The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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In her heart she was troubled. How much did he know? What could he discover from the evidence she had left? He had the reputation of being the best trailer and the most fearless officer in Arizona. But surely she had covered her tracks safely.
From Jos the ranger turned to Alan. "We'll hear your account of it now, seh," he said gently.
While Alan talked, Jack's gaze drifted through the window to the flock of sheep that were being driven up from the ditch by Lee and Norris. That little pastoral scene had its significance for him. He had arrived at the locality of the hold-up a few minutes after they had left, and his keen intelligence had taken in some of the points they had observed. A rapid circuit of the spot at the distance of thirty yards had shown him no tracks leading from the place except those which ran up the lateral on either side of it. It was possible that these belonged to the horses of the robbers, but if so the fellows were singularly careless of detection. Moreover, the booty must be accounted for. They had not carried it with them, since no empty box remained to show that they had poured the gold into sacks, and it would have been impossible to take the box as it was on a horse. Nor had they buried it, unless at the bottom of the irrigating ditch, for some signs of their work must have remained.
Balancing probabilities, it had seemed to Flatray that these might be the tracks of ranchmen who had arrived after the hold-up and were following the escaping bandits up the lateral. For unless these were the robber's, there was no way of escape except either up or down the bottom of the ditch. His search had eliminated the possibility of any other but the road, and this was travelled too frequently to admit of even a chance of escape by it without detection. Jack filed away one or two questions in his brain for future reference. The most important of these was to discover whether there had been any water in the ditch at the time of the hold-up.
He had decided to follow the tracks leading up the ditch and found no difficulty in doing so at a fast walk. Without any hesitation they paralleled the edge of the lateral. Nor had the deputy travelled a quarter of a mile before he made a discovery. The rider on the right hand side of the stream had been chewing tobacco, and he had a habit of splashing his mark on boulders he passed in the form of tobacco juice. Half a dozen times before he reached the Lee ranch the ranger saw this signature of identity writ large on smooth rocks shining in the sun. The last place he saw it was at the point where the two riders deflected from the lateral toward the ranch house, following tracks which led up from the bottom of the ditch.
An instant later Flatray had dodged back into the chaparral, for somebody was driving a flock of sheep down to the ditch. He made out that there were two riders behind them, and that they had no dog. For the present his curiosity was satisfied. He thought he knew why they were watering sheep in this odd fashion. Swiftly he had made a circuit, drawn rein in front of the store, and dropped in just in time to hear his name. Now, as with one ear he listened to Alan's account of the hold-up, with his subconscious mind he was with the sheep-herders who were driving the flock back into the pasture.
"Looks like our friend the bad man was onto his job all right," was the deputy's only comment when Alan had finished.
"I'll bet he's making his getaway into the hills mighty immediate," chuckled Baker. "He can't find a bank in the mountainside to deposit that gold any too soon to suit him."
"Sho! I'll bet he ain't worried a mite. He's got his arrangements all made, and likely they'll dovetail to suit him. He's put his brand on that gold to stay," answered Farnum confidently.
Jack's mild blue eyes rested on him amiably. "Think so, Bob?"
"I ain't knockin' you any, Jack. You're all right. But that's how I figure it out, and, by Gad! I'm hopin' it too," Farnum made answer recklessly.
Flatray laughed and strolled from the crowded room to the big piazza. A man had just cantered up and flung himself from his saddle. The ranger, looking at him, thought he had never seen another so strikingly handsome an Apollo. Black eyes looked into his from a sun-tanned face perfectly modelled. The pose of the head and figure would have delighted a sculptor.
There was a vigor, an unspoken hostility, in the gaze of both men.
"Mo'nin", Mr. Deputy Sheriff, one said; and the other, "Same to you, Mr. Norris."
"You're on the job quick," sneered the cattle detective.
"The quicker the sooner, I expect."
"And by night you'll have Mr. Hold-up roped and hog-tied?"
"Not so you could notice it. Are you a sheep-herder these days, Mr. Norris?"
The gentle irony of this was not lost on its object, for in the West a herder of sheep is the next remove from a dumb animal.
"No, I'm riding for the Quarter Circle K Bar outfit. This is the first time I ever took the dust of a sheep in my life. I did it to oblige Mr. Lee."
"Oh! To oblige Mr. Lee?"
"He wanted to water them, and his herder wasn't here."
"Must 'a' been wanting water mighty bad, I reckon," commented Jack amiably.
"You bet! Lee feels better satisfied now he's watered them."
"I don't doubt it."
Norris changed the subject. "You must have burnt the wind getting here. I didn't expect to see you for some hours."
"I happened to be down at Yeager's ranch, and one of the boys got me on the line from Mesa."
"Picked up any clues yet?" asked the other carelessly, yet always with that hint of a sneer; and innocently Flatray answered, "They seem to be right seldom."
"Didn't know but you'd happened on the fellow's trail."
"I guess I'm as much at sea as you are," was the equivocal answer.
Lee came over from the stable, still wearing spurs and gauntlets.
"Howdy, Jack!" he nodded, not quite so much at his ease as usual. "Got hyer on the jump, didn't you?"
"I kept movin'."
"This shorely beats hell, don't it?" Lee glanced around, selected a smooth boulder, and fired his discharge of tobacco juice at it true to the inch. "Reminds me of the old days. You boys ain't old enough to recall them, but stage hold-ups were right numerous then."
Blandly the deputy looked from one to the other. "I don't suppose either of you gentlemen happen to have been down and looked over the ground where the hold-up was? The tracks were right cut up before I got there."
This center shot silenced Lee for an instant, but Norris was on the spot with smiling ease.
"No, Mr. Lee and I have been hunting strays on the mesa. We didn't hear about it till a few minutes ago. We're at your service, though, Mr. Sheriff, to join any posses you want to send out."
"Much obliged. I'm going to send one out toward the Galiuros in a few minutes now. I'll be right glad to have you take charge of it, Mr. Norris."
The derisive humor in the newly appointed deputy's eyes did not quite reach the surface.
"Sure. Whenever you want me."
"I'm going to send Alan McKinstra along to guide you. He knows that country like a book. You want to head for the lower pass, swing up Diable Caon, and work up in the headquarters of the Three Forks."
Within a quarter of an hour the posse was in motion. Flatray watched it disappear in the dust of the road without a smile. He had sent them out merely to distract the attention of the public and to get rid of as many as possible of the crowd. For he was quite as well aware as the leader of the posse that this search in the Galiuros was a wild-goose chase. Somewhere within three hundred yards of the place he stood both the robber and his booty were in all probability to be found.
Flatray was quite right in his surmise, since Melissy Lee, who had come out to see the posse off, was standing at the end of the porch with her dusky eyes fastened on him, the while he stood beside the house with one foot resting negligently on the oilcloth cover of the wash-stand.
She had cast him out of her friendship because