CHAPTER III—IN WHICH WILLS COLLIDE
For a long time after Sheriff Warburton rode away, Dot followed him with her eyes. Not until he was but a wisp of dust in the gray distance, did she turn to reënter the house. She was considerably shaken by the ordeal, relieved that it was over. Ten thousand dollars reward, he had said. A fortune! What a store of untold pleasures it would buy—surcease of worry, regeneration! Thoughtfully she walked to her room and unlocked the door. The fearful eyes of the fugitive fastened on hers questioningly.
“He’s gone. It was Sheriff Warburton. He’s hunting for you—to arrest you.” She said this in quiet tones.
“I—I don’t know how to thank you, Miss Huntington,” he stammered huskily. “My—my own mother couldn’t ’a’ done more. I ain’t deservin’. I’m no good. I’ll never ferget you as long as I live.” A strange spasm crossed his face. He settled feebly back on the bed, the tears coursing down his cheeks in little rivulets.
“There now! Don’t think about it,” she said gently. “I’ll fix you something to eat. Then you can sleep. But my father must not even suspect that you are here, understand? To-night, when you’re stronger, I’ll help you out of the house. I’ll spread a few blankets in the hayloft for you. You’ll be safe there.”
She made to leave the room, but he stopped her.
“Would you mind gettin’ me them—them saddlebags ag’in, Miss Huntington? An’—an’ keep ’em by me, won’t you? I got things in ’em I—I can’t afford to lose, so to speak.”
For the second time Dot obeyed his request, bringing the bulging twin leather pouches from under the parlor lounge and storing them under the head of the bed. Now, she began to wonder curiously what they contained. While she prepared him his meal she still wondered. Of a sudden it dawned on her that in her nervousness and excitement she had forgotten to ask Sheriff Warburton about the fugitive—who he was, the nature of his crime, everything. What if she should be harboring a murderer? The thought chilled the blood in her veins. It filled her with apprehension, misgivings—horrified her. She turned it over in her mind, deciding finally that she would not allow herself to believe it. He was not the type who would kill a man, of that she became firmly convinced. A murderer must have something of viciousness stamped on his face, she fancied. The result of these reflections made her resolve to ask her patient about himself. There was no great hurry. He could not leave inside of several days anyway.
Later that afternoon she gathered together a number of old blankets and quilts, and spread a bed for the wounded fugitive in an obscure corner of the hayloft under the eaves of the barn. She hid the blood-spattered saddle. Then she drove the exhausted horse to wander with their handful of stock in the far end of the field.
Around five o’clock she made out her father galloping home along the road from camp. Giving the outlaw a few specific instructions she ran out beyond the gate to meet Lemuel as was her custom. But Huntington had no smile for his daughter to-day. She marked the ill humor in his face, the hard, accusing look he gave her, and half suspected the reason.
A tall, angular, wiry man was Lemuel Huntington, a sprinkle of gray in his hair and mustache, a countenance more pathetic than aggressive. Association with Geerusalem’s uppish fraternity had inspired him to assume its dashy swagger garb—stiff-brim gray Stetson, corduroy suit, his trousers stuffed into yellow, laced, three-quarter boots resplendent with steel buckles, his coat, box-pleated and belted à la Norfolk. Just now, as he rode up, scowling on Dot, he looked more the prosperous mining man of sectional influence than the humble, unimportant rancher he really was.
“What’s this talk of you side-kickin’ it with a bandit, Dot?” he began sharply as he dismounted.
“I suppose you’ve met Sheriff Warburton, and he’s told you——”
“Yes, I did. He says you helped Billy Gee git away, patched him up, give him a hoss, an’——”
“Billy Gee!” she gasped aloud. Her patient was the notorious desperado who, for years, had terrorized the border settlements far to the south!
“Yes—Billy Gee. He stuck up the paymaster’s car of the Mohave & Southwestern last night at a gradin’ camp east of Mirage an’ skinned out with twenty thousand dollars. Bob Warburton was on his trail when he done it. Posses are out thicker’n fleas—three from Geerusalem alone. The country’s all riled up. What d’you mean by actin’ that fool way, Dot? Ain’t you got no sense?”
“How did I know he was Billy Gee, daddy? Please be a little reasonable.” She spoke, a tinge of impatience in her voice, her eyes on the ground.
“He must ’a’ acted suspicious, didn’t he? An’ he was winged, to boot.”
“He was about dead. Father, would you have me run a dying man off the place, brutally—like a dog? Is that the kind of daughter you want to be proud of?” She was looking steadily at him now.
Lemuel was silent a moment. He glanced down at the buckles on his boots.
“By gosh, honey! I reckon you’ve got the ol’ man holed up,” he admitted rather ruefully. “But can’t you see, if it’d bin any one else, ’cept Bob Warburton, we’d have a tough time provin’ we wasn’t in cahoots with this thievin’ kiyote. It’s mighty ticklish business, I’m tellin’ you. He was bad hit, eh?”
She gave him a detailed account of the fugitive’s arrival at the ranch, but very carefully omitted to mention that she had taken him into the house. Adroitly, also, she evaded saying that he had departed. She dwelt in particular on the seriousness of his condition because of his loss of blood and his need of immediate care. Lemuel said no more following this explanation, though it was quite plain to her that some thought still troubled him.
While he attended to his chores Dot went into the kitchen and started getting supper ready. Now she was afire with excitement. Billy Gee, that terrible personage of whom she had heard such wild, thrilling things, was locked in her room—lying on her bed! Her prisoner! Her romantic brain reeled with ecstasy at the realization. And Sheriff Warburton, posses galore, were frantically beating brush the length and breadth of Soapweed Plains for Billy Gee, in pursuit of a ten-thousand-dollar reward. She had outwitted them—she, Dot Huntington!
The whole situation struck her as ridiculously funny. She leaned against the kitchen table and choked with silent laughter. This indeed was the big, exciting adventure she had longed for all these past years—infinitely big and exciting, pregnant with thrilling possibilities.
Then she remembered her father saying that Billy Gee had stolen twenty thousand dollars just the night before. She grew anxiously grave. From reflecting on the robbery she presently interpreted the cause of her patient’s singular concern over the safety of his saddlebags. They contained his stealings—currency, most likely; twenty thousand dollars in bills would make a bulky package, she believed.
Lemuel sauntered in from the barn some minutes afterward. He prepared to wash.
“I don’t see his horse, Dot,” he began abruptly, as he poured a dipperful of water into the basin.
“I turned it out with the rest—after I fed it. The poor thing was——”
“You give him Baldy, I s’pose?”
“No. Sheriff Warburton appeared to get the notion from what I said that I traded horses, and I didn’t tell him different. I didn’t see why I should,” she explained frankly.
Lemuel, in the act of rolling up his sleeves, glanced around at her. He frowned.
“Are you meanin’ to tell me, Dot, that a dyin’ man with a sheriff at his heels’d resk a get-away on foot—pertickler, a hard case like this here Billy Gee? D’you think I’m a fool, Dot?”
“Well, count your stock if you don’t believe me, daddy. You’re—you’re doubting everything I say, to-day. I don’t know why. You’ve never done that before.”
She spoke in such a meek, sorrowful voice that it moved him to cross the room to her side and kiss her tenderly on the cheek.
“Lord bless you, hon!” he murmured in loving tones. “I ain’t aimin’ to doubt my leetle gal never. You know that.” He laughed. “The on’y thing I got to say is, it’ll be good-by, Billy Gee, ’fore the week’s up, if he don’t git somepn faster’n two laigs under him. He must ’a’ left his saddle an’ everythin’, eh?” he added craftily.
“Everything,” nodded Dot, in a very decisive manner.
Lemuel went back to the basin and silently proceeded with his washing, but he said to himself: “No bandit livin’ would do sech a crazy thing—shot up, into the bargain. You might fool Bob Warburton, daughter, but you can’t fool yore ol’ man. There’s ten thousand dollars hidin’ on this ranch this minute.”
After supper, Lemuel composed himself in his favorite chair and smoked his pipe and mused as usual. It was a quiet night—exceptionally quiet, thought Dot, who, mindful that only a thin board partition separated her room from the kitchen, grew more and more fearful as the evening dragged on, in the knowledge that an accidental sound or movement by her outlaw patient would lead her father to investigate. She trembled at the consequences to herself. By the hour she kept busy with the noisy task of scouring pots and pans, giving the cupboard a thorough overhauling, burnishing the stove, making all the distracting sounds possible, and wishing and wishing that Lemuel might go to bed. But he had no such inclination.
“At three dollars a day, a man’d work over twenty years for twenty thousand dollars, Dot,” he observed pointedly, breaking a long silence. “An’ this Billy Gee gits it overnight.”
“Yes, daddy. But he doesn’t enjoy it. How can he?” she replied, vigorously rubbing at the stove lids. “Think of him being hunted from place to place like a wild animal, the target for any man’s gun, without home or any one to care for him when he’s sick. Think of such a terrible existence!”
“When a feller tries an’ tries till the heart’s kicked outer him, ’tain’t hard to tempt him. That’s how I feel about it.” There was an ugly, suggestive note in his voice.
She paused in her scrubbing and gave him a quick, searching look. Some grim expression she saw in his face, a dangerous flicker in his eyes, filled her with sudden misgivings.
“I mean that!” he said harshly, with a vicious jerk of his head. He had taken the pipe from his mouth; his gaze was fastened on her accusingly. “Look at me! I bin kicked an’ kicked! Year in an’ year out I bin a-goin’ it, till I’m bruck down—petered out, an’ not a cussed thing to show for it. An’ look at other men who ain’t half as deservin’! What’ve I got, eh? What’ve you got?” He stiffened in his chair, gulped out suddenly in tones that reverberated through the silent little house: “An’ I’ve tried—God Almighty knows! An’ yore poor ma she—she died a-tryin’ an’ skimpin’ an’ dreamin’——”
“Father!” cried Dot aghast. Her face was white, drawn; her eyes wide with alarm.
Sitting there in the yellow lamplight, Lemuel Huntington was wild to behold; his features distorted into hideous lines; his hands clenched, his whole body trembling spasmodically. He burst into a horrible laugh.
“To-day, you doctor up a low-down murd’rous skunk that’d cut our throats to-morrow for the fun of it. An’ ten thousand dollars gits by us, eh? D’you hear that! D’you hear that? Ten thousand dollars for Billy Gee, dead or alive! D’you know what that means to us? An’ d’you reckon I’m goin’ to sit still an’ let you——”
“Blood money!” she broke in, gasping out the words. “Daddy, would you want to buy your food and drink—mine—our clothes, pleasures—would you be so inhuman as to find happiness at the expense of a miserable fellow creature?”
“It’s the law—like the ten-dollar bounty on the hide of the kiyote. Money is money,” he slung in savagely. “I want you to c’nsider me, yoreself, our c’ndition. I bin wantin’ to give you an edjucation, to carry out yore ma’s dyin’ wish. I want you to be somebody. We bin livin’ like dogs too long. I’m damn sick of it! Outside o’ Agatha Liggs, look at how them town hussies treat you! An’ them edjucated shysters who ain’t fit to grease my boots—what do I git from them? We need money. We got to git money—now. Right off, see? An’ if you can’t help me git it honest, ’cordin’ to law, I’ll start out to steal it! I’ll turn bandit, an’ it’ll be for you to hide me out an’ take care of me! What d’you say to that, eh? What’re you goin’ to do?”
He had risen to his feet as he spoke. He crossed the kitchen to her side and stood now, glowering down on her, cupidity, fury, desperation flaming from his eyes. Terrified, she stared at him. She knew at last the reason for the marked change in him, what he intimated. There was no way for her to dodge the issue.
“You think I know where Billy Gee is——” she began with an effort.
“You got him hid out, an’ don’t lie to me!” he roared. “He’s too sick to ride, an’ you’re nursin’ him some place on this ranch. You can’t make no damn fool out of me, young lady. Where is he? You’re goin’ to tell me, or by hell, I’ll——” He raised his clenched fists menacingly above her head.