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

terrible thing had happened?

She remembered her uncle's uncontrolled fury that evening when she had ridden over to see Lite. What had she said to cause it? She tried to recall her words, and finally she did remember saying something about proving that her own money had been paying for her "keep" for three years. Then he had gone into that rage, and she had not at the time seen any connection between her words and his raving anger. But perhaps there was a connection. Perhaps—

"Oh, my goodness!" she exclaimed aloud. She was remembering the telegram which she had sent him just before she left Los Angeles for Nogales. "He'll just simply go WILD when he gets that wire!" She recalled now how he had insisted all along that Art Osgood knew absolutely nothing about the murder; she recalled also, with an uncanny sort of vividness, Art's manner when he had admitted for the second time that the letter had been from Carl. She remembered how he had changed when he found that her father was being punished for the crime.

She did not know, just yet, how all these tangled facts were going to work out. She had not yet come to the final question that she would presently be asking herself. She felt sure that her uncle knew more,—a great deal more,—about Johnny Croft's death than he had appeared to know; but she had not yet reached the point to which her reasonings inevitably would bring her; perhaps her mind was subconsciously delaying the ultimate conclusion.

She got up and dressed; unfastening her window, she stepped out on the veranda. The street was quiet at that time in the morning. A sentry stood on guard at the corner, and here and there a light flared in some window where others were wakeful. But for the most part the town lay asleep. Over in what was really the Mexican quarter, three or four roosters were crowing as if they would never leave off. The sound of them depressed Jean, and made her feel how heavy was the weight of her great undertaking,—heavier now, when the end was almost in sight, than it had seemed on that moonlight night when she had ridden over to the Lazy A and had not the faintest idea of how she was going to accomplish any part of her task which she had set herself. She shivered, and turned back to get the gay serape which she had bought from an old Mexican woman when they were coming out of that queer restaurant last evening.

When she came out again, Lite was standing there, smoking a cigarette and leaning against a post.

"You'd better get some sleep, Jean," he reproved her when she came and stood beside him. "You had a pretty hard day yesterday; and to-day won't be any easier. Better go back and lie down."

Jean merely pulled the serape snugger about her shoulders and sat down sidewise upon the railing. "I couldn't sleep," she said. "If I could, I wouldn't be out here; I'd be asleep, wouldn't I? Why don't you go to bed yourself?"

"Ah-h, Art's learned to talk Spanish," he said drily. "I got myself all worked up trying to make out what he was trying to say in his sleep, and then I found out it wasn't my kinda talk, anyway. So I quit. What's the matter that you can't sleep?"

Jean stared down at the shadowy street. A dog ran out from somewhere, sniffed at a doorstep, and trotted over into Mexico and up to the sentry. The sentry patted it on the head and muttered a friendly word or two. Jean watched him absently. It was all so peaceful! Not at all what one would expect, after seeing pictures of all those refugees and all those soldiers fighting, and the dead lying in the street in some little town whose name she could not pronounce correctly.

"Did you hear Art tell about taking a letter to dad the day before?" she asked abruptly. "He wasn't telling the truth, not all the time. But somehow I believe that was the truth. He said dad stuck it in the pocket of his chaps. I believe it's there yet, Lite. I don't remember ever looking into that pocket. And I believe—Lite, I never said anything about it, but somebody kept coming to the house in the night and hunting around through all the rooms. He never came into my room, so I—I didn't bother him; but I've wondered what he was after. It just occurred to me that maybe—"

"I never could figure out what he was after, either," Lite observed quietly.

"You?" Jean turned her head, so that her eyes shone in the light of a street lamp while she looked up at him. "How in the world did you know about him?"

Lite laughed drily. "I don't think there's much concerns you that I don't know," he confessed. "I saw him, I guess, every time he came around. He couldn't have made a crooked move,—and got away with it. But I never could figure him out exactly."

Jean looked at him, touched by the care of her that he had betrayed in those few words. Always she had accepted him as the one friend who never failed her, but lately,—since the advent of the motion-picture people, to be exact,—a new note had crept into his friendship; a new meaning into his watching over her. She had sensed it, but she had never faced it openly. She pulled her thoughts away from it now.

"Did you know who he was?"

It was like Jean to come straight to the point. Lite smiled faintly; he knew that question would come, and he knew that he would have to answer it.

"Sure. I made it my business to know who he was."

"Who was it, Lite?"

Lite did not say. He knew that question was coming also, but he did not know whether he ought to answer it.

"It was Uncle Carl, wasn't it?"

Lite glanced down at her quickly. "You're a good little guesser."

"Then it was that letter he was after." She was silent for a minute, and then she looked at her watch. "And I can't get at those chaps before to-morrow!" She sighed and leaned back against the post.

"Lite, if it was worth all that hunting for, it must mean something to us. I wonder what it can be; don't you know?"

"No," said Lite slowly, "I don't. And it's something a man don't want to do any guessing about."

This, Jean felt, was a gentle reproof for her own speculations upon the subject. She said no more about the letter.

"I sent him a telegram," she informed Lite irrelevantly, "saying I'd located Art and was going to take him back there. I wonder what he thought when he got that!"

Lite turned half around and stared down at her. He opened his lips to speak, hesitated, and closed them without making a sound. He turned away and stared down into the street that was so empty. After a little he glanced at his own watch, with the same impulse Jean had felt. The hours and minutes were beginning to drag their feet as they passed.

"You go in," he ordered gently, "and lie down. You'll be all worn out when the time comes for you to get busy. We don't know what's ahead of us on this trail, Jean. Right now, it's peaceful as Sunday morning down in Maine; so you go in and get some sleep, while you have a chance, and stop thinking about things. Go on, Jean. I'll call you plenty early; you needn't be afraid of missing the train."

Jean smiled a little at the tender, protective note of authority in his voice and manner. Whether she permitted it or not, Lite would go right on watching over her and taking care of her. With a sudden desire to please him, she rose obediently. When she passed him, she reached out and gave his arm a little squeeze.

"You cantankerous old tyrant," she drawled in a whisper, "you do love to haze me around, don't you? Just to spite you, I'll do it!" She went in and left him standing there, smoking and leaning against the post, calm as the stars above. But under that surface calm, the heart of Lite Avery was thumping violently. His arm quivered still under the thrill of Jean's fingers. Your bottled-up souls are quick to sense the meaning in a tone or a touch; Jean, whether she herself knew it or not, had betrayed an emotion that set Lite's thoughts racing out into a golden future. He stood there a long while, staring out upon the darkness, his eyes shining.

CHAPTER XXIV THE LETTER IN THE CHAPS

Though hours may drag themselves into the past so sluggishly that one is fairly maddened by the snail's pace of them, into the past they must go eventually. Jean had sat and listened to the wheels of the Golden State Limited clank over the cryptic phrase that meant so much. "Letter-in-the-chaps! Letter-in-the chaps!" was what they had said while the train pounded across the desert and slid through arroyas and deep cuts which leveled hills for its passing. "Letter-in-the-chaps! Letter-in-the-chaps!" And then a silence while they stood by some desolate station where the people were swarthy of skin and black of hair and eyes, and moved languidly if they moved at all. Then they would go on; and when the wheels had clicked over the switches of the various side tracks, they would take up again the refrain: "Letter-in-the-chaps! Letter-in-the-chaps!" until Jean thought she would go crazy if they kept it up much longer.

Little by little they drew near to Los Angeles. And then they were there, sliding slowly through the yards in a drab drizzle of one of California's fall rains. Then they were in a taxicab, making for the Third Street tunnel. Then Jean stared heavy-eyed at the dripping palms along the boulevard which led away from the smoke of the city and into Hollywood, snuggled against the misty hills. "Letter-in-the-chaps!" her tired brain repeated it still.

Then she was in the apartment shared with Muriel Gay and her mother. These two were over at the studio, the landlady told her when she let them in, and Jean was glad that they were gone.

She knelt, still in her hat and coat and with her gloves on, and fitted her trunk key into the lock. And there she stopped. What if the letter were not in the chaps, after all? What if it were but a trivial note, concerning a matter long since forgotten; a trivial note that had not the remotest bearing upon the murder? "Letter-in-the-chaps!" The phrase returned with a mocking note and beat insistently through her brain. She sat back on the floor and shivered with the chill of a fireless room in California, when a fall rain is at its drizzling worst.

In the next room one of the men coughed; afterwards she heard Lite's voice, saying something in an undertone to Art Osgood. She heard Art's voice mutter a reply. She raised herself again to her knees, turned the key in the lock, and lifted the trunk-lid with an air of determination.

Down next the bottom of her big trunk they lay, just as she had packed them away, with her dad's six-shooter and belt carefully disposed between the leathern folds. She groped with her hands under a couple of riding-skirts and her high, laced boots, got a firm grip on the fringed leather, and dragged them out. She had forgotten all about the gun and belt until they fell with a thump on the floor. She pulled out the belt, left the gun lying there by the trunk, and hurried out with the chaps dangling over her arm.

She was pale when she stood before the two who sat there waiting with their hats in their hands and their faces full of repressed eagerness. Her fingers trembled while she pulled at the stiff, leather flap of the pocket, to free it from the button.

"Maybe it ain't there yet," Art hazarded nervously, while they watched her. "But that's where he put it, all right. I saw him."

Jean's fingers went groping into the pocket, stayed there for a second or two, and came out holding a folded envelope.

"That's it!" Art leaned toward her eagerly.