Hidden Gold by Wilder Anthony (golden son ebook .TXT) π
"You may, but you don't act like it," was Wade's parting remark, as he turned his horse and rode off.
"Go to hell!" the Swede shouted after him.
Heading toward Crawling Water, the ranch owner rode rapidly over the sun-baked ground, too full of rage to take notice of anything except his own helplessness. The sting of Jensen's impudence lay in Wade's realization that to enlist the aid of the sheriff against the sheep man would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible. There was very little law in that region, and what little there was seemed, somehow, to have been taken under the direction of Race Moran.
It was now broad day and the prairie warmed to the blazing sun. Long, rolling stretches of grass, topped with rocks and alkaline sand, gave back a blinding glare like the reflection of a summer sea, from which arose a haze of gray dust like ocean mists over distant reaches. Far
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"Well, good luck to you, Gordon." Trowbridge slapped his friend on the shoulder, and they separated.
"Frank, can you let me have a bed?" Wade asked of the hotel proprietor, a freckled Irishman.
"Sure; as many as you want."
"One will do, Frank; and another thing," the ranchman said guardedly. "I'll need an extra horse to-night, and I don't want to be seen with him until I need him. Can you have him tied behind the school-house a little before nine o'clock?"
"You bet I can!" The Irishman slowly dropped an eyelid, for the school-house was close by the jail.
Wade tumbled into the bed provided for him and slept like a log, having that happy faculty of the healthy man, of being able to sleep when his body needed it, no matter what impended against the hour of awakening.
When he did wake up, the afternoon was well advanced, and after another hearty meal he walked over to the Purnells' to pass the time until it was late enough for him to get to work.
"Now, Gordon will tell you I'm right," Mrs. Purnell proclaimed triumphantly, when the young man entered the cottage. "I want Dorothy to go with me to call on Miss Rexhill, and she doesn't want to go. The idea! When Miss Rexhill was nice enough to call on us first."
Mrs. Purnell set much store upon her manners, as the little Michigan town where she was born understood good breeding, and she had not been at all annoyed by Helen Rexhill's patronage, which had so displeased Wade. To her mind the Rexhills were very great people, and great people were to be expected to bear themselves in lofty fashion. Dorothy had inherited her democracy from her father and not from her mother, who, indeed, would have been disappointed if Helen Rexhill appeared any less than the exalted personage she imagined herself to be.
"Oh, I'd like to meet her well enough, only...." Dorothy stopped, unwilling to say before Wade that she did not consider the Rexhills sufficiently good friends of his, in the light of recent developments, for them to be friends of hers.
"Of course, go," he broke in heartily. "She's not responsible for what her father does in the way of business, and I reckon she'd think it funny if you didn't call."
"There now!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed triumphantly.
"All right, I'll go." In her heart Dorothy was curious to meet the other woman and gauge her powers of attraction. "We'll go to-morrow, mother."
Quite satisfied, Mrs. Purnell made some excuse to leave them together, as she usually did, for her mother heart had traveled farther along the Road to To-morrow than her daughter's fancy. She secretly hoped that the young cattleman would some day declare his love for Dorothy and ask for her hand in marriage.
In reply to the girl's anxious questions Wade told her of what had happened since their meeting on the trail, as they sat together on the porch of the little cottage. She was wearing a plain dress of green gingham, which, somehow, suggested to him the freshness of lettuce. She laughed a little when he told her of that and called him foolish, though the smile that showed a dimple in her chin belied her words.
"Then the posse is still at the ranch?" she asked.
"I think so. If they are, we are going to run them off to-morrow morning, or perhaps to-night. I've had enough of this nonsense and I mean to meet Moran halfway from now on."
"Yes, I suppose you must," she admitted reluctantly. "But do be careful, Gordon."
"As careful as I can be under the circumstances," he said cheerfully, and told her that his chief purpose in coming to see her was to thank her again for the service she had rendered him.
"Oh, you don't need to thank me for that. Do you know"βshe puckered up her brows in a reflective wayβ"I've been thinking. It seems very strange to me that Senator Rexhill and Moran should be willing to go to such lengths merely to get hold of this land as a speculation. Doesn't it seem so to you?"
"Yes, it does, but that must be their reason."
"I'm not so sure of that, Gordon. There must be something more behind all this. That's what I have been thinking about. You remember that when Moran first came here he had an office just across the street from his present one?"
"Yes. Simon Barsdale had Moran's present office until he moved to Sheridan. You were his stenographer for a while, I remember." Wade looked at her curiously, wondering what she was driving at.
"Moran bought Mr. Barsdale's safe." Her voice sounded strange and unnatural. "I know the old combination. I wonder if it has been changed?"
"Lem Trowbridge was saying only this morning," said Wade thoughtfully, for he was beginning to catch her meaning, "that if we could only get proof of something crooked we might...."
"Well, I think we can," Dorothy interrupted.
They looked searchingly at each other in the gathering dusk, and he tried to read the light in her eyes, and being strangely affected himself by their close proximity, he misinterpreted it. He slipped his hand over hers and once more the desire to kiss her seized him. He let go of her hand and was just putting his arm around her shoulders when, to his surprise, she appeared suddenly indignant.
"Don't!"
He was abashed, and for a moment neither said a word.
"What is the combination?" he finally asked hoarsely.
"I promised Mr. Barsdale never to tell any one." Her lips wreathed into a little smile. "I'll do it myself."
"No, you won't." Wade shook his head positively. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you steal for me? It will be bad enough to do it myself; but necessity knows no law. Well, we'll let it go for the present then. Don't you think of doing it, Dorothy. Will you promise me?"
"I never promise," she said, smiling again, and ignoring her last words in womanly fashion, "but if you don't want me to...."
"Well, I don't," he declared firmly. "Let it rest at that. We'll probably find some other way anyhow."
She asked him then about Santry, but he evaded a direct answer beyond expressing the conviction that everything would end all right. They talked for a while of commonplaces, although nothing that he said seemed commonplace to her and nothing that she said seemed so to him. When it was fully dark he arose to go. Then she seemed a little sorry that she had not let him put his arm around her, and she leaned toward him as she had done on the trail; but he was not well versed in woman's subtleties, and he failed to guess her thoughts and walked away, leaving her, as Shakespeare put it, to
Having mounted his horse at the livery stable, he first made sure that the extra horse was behind the school-house, where he tied his own, and then walked around to the jail. On the outside, this building was a substantial log structure; within, it was divided into the Sheriff's office and sleeping room, the "bull pen," and a single narrow cell, in which Wade guessed that Santry would be locked. After examining his revolver, he slipped it into the side pocket of his coat and walked boldly up to the jail. Then, whistling merrily, for Bat Lewis, the deputy, was a confirmed human song-bird, he knocked sharply on the door with his knuckles.
"It's meβBat," he called out, mimicking Lewis' voice, in answer to a question from within.
"You're early to-night. What's struck you?" Sheriff Thomas opened the door, and turning, left it so, for the "relief" to enter. He had half feared that an attempt might be made to liberate Santry, but had never dreamed that any one would try the thing alone. He was glad to be relieved, for a poker game at which he wanted to sit in would soon start at the Gulch Saloon.
He was the most surprised man in Wyoming, when he felt the cold muzzle of Wade's Colt boring into the nape of his neck and heard the ranchman's stern warning to keep quiet or take the consequences. Sheriff Thomas had earned his right to his "star" by more than one exhibition of nerve, but he was too familiar with gun ethics to argue with the business end of a "45."
"Not a sound!" Outwardly cold as ice, but inwardly afire, Wade shoved the weapon against his victim's neck and marched him to the middle of the room. "I've got the upper hand, Sheriff, and I intend to keep it."
"You're a damn fool, Wade." The Sheriff spoke without visible emotion and in a low tone. "You'll go up for this. Don't you realize that...."
"Can it!" snapped Wade, deftly disarming the officer with his free hand. "Never mind the majesty of the law and all that rot. I thought that all over before I came. Now that I've got you and drawn your teeth, you'll take orders from me. Get my foreman out of that cell and be quick about it!"
There was nothing to do but obey, which Thomas quietly did, although somewhat in fear of what Santry might do when at liberty. When the cell door was unlocked, the old plainsman, in a towering rage at the injustice of his incarceration, seemed inclined to choke his erstwhile jailer.
"None of that, Bill," Wade admonished curtly. "He's only been a tool in this business, although he ought to know better. We'll tie him up and gag him; that's all. Rip up one of those blankets."
"I knew you'd come, boy!" The foreman's joy was almost like that of a big dog at sight of his master. "By the great horned toad, I knew it!" With his sinewy hands he tore the blanket into strips as easily as though the wool had been paper. "Now for him, drat him!"
Wade stood guard while the helpless Sheriff was trussed up and his mouth stopped by Santry, and if the ranch owner felt any compunction at the sight, he had only to think of his own men as he had seen them the night before, lying on the floor of the ranch house.
"Make a good job of it, Bill," was his only comment.
"You bet!" Santry chuckled as he drew the last of the knots tight. "That'll hold him for a spell, I reckon. How you feel, Sheruff, purty comfortable?" The flowing end of the gag so hid the officer's features that he could express himself only with his eyes, which he batted furiously. "Course," Santry went on, in mock solicitude, "if I'd thought I mighta put a bit of sugar on that there gag, to remind you of your mammy like, but it ain't no great matter. You can put a double dose in your cawfee when you git loose."
"Come on, Bill!" Wade commanded.
"So long, Sheruff," Santry chuckled.
There was no time to waste in loitering, for at any moment Bat Lewis might arrive and give an alarm which would summon reΓ«nforcements from amongst Moran's following. Hurrying Santry ahead of him, Wade swung open the door and they looked out cautiously. No one was in sight, and a couple of minutes later the two men were mounted and on their way out of town.
"By the great horned toad!" Santry exulted, as they left the lights of Crawling Water behind them. "It sure feels good to be out of that there boardin'-house. It wasn't our fault, Gordon, and say, about this here shootin'...."
"I know all about that, Bill," Wade interposed. "The boys told me. They're waiting for us at the big pine. But your arrest, that's what I want to hear about."
"Well, it was this-a-way," the old man explained. "They sneaked up on the house
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