Jean of the Lazy A by B. M. Bower (read e book TXT) 📕

he certainly gave no sign of it. He sat down on the railing, pushed back his hat, and looked as though he was preparing for a real soul-feast of reminiscent gossip. "Just get in?" he asked, by way of opening wider the channel of talk. He lighted a cigarette and flipped the match down into the street. "I've been here three or four months. I'm part of the Mexican revolution, though I don't reckon I look it. We been keeping things pretty well stirred up, down this way. You looking for picture dope? Lubin folks are copping all kinds of good stuff here. You ain't with them, are you?"

Jean braced herself against slipping into easy conversation with this man who seemed so friendly and unsuspicious and so conscience-free. Killing a man, she thought, evidently did not seem to him a matter of any moment; perhaps because he had since then become a professional killer of men. After planning exactly how she should meet any contingency that might arise, she found herself baffled. She had not expected to meet this attitude. She was not prepared to meet it. She had taken it for granted that Art Osgood would shun a meeting; that she would have to force him to face her. And here he was, sitting on the porch rail and swinging one spurred and booted foot, smiling at her and talking, in high spirits over the meeting—or a genius at acting. She eyed him uncertainly, trying to adjust herself to this emergency.

Art came to a pause and looked at her inquiringly. "What's the matter?" he demanded. "You called me up here—and I sure was tickled to death to come, all right!—and now you stand there looking like I was a kid that had been caught whispering, and must be kept after school. I know the symptoms, believe me! You're sore about something I've said. What, don't you like to have anybody talk about you being a movie-queen? You sure are all of that. You've got a license to be proud of yourself. Or maybe you didn't know you was speaking to a Mexican soldier, or something like that." He made a move to rise. "Ex-cuse ME, if I've said something I hadn't ought. I'll beat it, while the beating's good."

"No, you won't. You'll stay right where you are." His frank acceptance of her hostile attitude steadied Jean. "Do you think I came all the way down here just to say hello?"

"Search me." Art studied her curiously. "I never could keep track of what you thought and what you meant, and I guess you haven't grown any easier to read since I saw you last. I'll be darned if I know what you came for; but it's a cinch you didn't come just to be riding on the cars."

"No," drawled Jean, watching him. "I didn't. I came after you."

Art Osgood stared, while his cheeks darkened with the flush of confusion. He laughed a little. "I sure wish that was the truth," he said. "Jean, you never would have to go very far after any man with two eyes in his head. Don't rub it in."

"I did," said Jean calmly. "I came after you. I'd have found you if I had to hunt all through Mexico and fight both armies for you."

"Jean!" There was a queer, pleading note in Art's voice. "I wish I could believe that, but I can't. I ain't a fool."

"Yes, you are." Jean contradicted him pitilessly. "You were a fool when you thought you could go away and no one think you knew anything at all about—Johnny Croft."

Art's fingers had been picking at a loose splinter on the wooden rail whereon he sat. He looked down at it, jerked it loose with a sharp twist, and began snapping off little bits with his thumb and forefinger. In a minute he looked up at Jean, and his eyes were different. They were not hostile; they were merely cold and watchful and questioning.

"Well?"

"Well, somebody did think so. I've thought so for three years, and so I'm here." Jean found that her breath was coming fast, and that as she leaned back against a post and gripped the rail on either side, her arms were quivering like the legs of a frightened horse. Still, her voice had sounded calm enough.

Art Osgood sat with his shoulders drooped forward a little, and painstakingly snipped off tiny bits of the splinter. After a short silence, he turned his head and looked at her again.

"I shouldn't think you'd want to stir up that trouble after all this while," he said. "But women are queer. I can't see, myself, why you'd want to bother hunting me up on account of—that."

Jean weighed his words, his look, his manner, and got no clue at all to what was going on back of his eyes. On the surface, he was just a tanned, fairly good-looking young man who has been reluctantly drawn into an unpleasant subject.

"Well, I did consider it worth while bothering to hunt you up," she told him flatly. "If you don't think it's important, you at least won't object to going back with me?"

Again his glance went to her face, plainly startled. "Go back with you?" he repeated. "What for?"

"Well—" Jean still had some trouble with her breath and to keep her quiet, smooth drawl, "let's make it a woman's reason. Because."

Art's face settled to a certain hardness that still was not hostile. "Becauses don't go," he said. "Not with a girl like you; they might with some. What do you want me to go back for?"

"Well, I want you to go because I want to clear things up, about Johnny Croft. It's time—it was cleared up."

Art regarded her fixedly. "Well, I don't see yet what's back of that first BECAUSE," he sparred. "There's nothing I can do to clear up anything."

"Art, don't lie to me about it. I know—"

"What do you know?" Art's eyes never left her face, now. They seemed to be boring into her brain. Jean began to feel a certain confusion. To be sure, she had never had any experience whatever with fugitive murderers; but no one would ever expect one to act like this. A little more, she thought resentfully, and he would be making her feel as if she were the guilty person. She straightened herself and stared back at him.

"I know you left because you—you didn't want to stay and face-things. I—I have felt as if I could kill you, almost, for what you have done. I—I don't see how you can SIT there and—and look at me that way." She stopped and braced herself. "I don't want to argue about it. I came here to make you go back and face things. It's—horrible—" She was thinking of her father then, and she could not go on.

"Jean, you're all wrong. I don't know what idea you've got, but you may as well get one or two things straight. Maybe you do feel like killing me; but I don't know what for. I haven't the slightest notion of going back; there's nothing I could clear up, if I did go."

Jean looked at him dumbly. She supposed she should have to force him to go, after all. Of course, you couldn't expect that a man who had committed a crime will admit it to the first questioner; you couldn't expect him to go back willingly and face the penalty. She would have to use her gun; perhaps even call on Lite, since Lite had followed her. She might have felt easier in her mind had she seen how Lite was standing just within the glass-paneled door behind the dimity curtain, listening to every word, and watching every expression on Art Osgood's face. Lite's hand, also, was close to his gun, to be perfectly sure of Jean's safety. But he had no intention of spoiling her feeling of independence if he could help it. He had lots of faith in Jean.

"What has cropped up, anyway?" Art asked her curiously, as if he had been puzzling over her reasons for being there. "I thought that affair was settled long ago, when it happened. I thought it was all straight sailing—"

"To send an innocent man to prison for it? Do you call that straight sailing?" Jean's eyes had in them now a flash of anger that steadied her.

"What innocent man?" Art threw away the stub of the splinter and sat up straight. "I never knew any innocent man—"

"Oh! You didn't know?"

"All I know," said Art, with a certain swiftness of speech that was a new element in his manner, "I'm dead willing to tell you. I knew Johnny had been around knocking the outfit, and making some threats, and saying things he had no business to say. I never did have any use for him, just because he was so mouthy. I wasn't surprised to hear—how it ended up."

"To hear! You weren't there, when it happened?" Jean was watching him for some betraying emotion, some sign that she had struck home. She got a quick, sharp glance from him, as if he were trying to guess just how much she knew.

"Why should I have been there? The last time I was ever at the Lazy A," he stated distinctly, "was the day before I left. I didn't go any farther than the gate then. I had a letter for your father, and I met him at the gate and gave it to him."

"A letter for dad?" It was not much, but it was better than nothing. Jean thought she might lead him on to something more.

"Yes! A note, or a letter. Carl sent me over with it."

"Carl? What was it about? I never heard—"

"I never read it. Ask your dad what it was about, why don't you? I don't reckon it was anything particular."

"Maybe it was, though." Jean was turning crafty. She would pretend to be interested in the letter, and trip Art somehow when he was off his guard. "Are you sure that it was the day before—you left?"

"Yes." Some high talk in the street caught his attention, and Art turned and looked down. Jean caught at the chance to study his averted face, but she could not read innocence or guilt there. Art, she decided, was not as transparent as she had always believed him to be. He turned back and met her look. "I know it was the day before. Why?"

"Oh, I wondered. Dad didn't say— What did he do with it—the letter?"

"He opened it and read it." A smile of amused understanding of her finesse curled Art's lips. "And he stuck it in the pocket of his chaps and went on to wherever he was going." His eyes challenged her impishly.

"And it was from Uncle Carl, you say?"

Art hesitated, and the smile left his lips. "It—it was from Carl, yes. Why?"

"Oh, I just wondered." Jean was wondering why he had stopped smiling, all at once, and why he hesitated. Was he afraid he was going to contradict himself about the day or the errand? Or was he afraid she would ask her Uncle Carl, and find that there was no letter?

"Why don't you ask your dad, if you are so anxious to know all about it?" Art demanded abruptly. "Anyway, that's the last time I was ever over there."

"Ask dad!" Jean's anger flamed out suddenly. "Art Osgood, when I think of dad, I wonder why I don't shoot you! I wonder how you dare sit there and look me in the face. Ask dad! Dad, who is paying with his life and all that's worth while in life, for that murder that you deny—"

"What's that? Paying how?" Art leaned toward her; and now his face was hard and hostile, and so were his eyes.

"Paying! You know how he is paying! Paying in Deer Lodge penitentiary—"

"Who? YOUR FATHER?" Had Art been ready to spring at her and catch her by the throat, he would not have looked much different.

"My father!" Jean's voice broke upon the word. "And you—" She did not attempt to