CHAPTER XLVI

FAIR EXCHANGE

ALL day alone, a stranger, almost a prisoner in Lou Gore’s little room, Taisie Lockhart for once in her life was now almost in a condition of hysteria. The strain and stress of the long trail journey, the anxiety of her hazard of fortunes, the relaxation of success—and now all these scenes and sounds of violence in combination so worked upon her worn nerves that she no longer was herself. Lou Gore was much put to it to comfort her, and, indeed, was glad enough to welcome Jim Nabours and the boy Cinquo, who later in the evening came in to tell the news of the affair at the Silver Moon. These two paused in the outer room, not daring to ask once more to see their mistress.

“You tell her, ma’am,” said Jim Nabours. “Tell her we got Rudabaugh safe and his gang busted wide open—three of them killed. Dan McMasters, he taken Rudabaugh prisoner hisself in a fair stand-up fight.”

“Well, all right, all right,” responded Lou Gore; “I’ll tell her anything. Nobody in town has had any supper yet. We can’t have no dance now. This is the beatingest Fourth of July ever I did see. I declare, you cowboys give me more trouble than my gamblers.

“I don’t want to be nasty to you,” she went on. “But you’ve got to keep out of my kitchen. Here, take a couple of keys and go on upstairs and go to bed. I declare, I am right tired my own self.”

Meekly obedient, although reluctant not to see the mistress of Del Sol before he slept, Jim Nabours clumsily climbed the stairs, the boy close at his heels.

“What’s wrong, Mister Jim?” asked Cinquo solicitously. “Ain’t we sold out all right?”

“Yes,” said his foreman gruffly. “We’ve won out on the cows. But we’ve lost out on the land. You know that trunk?”

“Shore. I do. It was always getting in the road everywheres.”

“It won’t be no more! It’s gone—lost—stole. It was worth ten times as much as all our cows. Old Rudabaugh knows where it is, but he ain’t so apt to tell.”

As he spoke he flung open the door of a room, one of many precisely alike on either side of the upper hall. But he paused.

“Hello!” said he. “There’s some one in here now, and he’s gone to bed.”

The bed indeed was occupied—occupied by a long and motionless figure, a pillow slip drawn across his face, the hands folded on the breast.

“I’ll be——” Jim Nabours halted as something caught his eye. He stepped forward, drew back the face covering.

“Why, it’s Cal Dalhart!” said he. “He’s dead all right—but they done told me he was buried! McCoyne told me he seen it done hisself!”

The boy came and stared down in awe at the long and motionless figure, the white face.

“Him and Del, now——”

But Nabours took him by the arm. The two went down the stairs once more into the office room.

“Mister,” said Nabours to the gloomy occupant, handing over his key, “you’d better give me another room.”

“What’s the matter with the one you’ve got?” demanded the landlord of the Drovers’ Cottage.

“Somebody in it now,” replied Nabours, “and he’s dead. They told me that you-all got a couple of men to bury that man that got shot. Is that right? It was Mr. McCoyne told me that. Where is he?”

Sounds of voices came through the open door. A group of men were talking excitedly in the moonlight. The landlord summoned in one of these—McCoyne, ubiquitous and sleepless. To him Nabours repeated his query.

“Certainly, sir,” replied McCoyne. “I saw the two men carrying the coffin between them. I saw them bury him as plain as I ever saw anything in all my life! Of course, I wasn’t right out there with them. I been so busy——”

“Well, he ain’t buried now,” said Jim Nabours. “Cal Dalhart’s up there, upstairs.”

“Don’t that beat anything you ever heard!” exclaimed McCoyne. “It seems like everything goes wrong unless a man does it his own self, don’t it now?”

“You come along with me,” said Nabours, moved by a sudden thought of his own. “You get two men—new ones. I believe them two folks that buried Cal Dalhart is both dead theirselfs. Bring a couple of shovels. Hurry up!”

* * * * *

A little group of men departed in the moonlight on a certain gruesome errand. It was Jim Nabours himself who began at the loose dirt of the mound at whose head there had been erected a little headboard: “C. Dalhart, of Texas. Died July 4, 1867. May he rest in peace.”

“He couldn’t never rest in peace thisaway,” said Jim Nabours a half hour later. His shovel struck something hard.

“Here, lend us a hand,” said he. “Sinker, get hold the other handle of this trunk. It’s heavy. Huh! It’s got a half million acres of Texas land into it!”

“And we’ve got Sim Rudabaugh over in the livery stable,” he added after a time thoughtfully, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. “This ain’t no bad day’s work a-tall. You people go on back and bring Cal over here and we’ll bury him right. A fair exchange ain’t no robbery.”