CHAPTER XIV—AN EPISODE IN THE HILLS
It seldom happens that a sheriff, or any peace officer for that matter, ever regains the confidence of the public, much less his popularity, once he loses a prisoner of such supposed badness as was Billy Gee. Somehow, it is difficult for the voters to believe that a really efficient official may be caught unawares and outwitted by a criminal, particularly if that criminal is unarmed and handcuffed into the bargain. So the conscientious wielder of the franchise goes to the polls, and on the strength of his theory that a sworn servant of the people should be invincible and superior to mistake and oversight, very gravely ousts the incumbent candidate in favor of the untried timber on the ballot.
The voters of San Buenaventura County, California, were of another sort, however. Sheriff Bob Warburton had proved up to their ideals for two terms—even if he hadn’t been able to hold onto the will-o’-the-wisp bandit of the Mohave. He was sincere, always on the job, a good fellow, dependable. That he had slipped once, should not condemn him, asserted the electorate. What man does not slip once?
Regardless of the fact, then, that Warburton had resigned his office and that his political enemies made a great to-do about the Billy Gee incident, the people went to the polls strong for Warburton and reinstated him to office by an avalanche vote. And, as if to confirm their trust in him, on the very day that he resumed his gold star he issued a statement to the newspapers in which he vowed to capture Billy Gee and get him the maximum sentence under the law—imprisonment for life.
It was a week after election. During that week Warburton received Dot’s telegram requesting him to come to San Francisco. On the day following its receipt, while he debated whether he should make the trip or wire her for particulars, he got an unexpected message from Lex Sangerly, stating in so many words that the M. & S. money had been recovered and urging that information be kept secret for the time being.
Warburton puzzled over the matter for hours. He began to ask himself if it were not just possible that there existed a clandestine love affair between Dot and Billy Gee. Because of his intimate knowledge of Lex’s movements in the case, Warburton was certain that Sangerly had gone to San Francisco to interview the girl and had found her in possession of the outlaw’s loot. This, he reasoned, would explain her telegram that she had something of importance to tell him. Love alone could have moved Billy Gee to part with twenty thousand dollars, was the sheriff’s firm conviction.
“’Twouldn’t be the first good woman fell for a scalawag,” he muttered grimly, as he holstered his six-shooters and picked up his rifle.
It was at that season of the year when the desert region of southern California was beginning to feel the atmospheric influences caused by the early sprinkle of rain descending on the timbered highlands to the north—the violent gustiness of the wind whipping the sand into great clouds, the strange sultriness of the nights, the blood-red sunsets.
Unknown to any member of his office, except his second in command, Undersheriff Hodgson, Warburton stole out of the county seat one evening on a still hunt of weeks, and there was in his heart the kind of determination that stops at nothing to achieve its purpose.
Aside from his desire to merit the faith of the people, there was a personal angle which made his meeting with the bandit a thing of vital moment. Any one familiar with the man-hunting game will tell you that if there is one thing an officer of the law never forgets, it is a bodily injury received at the hands of a prisoner; also, that he never quite forgives himself for losing a prisoner. Either is, loosely speaking, a professional disgrace, but it is more than that. An officer appreciates only too well that he is the custodian of the law, that his voice is the voice of the commonwealth, that his body is as sacred as it is possible for a human body to be sacred. Sheriff Warburton cherished this belief with pride. Had Billy Gee held him up at the point of a gun and stripped him of his valuables, the act would have been more or less forgivable alongside of striking the sheriff down, shackling the sheriff with the sheriff’s handcuffs, and making his escape.
The memory of that hurt had burned itself into Warburton’s brain like some corroding acid. It permeated his being with the deadliness of a vicious poison. His determination to capture Billy Gee came to be a mania with him, a mania similar in intensity to that which had gripped Lemuel Huntington to see Dot educated before he died.
To-day, Sheriff Warburton was out to “get” Billy Gee—not Billy Gee dead, but Billy Gee alive. He wanted to bring the outlaw into the county seat of San Buenaventura, so that the people might see that he had lived up to their expectations as a sheriff, to vindicate his honor, the pride he felt in himself and his position. Anybody could sneak up behind a desperado and shoot him down, but few had grit enough to confront that desperado and take him alive. Warburton was going to herd Billy Gee into the county seat alive or perish in the attempt. So he swore to himself at the time.
A-straddle of a mule, driving a pack burro before him, went the grim sheriff of San Buenaventura County, looking for all the world like a prospector in his patched-up overalls, old gray hat, and boots worn down at the heels. A rough mat of whiskers which he had let flourish untrimmed, disguised him against the possibility of recognition.
Setting out from the town of Burbank, he steered a little north of east and began a painstaking, systematic visit to every water hole, spring, and tank on his slow, lonely journey across the north rim of the Mohave Desert. There were few of these blessed oases—bright green patches in that universe of gaunt desolation—and many hopeless miles separated them. A man could never live in that near-hell without water, and Warburton knew it.
Toward the end of August—a few weeks after Billy Gee’s spectacular flight from the Huntington ranch in the rented car—Warburton reached Blue Mud Spring, a forlorn, seldom-visited trickle of water lost in a topsy-turvy hill country some three miles west of Lemuel’s quarter sections. Warburton camped there four whole wretched days, waiting; he had found a rather significant clew, as he thought.
Carved on the flat surface of a soft lime boulder, a few rods away from the spring was the legend, “Dot H., Aug. 20, 1913.” It had been done by a man, the work of an idle jackknife. The date was the one on which Warburton had trailed Billy Gee to the Huntington ranch. It was the one on which the bandit had met Dot, reasoned the sheriff.
Inspection of the ground back of the boulder showed that the owner of the jackknife had lain there for some time. The imprint of a cartridge belt appeared in the dirt. A short distance up a near-by shallow gulch, his horse had pawed a hole in the loose gravel during intervals of hunger or impatience.
On the evening of Warburton’s fourth day of solitary vigil, while he was preparing his supper prospector fashion, the first person he had seen since leaving the railroad hove in sight from around a bend in the gulch. Warburton recognized him. It was none other than Tinnemaha Pete. The old desert rat came pattering forward, driving his two shying burros before him, urging them onward with wild, falsetto cries. As he neared the muddy seepage of spring he shooed them over to drink and toddled up to the sheriff.
“Howdy, stranger!” he piped. “Kinder sultry weather, the last day or so. Better’n that damn wind we bin havin’. You bin out in it? Lookit my eyes!” He lifted his rheumy red lips at the other for inspection, at the same time squinting craftily at him. But he couldn’t penetrate the thick disguise of beard.
“They sure are alkalied,” said the sheriff. “That’s tough. You’re jest in time for a feed, friend. Sit in. Where’re you headed?”
“I got claims ’crosst the hills yonder,” said Pete, waving his skinny arm toward Geerusalem. “Sometimes I come here, sometimes I hike to camp for water. Prospectin’?”
“That’s my middle name. Lookin’ for rock with one eye an’ watchin’ for that two-gun chap, Billy Gee, with the other. ’Tain’t pleasant, let me tell you.”
Tinnemaha Pete broke into a wild cackle. “A big walloper like you skeart of a kid! Say, you’re a tenderfoot, ain’t you?” He leered suddenly. “Yer hands’re soft. I jest seen the inside of one of ’em. You can’t fool me, mister.”
“I ain’t tryin’ to, dad,” grinned Warburton. “This here is my first trip out for nigh on a year. I bin bartendin’ for McGregor, over to Twenty-nine Palms. You know ‘Gold-tooth’ McGregor, the locoed Scotchman, wears a clean boiled shirt every day, an’——”
“Do I know that ol’ hoss thief? An’ you bin sellin’ booze for him? Better man never lived’n—— D’ye happen to have what’s good for snake bite?” he tittered.
The sheriff dug a bottle out of his pack and passed it to him. “’Tain’t as fine’s it might be, but it beats nothin’,” grimaced Tinnemaha Pete, as he wiped his mouth. “An’ after you workin’ in that rough-house joint of McGregor’s, you’re leery of Billy Gee! Say, d’ye know that boy’s a genius! He’s a cat for lives an’ a fox for tricks. He’s showed up ag’in. Ain’t you heerd? Lordy! Hell burn my soul, if he ain’t writ another notice an’ stuck it up on the blackboard of the Searchlight! Yes, he did—night afore last. ‘Warburton, I’m glad you’ve been reëlected sheriff. You’re the only man for the job. I mean it.’ That’s what the notice said. Ain’t that the tantalizin’ young devil?” Tinnemaha’s old eyes snapped proudly.
Warburton’s teeth set under their cover of beard. He began apportioning the fried rashers of bacon into two tin plates.
“One of these days Mr. Sheriff’ll nab that galoot. Jest you watch,” he replied slowly. “An’ when he does——”
“If he does,” hooted the old man, “he’s a Jim Dandy. If it hadn’t bin for Lem Huntington, the dirty——”
He broke off in his eccentric way, trotted over to his pack animals, and started throwing off their loads. Presently he had them hobbled for the night and was back at the fire, squatting on the ground, his heaping plate in his lap. They ate in silence, Warburton studying his guest curiously, listening to him mumbling over his food.
When the dishes had been washed and stacked away in a kyack, and the two men had filled and lighted their pipes, Sheriff Warburton returned to the subject uppermost in his mind.
“Yessir, jest like you said, dad, if it hadn’t been for this rancher Huntington gittin’ the drop on Billy Gee, the sheriff would ’a’ never——”
“Lem Huntington’s a ornery skipjack—a louse,” cried Tinnemaha Pete in sudden fury. “He togs up like a tinhorn gambler an’ smokes seegars now, an’ he’s bought a bunch of cows an’ is plantin’ a patch in alfalfee. The cussed scrub! The ring-necked buzzard! I know, stranger! They can’t fool old Tinnemaha Pete. Leetle Miss Dot—there’s a angel for you, mister! She hid out Billy Gee that day, an’ her dad nails him for the reeward. The t’rantula!”
It had grown quite dark. The purple sky was brilliant with stars; a warm, fragrant breeze purred down upon the night camp from over the shattered crests of the rocky hills. In the leaping firelight, Tinnemaha’s wizened features were distorted with senile rage. His black, short-stemmed pipe trembled in his bony, clawlike hand.
“You ain’t never met up with Billy Gee, eh?” he asked. “I did. Yes, siree, I know him! They ain’t a finer boy no place, they ain’t. An’ along comes this yaller snake, Lem Huntington, an’——”
“How d’you know that Miss Huntington hid Billy Gee?” interrupted Warburton casually. “You’re jest mebby guessin’ at it. You don’t know for sure.”
“Guessin’!” shrilled Tinnemaha Pete. “Guessin’, yore gran’mother. Mrs. Liggs told me, an’ I figger she oughter know.”
“Why?”
“’Cos Lem Huntington—yes, he told her, that’s why. You wait till me an’ him tangle. I found mineral on his ground an’—damn him, he’d better not try no shenanigans with me! Not with ol’ Peter Boyd. Mark me, stranger! I’ll cut him up. Sure’n scat, I’ll cut him up!”
Puffing frantically at his wheezing cold pipe, he bobbed his gray head at the fire, his puckered-up eyes flickering with a mad light.
Warburton tossed a snarl of sagebrush on the coals. As the flames leaped up, he glanced keenly at the queer little shriveled figure across from him. After an interval, he said:
“You reckillect the time las’ summer when Billy Gee nailed that there other sign on the Searchlight’s bulletin board, sayin’ he’d bin huntin’ for Warburton for three year, an’——” Tinnemaha brightened suddenly and gave a wild laugh. “Well, the sheriff told me that he got a-hold of that paper notice,” continued Warburton slowly. “It ’pears like it was a fancy sort o’ wrappin’ paper, an’ Warburton he mosied ’round Geerusalem till he found the store that used that pertickler kind. It was a dry-goods store, run by a woman—Mrs. Agatha Liggs.
“The sheriff didn’t do nothin’ about it then, figgerin’ that Billy Gee mighta jest bought suthin’ there an’ used the paper to write on. Now——” He paused. Trained to read men’s minds by their change of facial expression, he had been quick to note the look of suspicion which flashed across Tinnemaha’s wrinkled countenance. He finished his recital with a wild guess. “What is Mrs. Liggs to Billy Gee—aunt or mother?”
The old man chuckled mirthlessly. He drew a brand out of the fire and lit his pipe. “I ain’t ever goin’ to tell you, mister. I ain’t got no way of knowin’. Mark ye! I don’t keep cases on other folks’ business. Ol’ Tinnemaha Pete’s got too much of his own to ’tend to. Am I right or wrong—what?”
“Aunt or mother, dad?” smiled the sheriff indulgently. “Come on now, you ain’t foolin’ me one bit. I’ve heerd for years as how Tinnemaha Pete knows most everythin’ on the Mohave——”
“The hell you say!” exploded the desertarian. He thrust his skinny neck across the camp fire, and concentrated the gaze of his red-rimmed eyes on Warburton’s whiskered face. “I don’t ever reckillect seein’ you afore—not with that crop. Mebby I’d know you shaved. What’s yore name?”
“Jack Sangerly,” lied Warburton.
“Spangaree? Seems to me I met—— Yessir! Agatha give me a knockdown to a dude feller, tol’rable sort—had on ’bout five hunderd dollars o’ sporty togs. That’s the name—Spangaree. But he was a ol’ friend of the fambly, she said.”
Warburton smiled. “That’s my brother, Lex, you met,” he said blandly. “Lex’s bin edjicated in Frisco, an’ I reckon he knew her there. Say, come to think of it, I b’lieve he did tell me she was Billy Gee’s mother! Sure’s shootin’! It was over to the grading camp where Billy held up the paymaster of the M. & S., some time after.” He nodded gravely at the flames, but he was watching the other, hawklike.
Tinnemaha Pete gave vent to a paroxysm of hysterical laughter. “’Tain’t like yore brother to lie to you, is it, Spangaree?” he cackled, and resumed a vigorous puffing at his pipe. Thus for some seconds, then he added abstractedly: “But Agatha she knowed the whole Spangaree fambly, an’ said as how the dude feller I met an’ Jerome was kids together.”
“Jerome—Liggs!” gasped Warburton. In a twinkling, he remembered the embezzlement of the Marysville city funds!
Tinnemaha Pete did not hear him. The little old fellow’s faded blue eyes, now snapping with a malicious fire, were riveted on him.
“If you’re a deteckitive, stranger, God Almighty help ye!” he went on. “Billy Gee hangs out here. Like as not, he’s out in the dark yonder, takin’ it all in. Mark what I say! Close yore damn trap!” He spoke in a heavy, cracked whisper, and Warburton cast a furtive eye over the vicinity.
It was black night beyond the small circle of firelight, the desert hills tragically still, a subtle warning in Tinnemaha Pete’s voice and manner. A short silence fell. The desertarian broke it with a rough chuckle and shook his head at his pipe.
“But he ain’t,” he ruminated, half to himself. “Lem Huntington knows where he is. Gol ding his flea-bitten hide! I hope Billy cuts him up, like I aim to. Jest let him try robbin’ ol’ Peter Boyd of them Billy Geerusalem claims, an’ I’ll fetch him. I’ll turn a knife into him. I’ll cut him up—chop him to pieces. Jest nacherly make hash outer the skunk. I sure will. Jest nacherly make hash outer him——”
He mumbled on for a spell, then dropped off to sleep, looking for all the world—sitting there before the dying fire—like a little pile of discarded old clothes thrown over a stump.
Warburton waited a few minutes, gazing thoughtfully at him. At last, getting cautiously to his feet, he saddled the mule and struck out for the Huntington ranch. Tinnemaha Pete had given him enough of a clew to go on. More important still, Jerome Liggs and Billy Gee were one and the same. Jerome Liggs, who had disappeared three years ago as if the earth had opened and swallowed him, was alive, here, on the point of capture! Warburton rode slowly, warily along. This was the biggest hour of his whole life. He was on the eve of the greatest triumph of his career.
“I’m a-goin’ to git you, Billy Gee. I’m a-goin’ to git you!” he murmured into the night.