Part 19

Smith pulled himself together and stood the argument firmly upon its unquestionable footing.

"Let us put all these indirections aside and be for the moment merely a man and a woman, as God made us, Verda," he said soberly. "You know, and I know, that there was never any question of love involved in our relations past and gone. We might have married, but in that case neither of us would have gotten or exacted anything more than the conventional decencies and amenities. We mustn't try to make believe at this late day. You had no illusions about me when I was Watrous Dunham's hired man; you haven't any illusions about me now."

"Perhaps not," was the calm rejoinder. "And yet to-day I have lied to save you from those who are trying to crush you."

"I told you not to do that," he rejoined quickly.

"I know you did; and yet, when you went away this morning you knew perfectly well that I was going to do it if I should get the opportunity. Didn't you, Montague?"

He nodded slowly; common honesty demanded that much.

"Very well; you accepted the service, and I gave it freely. Mr. Kinzie believes now that you are another Smith--not the one who ran away from Lawrenceville last May. Tell me: would the other woman have done as much if the chance had fallen to her?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, "I hope not," but he did not say it. Instead, he said: "But you don't really care, Verda; in the way you are trying to make me believe you do."

"Possibly not; possibly I am wholly selfish in the matter and am only looking for some loophole of escape."

"Escape? From whom?"

She looked away and shook her head. "From Watrous Dunham, let us say. You didn't suspect that, did you? It is so, nevertheless. My father desires it; and I suppose Watrous Dunham would like to have my money--you know I have something in my own right. Perhaps this may help to account for some other things--for your trouble, for one. You were in his way, you see. But never mind that: there are other matters to be considered now. Though Mr. Kinzie has been put off the track, Mr. Stanton hasn't. I have earned Mr. Stanton's ill-will because I wouldn't tell him about you, and this evening, at table, he took it out on me."

"In what way?"

"He gave me to understand, very plainly, that he had done something; that there was a sensation in prospect for all Brewster. He was so exultantly triumphant that it fairly frightened me. The fact that he wasn't afraid to show some part of his hand to me--knowing that I would be sure to tell you--makes me afraid that the trap has already been set for you."

"In other words, you think he has gone over Kinzie's head and has telegraphed to Lawrenceville?"

"Montague, I'm almost certain of it!"

Smith stood up and put his hands behind him.

"Which means that I have only a few hours, at the longest," he said quietly. And then: "There is a good bit to be done, turning over the business of the office, and all that: I've been putting it off from day to day, saying that there would be time enough to set my house in order after the trap had been sprung. Now I am like the man who has put off the making of his will until it is too late. Will you let me thank you very heartily and vanish?"

"What shall you do?" she asked.

"Set my house in order, as I say--as well as I can in the time that remains. There are others to be considered, you know."

"Oh; the plain-faced little ranch girl among them, I suppose?"

"No; thank God, she is out of it entirely--in the way you mean," he broke out fervently.

"You mean that you haven't spoken to her--yet?"

"Of course I haven't. Do you suppose I would ask any woman to marry me with the shadow of the penitentiary hanging over me?"

"But you are not really guilty."

"That doesn't make any difference: Watrous Dunham will see to it that I get what he has planned to give me."

She was tapping an impatient tattoo on the carpet with one shapely foot.

"Why don't you turn this new leaf of yours back and go home and fight it out with Watrous Dunham, once for all?" she suggested.

"I shall probably go, fast enough, when Macauley or one of his deputies gets here with the extradition papers," he returned. "But as to fighting Dunham, without money----"

She looked up quickly, and this time there was no mistaking the meaning of the glow in the magnificent brown eyes.

"Your friends have money, Montague--plenty of it. All you have to do is to say that you will defend yourself. I am not sure that Watrous Dunham couldn't be made to take your place in the prisoner's dock, or that you couldn't be put in his place in the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust. You have captured Tucker Jibbey, and that means Tucker's father; and my father--well, when it comes to the worst, my father always does what I want him to. It's his one weakness."

For one little instant Smith felt the solid ground slipping from beneath his feet. Here was a way out, and his quick mentality was showing him that it was a perfectly feasible way. As Verda Richlander's husband and Josiah Richlander's son-in-law, he could fight Dunham and win. And the reward: once more he could take his place in the small Lawrenceville world, and settle down to the life of conventional good report and ease which he had once thought the acme of any reasonable man's aspirations. But at the half-yielding moment a word of Corona Baldwin's flashed into his brain and turned the scale: "It _did_ happen in your case ... giving you a chance to grow and expand, and to break with all the old traditions ... and the break left you free to make of yourself what you should choose." It was the reincarnated Smith who met the look in the beautiful eyes and made answer.

"No," was the sober decision; and then he gave his reasons. "If I could do what you propose, I shouldn't be worth the powder it would take to drive a bullet through me, Verda, for now, you see, I know what love means. You say I have changed, and I _have_ changed: I can imagine the past-and-gone J. Montague jumping at the chance you are offering. But the mill will never grind with the water that is past: I'll take what is coming to me, and try to take it like a man. Good-night--and good-by." And he turned his back upon the temptation and went away.

Fifteen minutes later he was in his office in the Kinzie Building, trying in vain to get Colonel Baldwin on the distance wire; trying also--and also in vain--to forget the recent clash and break with Verda Richlander. He had called it a temptation at the moment, but perhaps it was scarcely that. It was more like a final effort of the man who had been to retransform the man who was. For a single instant the doors of all his former ambitions had stood open. He saw how Josiah Richlander's money and influence, directed by Verda's compelling demands, could be used to break Dunham; and that done, all the rest would be easy, all the paths to the success he had once craved would be made smooth.

On the other hand, there was everything to lose, and nothing, as the world measures results, to be gained. In a few hours at the furthest the good name he had earned in Brewster would be hopelessly lost, and, so far as human foresight could prefigure, there was nothing ahead but loss and bitter disgrace. In spite of all this, while the long-distance "central" was still assuring him that the Hillcrest wire was busy, he found time to be fiercely glad that the choice had been only a choice offered and not a choice accepted. For love's sake, if for no higher motive, he would go down like a man, fighting to the end for the right to live and think and love as a man.

He was jiggling the switch of the desk 'phone for the twentieth time in the effort to secure the desired line of communication with Baldwin when a nervous step echoed in the corridor and the door opened to admit William Starbuck. There was red wrath in the mine owner's ordinarily cold eyes when he flung himself into a chair and eased the nausea of his soul in an outburst of picturesque profanity.

"The jig's up--definitely up, John," he was saying, when his speech became lucid enough to be understood. "We know now what Stanton's 'other string' was. A half-hour ago, a deputy United States marshal, with a posse big enough to capture a town, took possession of the dam and stopped the work. He says it's a court order from Judge Lorching at Red Butte, based on the claims of that infernal paper railroad!"

Smith pushed the telephone aside.

"But it's too late!" he protested. "The dam is completed; Williams 'phoned me before I went to dinner. All that remains to be done to save the charter is to shut the spillways and let the water back up so that it will flow into the main ditch!"

"Right there's where they've got us!" was the rasping reply. "They won't let Williams touch the spillway gates, and they're not going to let him touch them until after we have lost out on the time limit! Williams's man says they've put the seal of the court on the machinery and have posted armed guards everywhere. Wouldn't that make you run around in circles and yelp like a scalded dog?"

XXX

A Strong Man Armed

When the full meaning of Stanton's _coup_ had thus set itself forth in terms unmistakable, Smith put his elbows on the desk and propped his head in his hands. It was not the attitude of dejection; it was rather a trance-like rigor of concentration, with each and all of the newly emergent powers once more springing alive to answer the battle-call. At the desk-end Starbuck sat with his hands locked over one knee, too disheartened to roll a cigarette, normal solace for all woundings less than mortal. After a minute or two Smith jerked himself around to face the news-bringer.

"Does Colonel Baldwin know?" he asked.

"Sure! That's the worst of it. Didn't I tell you? After he got back from Stuart's funeral he drove out to the dam, reaching the works just ahead of the trouble. When M'Graw and the posse outfit showed up, the colonel got it into his head that the whole thing was merely another trick of Stanton's--a fake. Ginty, the quarry boss, brought the news to town. He says there was a bloody mix-up, and at the end of it the colonel and Williams were both under arrest for resisting the officers."

Smith nodded thoughtfully. "Of course; that was just what was needed. With the president and the chief of construction locked up, and the wheels blocked for the next twenty-four hours, our charter will be gone."

"This world and another, and then the fireworks," Starbuck threw in. "With the property all roped up in a law tangle, and those stock options of yours due to fall in, it looks as if a few prominent citizens of the Timanyoni would have to take to the high grass and the tall timber. It sure does, John."

"The colonel was not entirely without his warrant for putting up a fight," Smith went on, after another reflective minute. "Do you know, Billy, I have been expecting something of this kind--and expecting it to be a fake. That's why I sent Stillings to Red Butte; to keep watch of Judge Lorching's court. Stillings was to 'phone me if Lorching issued an order."

"And he hasn't phoned you?"

"No; but that doesn't prove anything. The order may have been issued, and Stillings may have tried to let us know. There are a good many ways in which a man's mouth may be stopped--when there are no scruples on the other side."

"Then you think there is no doubt that the court order is straight, and that this man M'Graw is really a deputy marshal and has the law for what he is doing?"

"In the absence of any proof to the contrary, we are obliged to believe it--or at least to accept it. But we're not dead yet.... Billy, it's running in my mind that we've got to go out there and clean up Mr. M'Graw and his crowd."

Starbuck threw up his hands and made a noise like a dry wagon-wheel.

"Holy smoke!--go up against the whole United States?" he gasped.

Smith's grin showed his strong, even teeth.

"Starbuck, you remember what I told you one night?--the night I dragged you up to my rooms in the hotel and gave you a hint of the reason why I had no business to make love to Corona Baldwin?"

"Yep."

"Well, the time has come when I may as well fill out the blanks in the story for you. The night I left my home city in the Middle West I was called down to the bank of which I was the cashier and was shown how I was going to be dropped into a hole for a hundred thousand dollars of the bank's money; a loan which I had made as cashier in the absence of the president, but which had been authorized, verbally, by the president before he went away."

"A scapegoat, eh? There have been others. Go on."

"It was a frame-up, all around. The loan had been made to a friend of mine for the express purpose of smashing him--that was the president's object in letting it go through. Unluckily, I held a few shares of stock in my friend's company: and there you have it. Unless the president would admit that he had authorized the loan, I was in for an offense that could be easily twisted into embezzlement."

"The president stacked the cards on you?"

"He did. It was nine o'clock at night and we were alone together in the bank. He wanted me to shoulder the blame and run away; offered me money to go with. One word brought on another; and finally, when I dared him to press the police-alarm button, he pulled a gun on me. I hit him, just once, Billy, and he dropped like a stone."

"Great Moses!--dead?"

"I thought he was. His heart had stopped, and I couldn't get him up. Picture it, if you can--but you can't. I had never struck a man in anger before in all my life. My first thought was to go straight to the police station and make a clean breast of it. Then I saw how impossible it was going to be to dodge the penitentiary, and I bolted; jumped a freight-train and hoboed my way out of town. Two days later I got hold of a newspaper and found that I hadn't killed Dunham; but I was outlawed, just the same, and there was a reward offered."

Starbuck was nodding soberly. "You sure have been carrying a back-load all these weeks, John, never knowing what minute was going to be the next. Now I know what you meant when you hinted around about this Miss Rich-pastures. She knows you and she could give you away if she wanted to. Has she done it, John?"

"No; but her father has. Kinzie sent one of his clerks out to the Topaz to hunt up the old man. Kinzie hasn't done anything, himself, I guess; Miss Richlander told me that much; but Stanton has got hold of the end of the thread, and, while I don't know it definitely, it is practically certain he has sent a wire. If the Brewster police are not looking for me at this moment, they will be shortly. That brings us back to this High Line knock-out. As the matter stands, I'm the one man in our outfit who has absolutely nothing to lose. I am an officer of the company, and no legal notice has been served upon me. Can you fill out the remainder of the order?"

"No, I'll be switched if I can!"

"Then I'll fill it for you. So far as I know--legally, you understand--this raid has never been authorized by the courts; at least, that is what I'm going to assume until the proper papers have been served on me. Therefore I am free to strike one final blow for the colonel and his friends, and I'm going to do it, if I can dodge the police long enough to get action."

Starbuck's tilting chair righted itself with a crash.

"You've thought it all out?--just how to go at it?"

"Every move; and every one of them a straight bid for a second penitentiary sentence."

"All right," said the mine owner briefly. "Count me in."

"For information only," was the brusque reply. "You have a stake in the country and a good name to maintain. I have nothing. But you can tell me a few things. Are our workmen still on the ground?"

"Yes. Ginty said there were only a few stragglers who came to town with him. Most of the two shifts are staying on to get their pay--or until they find out that they aren't going to get it."

"And the colonel and Williams: the marshal is holding them out at the dam?"

"Uh-huh; locked up in the office shack, Ginty says."

"Good. I shan't need the colonel, but I shall need Williams. Now another question: you know Sheriff Harding fairly well, don't you? What sort of a man is he?"

"Square as a die, and as nervy as they make 'em. When he gets a warrant to serve, he'll bring in his man, dead or alive."

"That's all I'll ask of him. Now go and find me an auto, and then you can fade away and get ready to prove a good, stout _alibi_."

"Yes--like fits I will!" retorted the mine owner. "I told you once, John, that I was in this thing to a finish, and I meant it. Go on giving your orders."

"Very well; you've had your warning. The next thing is the auto. I want to catch Judge Warner before he goes to bed. I'll telephone while you're getting a car."

Starbuck had no farther to go than to the garage where he had put up his new car, and when he got it and drove to the Kinzie Building, Smith came out of the shadow of the entrance to mount beside him.

"Drive around to the garage again and let me try another 'phone," was the low-spoken request. "My wire isn't working."

The short run was quickly made, and Smith went to the garage office. A moment later a two-hundred-pound policeman strolled up to put a huge foot on the running-board of the waiting auto. Starbuck greeted him as a friend.

"Hello, Mac. How's tricks with you to-night?"

"Th' tricks are even, an' I'm tryin' to take th' odd wan," said the big Irishman. "'Tis a man named Smith I'm lookin' for, Misther Starbuck--J. Mon-tay-gue Smith; th' fi-nanshal boss av th' big ditch comp'ny. Have ye seen 'um?"

Starbuck, looking over the policeman's shoulder, could see Smith at the telephone in the garage office. Another man might have lost his head, but the ex-cow-puncher was of the chosen few whose wits sharpen handily in an emergency.

"He hangs out at the Hophra House a good part of the time in the evenings," he replied coolly. "Hop in and I'll drive you around."

Three minutes later the threatening danger was a danger pushed a little way into the future, and Starbuck was back at the garage curb waiting for Smith to come out. Through the window he saw Smith replacing the receiver on its hook, and a moment afterward he was opening the car door for his passenger.

"Did you make out to raise the judge?" he inquired, as Smith climbed in.

"Yes. He will meet me at his chambers in the court-house as soon as he can drive down from his house."

"What are you hoping to do, John? Judge Warner is only a circuit judge; he can't set an order of the United States court aside, can he?"

"No; but there is one thing that he can do. You may remember that I had a talk with him this morning at his house. I was trying then to cover all the chances, among them the possibility that Stanton would jump in with a gang of armed thugs at the last minute. We are going to assume that this is what has been done."

Starbuck set the car in motion and sent it spinning out of the side street, around the plaza, and beyond to the less brilliantly illuminated residence district--which was not the shortest way to the court-house.

"You mustn't pull Judge Warner's leg, John," he protested, breaking the purring silence after the business quarter had been left behind; "he's too good a man for that."

"I shall tell him the exact truth, so far as we know it," was the quick reply. "There is one chance in a thousand that we shall come out of this with the law--as well as the equities--on our side. I shall tell the judge that no papers have been served on us, and, so far as I know, they haven't. What are you driving all the way around here for?"

"This is one of the times when the longest way round is the shortest way home," Starbuck explained. "The bad news you were looking for 'has came'. While you were 'phoning in the garage I put one policeman wise--to nothing."

"He was looking for me?"

"Sure thing--and by name. We'll fool around here in the back streets until the judge has had time to show up. Then I'll drop you at the court-house and go hustle the sheriff for you. You'll want Harding, I take it?"

"Yes. I'm taking the chance that only the city authorities have been notified in my personal affair--not the county officers. It's a long chance, of course; I may be running my neck squarely into the noose. But it's all risk, Billy; every move in this night's game. Head up for the court-house. The judge will be there by this time."

Two minutes beyond this the car was drawing up to the curb on the mesa-facing side of the court-house square. There were two lighted windows in the second story of the otherwise darkened building, and Smith sprang to the sidewalk.

"Go now and find Harding, and have him bring one trusty deputy with him: I'll be ready by the time you get back," he directed; but Starbuck waited until he had seen Smith safely lost in the shadows of the pillared court-house entrance before he drove away.

XXXI

A Race to the Swift

Since Sheriff Harding had left his office in the county jail and had gone home to his ranch on the north side of the river some hours earlier, not a little precious time was consumed in hunting him up. Beyond this, there was another delay in securing the deputy. When Starbuck's car came to a stand for a second time before the mesa-fronting entrance of the court-house, Smith came quickly across the walk from the portal.

"Mr. Harding," he began abruptly, "Judge Warner has gone home and he has made me his messenger. There is a bit of sharp work to be done, and you'll need a strong posse. Can you deputize fifteen or twenty good men who can be depended upon in a fight and rendezvous them on the north-side river road in two hours from now?"

The sheriff, a big, bearded man who might have sat for the model of one of Frederic Remington's frontiersmen, took time to consider. "Is it a scrap?" he asked.

"It is likely to be. There are warrants to be served, and there will most probably be resistance. Your posse should be well armed."

"We'll try for it," was the decision. "On the north-side river road, you say? You'll want us mounted?"

"It will be better to take horses. We could get autos, but Judge Warner agrees with me that the thing had better be done quietly and without making too much of a stir in town."

"All right," said the man of the law. "Is that all?"

"No, not quite all. The first of the warrants is to be served here in Brewster--upon Mr. Crawford Stanton. Your deputy will probably find him at the Hophra House. Here is the paper: it is a bench warrant of commitment on a charge of conspiracy, and Stanton is to be locked up. Also you are to see to it that your jail telephone is out of order; so that Stanton won't be able to make any attempt to get a hearing and bail before to-morrow."

"That part of it is mighty risky," said Harding. "Does the judge know about that, too?"

"He does; and for the ends of pure justice, he concurs with me--though, of course, he couldn't give a mandatory order."

The sheriff turned to his jail deputy, who had descended from the rumble seat in the rear.

"You've heard the dope, Jimmie," he said shortly. "Go and get His Nobs and lock him up. And if he wants to be yelling 'Help!' and sending for his lawyer or somebody, why, the telephone's takin' a lay-off. _Savvy?_"

The deputy nodded and turned upon his heel, stuffing the warrant for Stanton's arrest into his pocket as he went. Smith swung up beside Starbuck, saying: "In a couple of hours, then, Mr. Harding; somewhere near the bridge approach on the other side of the river."

Starbuck had started the motor and was bending forward to adjust the oil feed when the sheriff left them.

"You seem to have made a ten-strike with Judge Warner," the ex-cow-puncher remarked, replacing the flash-lamp in its seat pocket.