Part 3

Freel went up the street and mingled with the crowds. There was no question that the sentence was unpopular among the cattlemen. Their tempers were worn to a frazzle over the drouth, the continuous heat and the sheep trouble, and a hanging might act as a safety valve. Freel caught the gist of a remark between Kales and one of the Lazy H cowboys, which hinted at a lynching.

There were open remarks about Judge Grayson being chicken-hearted, and some of them seemed even to blame Freel for what they considered a miscarriage of justice.

Alone in his small cell, Skeeter Bill sat down and contemplated his future. He was thirty-five years of age, and in all probabilities he would live thirty-five years longer. His mind traveled back over the years he could remember as he tried to visualize the long years to come—years of being only a number, a caged atom.

“I laid down on the job,” he told himself bitterly as he thought of his capture. “Why didn’t I take a chance of shootin’ m’self loose from that gang? All they could ’a’ done was t’ kill me. Or _why_ in —— didn’t I let that dead man alone?”

He shook his head sadly.

“I swore at that horse ’cause it didn’t have no speed; and t’ think of how it could ’a’ saved me by dyin’ half-way out there.”

But again Skeeter Bill shook his head. If it hadn’t been for him, Kirk or his wife would now be sharing this cell.

“Pals,” said Skeeter. “Bunkies—and him fightin’ f’r life. Livin’ and lovin’ thataway. ——! They deserve a chance, I reckon. But—” Skeeter lifted his head and spoke to the barred door—“I didn’t take their crime jist t’ save them. Nope, I wasn’t doin’ that—I was jist tryin’ t’ give ’em a chance t’ git away, tha’s all. I ain’t no —— hero; I’m jist unlucky, I am.”

Freel came back into his office, and in a few minutes he came back to the cell door.

“I dunno when we’ll make the trip, Sarg. There’s lots of wild talkin’ bein’ done, and we may have to sneak out of Crescent City.”

Skeeter grinned seriously.

“Seems kinda funny f’r me t’ have t’ sneak to the penitentiary, Freel.”

Freel laughed shortly.

“Is kinda queer. I don’t reckon they’ll try to take yuh out of here.”

“First time I ever was in a jail that I didn’t want t’ leave,” grinned Skeeter Bill.

Freel turned and walked back to his office. He seemed nervous over the outcome of it all; but Skeeter Bill, if he was perturbed in the least, did not show it. He wondered whether any of his acquaintances outside the valley had heard of his arrest. News did not travel fast in that country.

His thoughts turned back to Mary Leeds and the town of Sunbeam. Would she ever know? Somehow he hoped she would never find out. Mary Leeds was nothing to him, he told himself. She knew him as an outlaw. Sunbeam knew him as a gun-fighting lawbreaker—even if he had been instrumental in cleaning up the place. No, she would not be at all interested in his future.

Skeeter shook his head sadly over it all. He was making a fitting finish, but there was little glory in it.

“I wonder where m’ spark is?” he mused. “I’ve got a fine chance t’ build it into a flame where I’m goin’. Yet I wonder why Mary Leeds called, ‘Skeeter Bill!’ when I rode away. Anyway I won’t need t’ worry about gittin’ a hair-cut no more, and a number ain’t no worse than a name.”

* * * * *

Sunbeam had been good to Mary Leeds. On the night that her father had been killed, several wealthy bad-men had died intestate, and Sunbeam settled their estates without recourse to law.

But the life of the border mining-town palled upon her. She did not fit in somehow. The estimable Mrs. Porter had taken her into their home and had grown rather refined in her language, due to the instructive criticism of Mary Leeds.

“My ——!” exclaimed Mrs. Porter. “Ever since Jim Porter flirted openly with a stick of dynamite I’ve had t’ do everythin’ ’cept chaw tobacco; but now I reckon I’ve got t’ curry m’ finger-nails, wear stockin’s and say, ‘Yessir’ t’ every hardheaded son-of-a-rooster that comes after his laundry.”

“But,” explained Mary, “you are a woman.”

“Tha’s so,” agreed Mrs. Porter dubiously. “I s’pose I am. I’ve got them charact’ristics. I kinda wish you’d stay here in Sunbeam. Me ’n’ you git along sweet and pretty, but after you’re gone I’ll be the only ree-fined female in this whole —— town. Mebbe I’ll forgit everythin’ you learned me, and start in swearin’ like ——.”

“I hope not,” sighed Mary. “You have been lovely to me, Mrs. Porter. I don’t know what I would have done without you and——”

Mrs. Porter lifted her homely face and looked closely at Mary, who was staring out of the half-open window. The rumble of a series of blasts shook the ground, and from over on the street came the bumping and rattling of a heavy freight wagon.

Mary Leeds was not beautiful, though not far from it. Her face was appealing in its delicate lines, and a pair of wistful, blue eyes looked out into the world from below a tangle of soft brown hair.

Mary turned and saw Mrs. Porter looking at her.

“You didn’t quite finish your statement, Mary,” said Mrs. Porter softly.

Mary’s eyes switched back to the window, but she did not reply.

“You kinda meant t’ say a man’s name, didn’t you?”

“A man?”

Mary did not turn her head.

“Yeah, a man; Skeeter Bill Sarg.”

Mary turned and looked straight at Mrs. Porter.

“Skeeter Bill? Why should I mention him?”

Mrs. Porter turned back to her washtub and thoughtfully lifted a dripping garment.

“I dunno why.”

She shook her head.

“’Course he didn’t do nothin’ for you,” she added.

Mary continued the stare out of the window.

“Funny sort of a feller, was Skeeter Bill,” mused Mrs. Porter. “I ’member that he killed Jeff Billings ’cause Jeff lied to him. And Jeff had some laundry with me which wasn’t paid for, and Skeeter paid for it. I offered it to him, but he wouldn’t take it.

“’Member how he saved you and the preacher at the Poplar Springs, after Tug Leeds and his gang had shot up the outfit to steal the horses? He brought yuh both back here, and backed the preacher t’ clean up Sunbeam.

“And Tug Leeds lied to you and the preacher about Skeeter, and made yuh think he was a awful bum. ’Member that, do you?

“And then mebbe yuh ’member how Tug Leeds framed it to have the preacher hold church in his danged honkatonk t’ disgust both of yuh, and how Skeeter Bill raised —— with the whole gang and saved yuh from bein’ stole by Leeds and his gang?

“’Member that some of that lousy outfit shot old Judge Tareyton, through the winder, and the old judge, with his dyin’ muscles, pulled the trigger that sent Tug Leeds t’ ——?

“And Judge Tareyton was your own pa, and Tug Leeds was the man who had sent him to the penitentiary and stole his name. ’Member all that, don’t yuh? Skeeter Bill was the man who engineered all that.”

Mary turned slowly and nodded dumbly.

“I know. I owe him everything, Mrs. Porter. He—he had been awful good to my old daddy, they say. He saved my life, I think. But he said he was a horse-thief and ——”

“Y’betcha he did! Honest? Whooee, that ganglin’ outlaw sure was honest. If he’d ’a’ got killed in that entertainment they’d put up a monyment to him; but as it is I suppose some of these snake-hunters would kill him on sight.

“Human nature is kinda like that, Mary. Folks that pack a sawed-off shotgun for yuh when you’re alive, will chip in t’ give yuh a fancy tombstone and shed tears over yuh when you’re dead.

“Folks cuss me for wearin’ out their shirts on a old wash-board; but I’ll betcha if I died they’d all chip in and put me up a tombstone, real finicky, with a marble angel humped over a wash-tub, lookin’ at a marble shirt, and on it they’d engrave, ‘Not worn out, but —— near it.’”

Mary Leeds laughed at Mrs. Porter’s serious expression and dejected position over the wash-board as she held the dripping shirt in both hands and gazed at the ceiling.

“’F I go to heaven,” continued Mrs. Porter, “and they tell me that angels wear shirts, I’m sure goin’ to tell ’em that I know of a lot of preachers that have got the wrong dope on things down here.”

Mrs. Porter slapped the shirt back into the sudsy water and sank down in a broken-backed chair.

“Aw, I’m sick of it all, so I am. Scrub, scrub, scrub, all the time ’cept when I’m ridin’ sign on a —— flat-iron! Miners bring in their flannel shirts so danged dirty that yuh can’t wash ’em—yuh have t’ cultivate ’em. Their socks has been worn so long that I have t’ picket ’em out, ’stead of hangin’ ’em on the line.

“Feller brought me six suits of underclothes last week, and I let ’em fall off the table. Know what they done? Three suits broke all t’ ——, and the other three was so badly cracked that he made me pay for ’em. I tell yuh I’m sick of it. How in —— can I git refined under them conditions, I ask yuh?”

Mrs. Porter gathered up her apron in both hands and buried her face within its damp folds while her shoulders shook with suppressed emotion. Mary went to her quickly and threw both arms around her shoulder.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! It is too hard. Do you really have to stay here, Mrs. Porter? Couldn’t you live just as well in some other town?”

“I s’pose so.”

Mrs. Porter’s voice was muffled.

“Goodness knows there ain’t many towns where men don’t git their shirts dirty,” she added.

“I didn’t mean that,” explained Mary softly. “Perhaps you could get into something else. Suppose you go back East with me?”

Mrs. Porter lifted her head quickly and stared wide-eyed at Mary.

“Go East with you?”

“Where there are lots of folks and——”

“Lots of shirts?” supplied Mrs. Porter. “Lord bless you, child, I ain’t got but eighty dollars t’ my name.”

“I have,” said Mary; “I have enough for us both.”

Mrs. Porter shifted her eyes and looked around the room. There was nothing attractive about the rough shack interior. Outside, a mule-skinner spoke in the only language known to mules, and a heavy wagon lurched past through the dust. Mrs. Porter shoved the hair back from her face and got slowly to her feet.

She lifted up the sodden shirt and slapped it against the wash-board.

“This here shirt belongs t’ Doc Sykes, the coroner. Kinda prophetic-like, so it is, ’cause I’ve told him that he was the last person I ever expected t’ do business with. Gimme room t’ wring, young woman, ’cause I’m sure goin’t’ wind up m’ career in a big splash. You sure got somethin’ wished on to you when you issued a invite t’ me to go where men change their shirts once per week. Whooee!”

Mary Leeds laughed joyously and gave Mrs. Porter plenty of room for her last appearance as a laundress in a mining-camp.

* * * * *

While Mary Leeds and Mrs. Porter prepared to leave Sunbeam, and while Skeeter Bill Sarg smoked innumerable cigarets and waited for the sheriff to take him to the penitentiary at Red Lodge, a disgruntled crew of cowboys and paid gunmen loafed around the Lazy H ranch.

It had developed that Cleve Hart was not sole owner of the Lazy H, and that the other owners, who were Eastern capitalists, were disgruntled over their investment, and ordered an immediate sale of the property and the discharge of all employees forthwith.

Nick Kales had sold his services to Cleve Hart without any agreement from the other owners; with the result that he was forced to look forward to about two weeks’ pay at the rate of forty dollars a month, instead of the generous bonus due him as a professional gunman.

“Dutch” Van Cleve, a protegé of Nick Kales, was also a bit disgruntled over the outcome. The rest of the remaining cowpunchers, “Red” Bowen, “Swede” Sorenson, “Roper” Bates and “Boots” Orson, faced a lean year, as none of them saved more than tobacco money out of their monthly salary.

The killing of Cleve Hart and the arrest and conviction of Skeeter Bill had quieted things to some extent, but it was only an armed truce. Cowboys rode dead-lines and managed to keep the sheep within a well-defined area; but the cattlemen knew that an adverse court decision would wipe out dead-lines, and with it the cattle business.

Swede Sorenson had just ridden in from Crescent City, bringing the mail; and among it was a letter for Nick Kales, postmarked from the town of Wheeler.

Kales looked it over gloomily and put it unopened into his pocket. He exchanged a word or two with Dutch Van Cleve aside, and a little later they both approached Roper Bates, a saturnine, narrow-between-the-eyes sort of a puncher.

“Can yuh read?” queried Kales.

“Well,” grinned Roper, “I ain’t no —— professional reader, as yuh might say; but I _sabe_ some of the alphabet.”

“Yuh know how to keep your mouth shut, don’t yuh?”

“Now,” said Roper seriously, “you’re guessin’ me dead center. Shoot the piece, Kales.”

Kales took out the letter and handed it to Roper, who looked at it curiously.

“It ain’t never been opened,” he remarked.

“Me ’n’ Dutch can’t read,” explained Kales. “We’re askin’ yuh to decipher it for us; _sabe_?”

Roper took out the letter and laboriously spelled out the pencil-written message.

“It says,” began Roper:

“Dear Nick: All set for a big one on Thursday the eighteenth. Make it look good. Number 16. Hits there about nine o’clock. Burn this up right away. Very truly yours, Wheat.”

Roper finished and looked up at Kales, who was staring intently at him.

“What’sa idea?” queried Roper seriously.

Kales watched Roper’s face closely for several seconds and then took the letter from him. He touched a lighted match to one corner of the letter and envelop and watched them burn to a flimsy cinder.

“You know somethin’ now,” said Kales meaningly, “and there ain’t no use tellin’ yuh to keep your mouth shut.”

“Aw, ——!” grunted Roper. “You make me tired. If the deal’s any good I want in on it.”

Kales and Dutch exchanged glances. Dutch was long of face, crooked of nose and with a pair of round eyes which seemed to film over, instead of blinking.

“Whatcha think, Dutch?” queried Kales.

“Aw’right,” nodded Dutch. “I don’t care.”

“What about the rest—Red, Swede, Boots?” asked Kales. “This job is big enough for all.”

“All square,” declared Roper. “All square, and all broke. Put it up to ’em, Kales.”

The three men drifted down to the bunkhouse, where the other three were playing seven-up, and Kales lost no time in feeling out the other cowboys.

“What are you fellers goin’ to do?” asked Kales. “She’s a long ways to the next range.”

“That’s the —— of it,” growled Red disgustedly. “I’m broke—flat.”

“You ain’t got nothin’ on me,” grunted Swede. “I don’t even own the saddle I’m ridin’.”

“What’s the answer to your question, Kales?” queried Boots Orson, who was a trifle more intelligent than the rest and felt that Kales’ question was not idle curiosity.

“A certain job,” stated Kales bluntly, “might mean a big stake or it might mean the penitentiary. Takes a lot of guts.”

“You’re talkin’,” reminded Orson softly.

“Am I?”

Kales’ eyes swept the circle of cowboys, but read only interest in their faces.

“You—show—us,” said Red slowly, spacing his words widely. “I’m game.”

“—— right!” breathed Swede. “Shoot.”

“Did yuh ever hear of Sunbeam?” asked Kales.

“Yeah,” nodded Swede. “Minin’-town, about fifty miles from Wheeler.”

“Gold-minin’ town,” said Kales as if disputing Swede. “Lot of the yaller stuff shipped out of there, but nobody knows when.”

“There ain’t a —— mind-reader among us,” grinned Red.

“That part’s all fixed,” explained Kales, nodding toward Roper. “He read the letter.”

“I read a letter,” agreed Roper, looking up from the manufacture of a cigaret. “It didn’t fix nothin’ for me.”

“Lemme tell yuh about that letter,” urged Kales. “That feller who wrote it is Pat Wheat, and an old bunkie of mine. He works for the express company as a shotgun messenger. That’s how he knows things, I reckon.

“Me and him have been workin’ for a big stake, and he knowed I was here; so he tips me off. Pat will be ridin’ shotgun on this shipment, and she’s a cinch that we’ll crack out of here with a lot of _dinero_.”

“Hold up the train?” queried Red.

“You’re —— right. Cut off the baggage-car and take it a few miles. Won’t have nobody to handle except the engine crew. Pat’ll take care of the messenger.”

“I _sabe_ the place,” grinned Roper joyously. “We can flag her down jist short of the S bridge, cut off the money-car and run down to the mouth of San Gregario Cañon. She’s a dinger of a place to make a getaway.

“Have the horses planted there, and we can ride the rocky bottom of that dry creek for a mile. Never leave a track.”

“How about the rest of the train?” queried Boots. “There’s six of us. Passengers pack money and jewelry.”

Kales nodded slowly and stared at the ceiling for a while before he said:

“Yeah, that might be a good scheme, at that. We’ll cut the telegraph wire. Won’t be a —— of a lot of passengers, but it might pay to do it. If it was a reg’lar main-line train with sleepers, I’d say it wouldn’t pay, but on a branch line like this it’s a cinch to pile out or into them old cars.”

“When do we git action?” queried Roper. “Did that letter say, ‘Thursday’?”

“It did,” nodded Kales; “and this is Tuesday. We’ll work out the details later.”

“Can’t come too soon to suit me,” yawned Red. “Since Cleve Hart got bumped off it’s been kinda slow around here.”

“Hart was a —— fool,” declared Kales.

“Any old time yuh start monkeyin’ with women, you’re a fool.”

“Do yuh think that’s why he got his?” asked Red.

“Cinch. He thought he’d run a blazer on that shepherd and take his woman, but he got his shirt filled with buckshot.”

“Where’d this Sarg person figure in on the deal anyway?” queried Boots, who was with the sheriff when they arrested Skeeter Bill.

Kales grinned, showing some very bad-shaped teeth.

“Sarg never shot Hart. I know a few things about that long _hombre_, y’betcha. He’s a pistol fighter, Sarg is; and a —— good shot. Do yuh think he’d pick up a shotgun when he had a loaded six-gun in his holster?

“Sarg pistol-whipped Sunbeam town, so they tells me, and pulled out without a scratch. I don’t _sabe_ what he’s doin’ down here, ’less he hired out his gun to the sheep outfits.”

“Do yuh reckon the woman killed Hart?” queried Roper interestedly.

“She shore did, pardner.”

Kales was emphatic.

“Hm-m-m,” mused Roper.

He had seen Mrs. Kirk, and Roper was not overloaded with scruples.

“Freel’s scared,” observed Swede. “He ain’t made no move to take Sarg to the penitentiary yet.”

“Them boys from the Tin-Cup outfit swore they’d hang Sarg if they got a chance,” stated Red, “and Freel ain’t takin’ no chances. They’re sore at the judge for not hangin’ Sarg.

“’Course the sheep are closer to the Tin-Cup than to any of the other outfits, and if the law decides in favor of sheep—blooey! They’ll swarm plumb into Tin-Cup range. ’Course the law’ll only give ’em an even break with the cattle; but the —— law don’t stop to figure that cattle can’t live on an even break with sheep.”

“After that there sermon,” stated Roper piously, “the choir will rise and sing. What in —— do we care what the sheep do to Moon Valley? We’re leavin’ here; _sabe_?”

“And with freight all paid,” added Kales, grinning. “Tomorrow we all pull out, eh? Me and Dutch’ll pull out from Crescent City after we’ve planted the fact that we’re leavin’ for good. We’ll spring it that Roper and Swede left over Table Rock Pass t’day.

“Mebbe Red and Boots better stay here at the ranch. Might look bad if we all drifted at the same time, eh?

“And suppose we all meet in San Gregario Cañon, down near the mouth of it, about dark on Thursday? Me and Dutch’ll have things framed, wires cut and all that.”

The rest of the gang nodded in agreement, except Roper, who said:

“Let Boots pull out with Swede, and I’ll stay here. I owe a few dollars in Crescent City, and I might want to come back here some day. I’ll ride down with you and Dutch and then come back here.”

“Well, that’s all right,” grunted Kales. “Fix it any old way yuh want to.”

And thus are honest men drawn into evil paths through the need of a few dollars. But the question still remains: Who is an honest man, who is broke, with easy money in sight?

* * * * *

Roper Bates had little stomach for a train-robbery, but he did have a little plan of his own. Money did not mean so much to Roper as a pretty face. He had seen Mrs. Kirk, and the memory of her caused him to calculate deeply.

Roper was not an ignorant person, but a queer kink in his mental make-up caused him to believe that it was inconsistent that this pretty woman should be the wife of a despised sheep-herder. To him it was very unreasonable; a condition to be remedied at once. He did not take the woman’s position into consideration at all.

Roper was no handsome hero; rather he was a homely cowpuncher; but his mirror, if he ever used one, only reflected Roper Bates, which was sufficient for Roper Bates. He was a top-hand, a good pistol shot and took a bath in the Summer. All of which raised him far above the level of sheep-herders.

He had no intentions of being at the mouth of San Gregario Cañon at dark; but he did not mention this fact, as it was nobody’s business except his own. He was free, white and well past twenty-one. Also, on this particular Thursday he had imbibed freely of the juice that cheers, and the world was made up of pastel shades.

He lounged past the jail and almost ran into one of the Tin Cup punchers, known as “Jimmy Longhair,” who seemed to be making an indifferent getaway from the rear of the jail. Jimmy was the long-haired puncher who had been with the sheriff at the capture of Skeeter Bill.

“_Hyah_, Hair,” greeted Roper jovially. “How’sa dandruff?”

Jimmy Longhair glared evilly from under the floppy brim of his sombrero, but made no reply. He was a trifle touchy about his hair, but did not want to get tough with Roper Bates.

“Whatcha tryin’ to do—break in the back door?” continued Roper, grinning.

“None of yore —— business!” growled Jimmy.

“Go to the head of the class,” gulped Roper. “I betcha I know what yuh was tryin’ to do. You Tin Cup snake-hunters want to lynch Sarg, and when yuh find that Freel won’t let yuh, yuh sneak around tryin’ to shoot him through the back winder.”

“Aw-w-w, ——!” disgustedly. “No such a —— thing.”

Roper rocked on his heels and considered Jimmy Longhair appraisingly.

“Listenin’?”

Jimmy proceeded to roll a cigaret, which gave him an alibi to neglect an answer. Then the door of the sheriff’s office opened and shut, and Freel came past them. He barely looked at them, but neither gave him more than a passing glance.

“Listenin’,” declared Roper again. “Jist like a —— cholo. I’d be ’shamed.”

“You go to ——!” growled Jimmy.

“I betcha,” nodded Roper soberly. “I betcha m’ life.”

Whether Roper was willing to bet his life on the truth of his statement or in agreement with Jimmy Longhair’s order, made no difference to either of them. Roper turned on his heel and went after more bottled cheer, while Jimmy Longhair secured his bronco and hit the dusty road toward the Tin Cup ranch-house.

* * * * *

While the rest of the Valley of the Moon folks moved along in their own dumb way, Skeeter Bill chafed in the confines of his small cell. Old Solitaire had beaten him something over two hundred times, which also got on his nerves to a certain extent. Freel had told him that his stay was not to be much longer, which did not serve to brace his spirits to any extent.

Skeeter Bill had gone over every inch of his cell, trying to dope out a scheme to escape; but that jail was not built for any such hope. Skeeter knew that he did not have one chance in a thousand to miss the wide doors of the penitentiary.

Freel brought in his supper, but did not seem in any mood for conversation.

“Anybody’d think you was the one goin’ t’ prison,” observed Skeeter. “My gosh, yo’re gloomy, Freel.”