobiles; all these contributed to the bedlam that roared through the hills from early dawn to midnight, incessantly from one day to another.
Lex stepped out of the roadster and began shouldering his way across the sidewalk to Mrs. Liggs’ store. He suddenly noticed that the place was open, the display window brilliantly lighted up, and he made out over the heads of the throng, the figure of the little proprietress bustling energetically about behind the counter, waiting on customers. The marked difference between his visit that afternoon, when he had found the establishment closed and its owner showing traces of prolonged grief, and his present one, caused him to wonder curiously. The next moment, however, an unlooked-for incident drove the thought from his mind.
He had almost cleared the jam on the sidewalk and was within a step of the store entrance, when a man collided heavily with him. As he staggered back into the arms of one of the crowd, a coarse voice yelled in his ear:
“What the hell! Look where you’re going, you poor fish!”
Lex got his feet and stood blocking the other’s way, gazing steadily at him. The press of men around them, sensing trouble, scattered like magic, for it was no unusual thing for revolvers to flash at the least provocation.
The man before him was big and powerfully built, forty-five or thereabouts, with heavy face and piercing, arrogant, coal-black eyes. His clothes—Norfolk suit of the finest whipcord, silk shirt, jaunty, stiff-brimmed Stetson and nap-a-tan half boots of superior quality—his whole bearing, in fact, stamped him a person of wealth and prominence.
There was a tragic silence. In that brief interval, the center of the street was a solid mass of staring humanity, the two principals standing alone, the hub of a wide circle. Even Mrs. Liggs, attracted by the sudden commotion, stood watching now, pale and trembling, from the rear of the store, her eyes riveted on the contestants facing each other before her door.
“Perhaps you’d better look where you’re going, neighbor,” said Lex finally, in a dangerously quiet tone.
The other’s lip curled, and his eyes flamed with contempt. He sneered. “I see you don’t know who you’re talking to——”
“I don’t care and have no desire to know,” cut in Lex. “What I want to know is, are you looking for trouble?”
The man regarded him hatefully before he spoke, then he said in low, sibilant tones, intended only for Lex’s ears. “One word from me—one signal—and you’d be riddled with bullets where you stand. I don’t like you, stranger, because you’re just that, a stranger. But I admire an equal, able and willing to fight for his rights. You say you don’t care to know me. You ask me if I’m looking for trouble. You haven’t got a chance in the world against me. Look for yourself!”
Without averting his gaze from Lex’s face, he raised his voice: “Hey, gang! Quintell men come forward!”
A sudden movement ran over the multitude. The open circle began filling rapidly, as scores of hitherto curious onlookers obeyed the order. They halted, silent and ominous—members of that army of undesirables which forms a large percentage of the population of every new mining camp—and focused their hard eyes on Lex.
The man chuckled easily. “You’re a stranger in camp and don’t appreciate what it means to brush up against Jule Quintell. I hope we understand each other—that we’ll spare each other future embarrassment,” he said, with biting emphasis.
Dismissing his followers with a wave of his hand, he turned on his heel and strode away. Lex, furious with chagrin, looked after him for some seconds, then he entered the little dry-goods store.
“Oh, deary!” burst out Mrs. Liggs, hurrying up to him. She closed and locked the front door, and taking his hand in her own trembling one, started leading him toward the rear of the place. “I nearly fainted with fright, Lex. Do you know who he was? Jule Quintell, honey, the awfulest man. He’s the worst crook, controls the camp, and is that powerful he just laughs at law and order. Men are killed off like flies, and they say Jule Quintell is back of every murder. Oh, it’s terrible, Lex! Nobody is safe, and he’s got spies all around, and they jump mining claims, and if the owner shows fight, they shoot him like a dog. I was just scared to death.”
She made him comfortable in the cozy living room and chattered on, recounting the lawless deeds of “Boss” Quintell and his gangster following.
“One of these days he’ll get what’s coming to him, Mother Liggs. He’ll pick on the wrong man at the right time,” said Lex slowly.
A little later, they had dismissed the subject and their talk drifted to the search being made on the Huntington ranch.
“Developments have brought about a rather unusual situation,” he told her, “and I have come to you, hoping you might be able to clear it up. In the first place, I want to ask you a question, because I know you are an intimate friend of the Huntingtons. I saw your picture occupying a prominent place out there. Has Miss Huntington a sweetheart? Have you ever known her to be interested in any man?”
Mrs. Liggs thought a moment, then shook her head decidedly. “No, and what’s more, she never speaks of men in that way, Lex. She’s different from any girl I’ve ever met, for her age—she’s eighteen. She’s studious and likes to read novels and—well, dream. She sits and spins yarns to me every time we visit one another. Yarns she’s made up, mind you, and they’re as clever as any you ever read. But I’m positive she never kept company with a man in her life. I’d know if she did, Lex.”
He looked across the room, puffing his cigarette in silence.
“The reason I ask, Mother Liggs, is that our investigations lead us to believe that she helped Billy Gee, provided him with food, a bed and——”
“She did!” burst out the little old lady, in sudden excitement.
“Yes, and from all appearances, hid him in her room. I want to be sure of their relations to each other, for it is quite probable that if he knew her he would tell her about the stolen money and either confide in her where he had hidden it or have her conceal it for him.” He followed by giving Mrs. Liggs a detailed account of the search and what it had revealed.
She listened intently, eagerly, drinking in every word, a strange, exultant light that he did not note gleaming far back in the depths of her faded blue eyes, her cheeks tinged with a faint rosiness that heightened the charm of her kindly countenance.
“And if you don’t find this money, Lex, I hope you don’t intend to arrest Dot!” she cried suddenly. “Why, that would be a terrible outrage—horrible. That girl is a dear, sweet, innocent child who wouldn’t do wrong for anything. Why, that’s just like her to help him—wounded and bleeding and all that!”
He smiled at her vehement defense of the girl. “I don’t think we will have occasion to go that far in the matter, Mother Liggs,” he said reassuringly. “As I was driving in from the ranch it struck me that, confronted with what evidence we have and more that we’ll get, showing that Miss Huntington presumably aided him, Billy Gee will confess—make a clean breast of everything, rather than have her incriminated. Any man would, out of a sense of gratitude, if for no other reason.” He paused and added slowly: “Personally, from everything you’ve told me about her I don’t believe a young woman of Miss Huntington’s standing would stoop to such a thing as keeping stolen money—supposing, of course, that Billy Gee turned it over to her. Isn’t that so?”
Mrs. Liggs did not reply. She studied him curiously for a few seconds, then she said gravely:
“You haven’t seen the bulletin board this afternoon, have you? Well, Billy Gee escaped from Sheriff Warburton and—and got away, Lex. If you’ll stay to supper I’ll tell you all about it. And I’ve got—what do you think, deary? Pumpkin pie! Only it’s made out of canned pumpkin.” Laughing, she took both his hands in hers and drew him into the kitchen.
A hundred miles southwest of Geerusalem, where the Mohave Desert grudgingly recedes and the great arable belt, rich in orange and lemon groves, orchard and vineyard, follows the coast line unswervingly, north and south, a dozen posses were scouring the country for one man.
Four hours before, Billy Gee had turned on Sheriff Warburton in the lavatory of the smoking car and struck him down with the heavy “bottle-cuffs” that shackled his hands. He had taken the key from the unconscious official’s pocket, unlocked the manacles, slipped them on Warburton, and gagged him so that he could not cry out. Then he had leaped through the lavatory window, while the train was straining on an upgrade, out of the desert.
At the next station, a brakeman had discovered the sheriff lying helpless on the floor. The train was stopped, the wires tapped, and the alarm broadcasted around for hundreds of miles.
Sheriff Warburton, overwhelmed with humiliation, raging impotently, mustered a posse and began combing the neighborhood where his prisoner had broken for freedom. Other posses were organized. A dragnet, twenty-five miles in diameter, started closing in. Hour after fruitless hour passed. On the evening of the same day that he had left Geerusalem with the notorious bandit in custody, Sheriff Warburton, baffled, discomfited, offered one thousand dollars for the man’s capture, dead or alive.
At ten o’clock that night, when it seemed certain that Billy Gee had dropped from sight, Warburton wrapped up his gold-filled star of authority, together with his credentials and a letter, resigning as sheriff of San Buenaventura County. These he mailed to the chairman of the board of supervisors, but he did not abandon his hunt for Billy Gee. On the contrary, he prosecuted that hunt with a persistence bordering on frenzy, spending days and nights in the saddle, sleeping and eating only when exhaustion threatened to put him out of the running, and he registered a violent oath against the outlaw, if they ever should meet again.
Two weeks later the newspapers carried a story about the finding of a dead man in a lonely desert cañon, some distance from the little town of Burbank. Authorities differed as to the length of time the man had been dead. Identification proving quite impossible, it was, nevertheless, decided that the remains were those of Billy Gee. Ex-Sheriff Warburton alone would not believe it. He continued his relentless, indefatigable search.