The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 16
AUTUMN colors were coming into the sugar maples and quaking aspen in the patio where the fountain tinkled among the roses. As Barrett sat there in the afternoon sun with Alma Nearing, recovering from his weakness and his wound, the first fall of leaves, already touched by frost, showered at their feet.
A strong patient, fit to take the road; a rebellious patient against the soft restraint of his lovely nurse, who denied him his pipe with stern prohibition. Barrett argued that a man was well when the yearning to smoke came over him with such insistent and healthy urge.
"Tomorrow," she yielded. "But if the smoke gets into that tender spot in your lung and irritates it, and you take consumption, don't blame me."
"It's as sound as it ever was, Alma," he insisted, thumping his chest to prove his contention.
"Tomorrow; not one minute sooner."
Barrett looked moodily at the whirling shower of leaves that came down the wind from the maple tree. 'Alma, mischief in her eyes, reached behind her and produced his friendly little pipe.
"I can't bear your sufferings any longer," she said, laughing at his simple joy. "Smoke, even if it does make you sick."
"Somebody's always saving my life—this is the second time for you," he told her, so gravely that the joy seemed to have departed from him.
"Are you sorry?" she asked.
"Only that I owe so much I'll never have lives enough to go around and pay my debts. First it was Dan, down at Saunders, then"
"Dan? Down at Saunders? When did you get into a scrape at Saunders, Ed?"
"It was that rustling gent, you know, the fellow from the Indian Nation, the one that—lost his life up in the canyon the evening I went to Eagle Rock camp with your Uncle Hal."
"Manuel told me about that one," she said, speaking as if she resented the conspiracy of secrecy that had kept this news from her in other sources.
Barrett had got the impression, as such sick fancies creep in and establish themselves sometimes, that he had told Alma all about meeting and fighting the rustler as he lay stretched out under Dale Findlay's bullet. He had the impression, moreover, that he had revealed a great many things which had been better kept to himself. This was a revelation to him now. He felt that he must not have emptied himself of quite all he knew.
"It was a sad and unfortunate thing for me," he said, leaving no room for doubt of his entire sincerity. "That thing kept bothering me all the time while I was laid up, coming up to haunt me like a mistake a man makes that costs somebody his life."
"He got just what was coming to him, all right!" she said, with strong indorsement of his deed. "I'd shoot one of those range wolves in a second if I caught him running off our cattle. You remember I told you there's a never-dying feud between me and that tribe?"
"I remember. And the next time it was old Fred Grubb," hurrying on from the question of feuds and vengeance, not pleased to hear her talk of that. "The time that Mexican and Findlay played the joke on me, you know."
"What a fool I was to try to make you believe, even myself believe, it was a joke!"
"No; I don't see that you were," he said, after a philosophical pause, "It might have been; I could have been convinced that it was if Findlay hadn't followed it up so rough."
"The cowardly sneak!"
"You saved my precious remnant of a life that day. But you never told me, Alma, how you knew. You didn't just happen along; I thought I saw you coming, away down the road, while I was lying there where I kicked over in front of the door."
"But of course you didn't, you couldn't," she said, looking at him curiously.
Barrett shook his head, sunk in a solemn cloud of thought. He lived again that experience when all that was sentient in him had crossed the borderland of death, prone upon the cabin floor, the burning load of hay against the door.
"Findlay and that shadow of his, Worthy Glass"
"Worthy! Heaven help the rest of us!" said he.
"That's his name, the name on the payroll, anyway."
"Is it still there?"
"Yes," said she, sadly. "Findlay and that man came here that morning with an old slinking scoundrel named Thomson, a lawyer of evil repute. Dale and Uncle Hal were shut up with that old snake an hour or more. What they were trying to get out of him I don't know. I happened to be at the barn, saddling up to go to the post, when Dale and Glass came in for their horses. I heard Dale say they'd go on up to the hay ranch while they were at it, and clean that bunch out. I rushed to Uncle Hal, but he refused to take it seriously. At least he pretended to make light of it. I never have been able to understand, Ed, why he didn't go out and call them off."
Alma made this revelation reluctantly, shame for the confession in her low, sad voice. Barrett shook his head, slowly, as if he, too, had pondered it long, yet could not answer it.
"Jt was because he thought Dan and I ought to be able to take care of ourselves," he said, willing to manufacture an excuse for Nearing for her sake.
"Findlay knew you were alone; he knew very well that charmer of his was holding Dan in Bonita!"
"Cattle Kate?"
"Who else? Dan's been here a dozen times to see you and try to square himself for failing you when he was needed. Poor fool! he doesn't know himself that she was only stringing him along to help Findlay. She'd kill a man to help Findlay."
"She didn't impress me as a bad one," Barrett reflected.
"Not that way, not bad in the way the other ones in Bonita are bad. Only she's blind over Dale Findlay, poor soul. I know her well, I often stop and see her when I go through Bonita to visit the post."
She seemed to have dropped the thread of her recital. Barrett waited a little while for her to take it up again, then reminded her.
"When Senator Nearing refused to interfere with their innocent diversion, you saddled and rode after them yourself."
"They were about a mile up the road when I started. But they never looked back, they knew there wasn't a man on this ranch that would follow them!"
She said this bitterly, the scorn that she could so well express in the mere modulation of a word, the lifting of a brow, the toss of her head, was wanting there. There was much of sadness, something of shame.
Barrett took her hand in the frankness of the understanding that had grown up between them. He held it in firm and sincere clasp while he looked into her eyes.
"Alma, I'd rather it was you that came than a regiment of cattlemen," he said.
She smiled, reached with her free hand and patted his, with the comforting, assuring caress of one much older and wiser than he.
"And then what?" he asked, holding very tightly to her hand.
"They rode off, and I snaked the wagon away from the door," she replied.
"And that was all?"
"That was all, Ed."
Barrett was not satisfied. He wanted to confirm or dismiss the impression he had that shots had been fired, that Findlay and Glass had retreated, dropping their devilish scheme to have his life by fire, only upon the argument of force. But this must wait a closer understanding, a more intimate footing between them, granting the hope that grew within him that it would come.
"Why didn't you let Dan in to see me, when you never denied old Fred?" he asked.
"I was sore at him, Ed. I wanted to punish him. And I wanted to tell you, before you saw him again, how Cattle Kate fooled the poor dunce, and honied him out of being there to help you. I thought you ought to know what a weak stick he is to lean on."
"It was my fault, as much as Dan's, I guess. I might have waited for him, or hunted him up and brought him home."
"You're all alike," she declared in mock contempt, flinging his hand away. "You'll stand together in that great fraternity of manly weakness, in spite of everything."
"Dan's a good boy," Barrett said, so simply serious that she nodded in agreement.
"Good, but weak."
"Well, it wouldn't do to turn the hose on many men's feet," said he.
"All clay," she nodded, that spark of humor which lit her face like a candle at a window growing in her soft dark eyes. "But I believe some of them are baked; they stand up better than others."
Barrett had no rejoinder for her pleasantry. A while they sat in silence, Alma stretching her hand abstractedly to catch the falling leaves. Barrett looked at her covertly, as if to undertake something he might not be permitted to do, as he filled his pipe the second time and tried to suppress the crackle of the match. She was so engrossed by her thoughts that she did not interpose, nor put out a hand to deny him this solace so long suspended.
"Ed," she began presently, her gaze on the ground, "I asked Uncle Hal to discharge Findlay after that shooting. I never was so surprised and humiliated in my life as I was when he refused. The worst of it is, Ed, he can't."
"Yes, I know it," he replied.
"What do you suppose that man Findlay is, Ed?" she asked, turning to him suddenly.
"I believe he's the biggest crook on this range."
"He's the king-pin of the cattle rustlers in this part of the country," she said, her voice lowered to a fearful whisper, her face white. She sat a moment leaning toward him, as she had bent to impart her disturbing secret, her breath laboring, her manner painfully agitated. "Manuel knows, he knows more than anybody suspects. They wouldn't let him live an hour if they knew."
"I've suspected something of the kind," Barrett told her, no surprise quickening in him at her revelation.
"I've thought for a long time he's got some kind of a grip on Uncle Hal, he's changed so in the last three or four years. I knew it when he refused to discharge Findlay, yes, I knew it that night—that night he—he—pulled his gun on you out there by the gate."
"Alma!"
"I knew it! You took the blame, Edgar Barrett, to spare us the shame of his unspeakable deed. He tried to kill you that night because you knew too much. Tell me what it is."
"I provoked him, I didn't go at it right," Barrett excused, seeing that it would be useless to deny what she knew too well.
"There was something more than sudden irritation behind his attempt," she declared in great earnestness. "Uncle Hal never has been a man to shy at a shadow. You found out something between him and Findlay. What was it, Ed?"
"I was impatient, impertinent, maybe; but I was sore over that affair at Eagle Rock camp that day. I made the same demand that you did later—I said he had to fire Findlay and all his rustlin' gang. I didn't go at it right, you see."
"What did you say you'd do if he refused?" she asked him, shrewdly.
"Well, that's where I stumbled again, Alma. I made the blow that I'd take it up with the stockholders, tell what I knew, and try to oust him from the head of the company."
"And he would have killed you to keep you still!"
"He was tired that night, he'd been in the saddle two days, he told me. I had no right to bully him; maybe I got about what was comin' to me. Oh well, it was only a bluff, I think, anyway. His heart wasn't in it."
"Only you know better," she said, sadly. "He used to be such a good man, such a frank, kind, generous man. I can't believe he's intentionally involved with Findlay, he must have been drawn into it by some subtle plotting to get him into it. Will you be honest with me, Ed, and tell me what you've found out?"
"Very little, Alma. I only know that Findlay's holding a club over him, driving him to stand by and see the company robbed in broad daylight. He told me himself that Findlay could drag him down to disgrace, ruin him, with a word. More than that he wouldn't tell. He refused my offer to help him on any terms. It seemed to scare him."
"Then it must go on, and on!" said she, despairingly.
"It can't be very long now," he comforted her, with the portentous calmness of one certain of his hour.
Alma shook her head, the shadow of a great sadness in her eyes.
"It's natural for you to think of squaring your account with Findlay, you'd be a coward if you didn't. But you can't get at him, Ed."
"We'll not talk about it," he said, with gentle finality.
"We must. It's been growing in your heart to kill him all the time, you talked of that, and nothing else, while you had fever. Manuel said you got up one night and went looking for your gun when you heard Findlay talking in the house. Do you remember?"
"I don't remember, Alma," he said, in the same gentle, calming voice.
"He owes it to you, the law would uphold you if you shot him on sight. But you can't touch him; he's never alone, not for a minute, except when he comes into this house. All feuds end at the door; he knows he's safe here."
"I saw him alone at Bonita one night. Well, Charley Thomson was with him."
"Where were they?"
"Just leaving Cattle Kate's hotel."
"Of course. And I'll bet anything Kate was hanging around behind him with a gun under her apron. She'd have killed you, or any man that made a break to pull a gun."
"Yes, she was right there," he admitted, not having counted that circumstance before." But I didn't want to go after him then; I was willing to let that little joke of his pass."
"And the minute he got from under Kate's eye, Glass or another one of the three that always hang around him, stepped in behind. You'd have seen if you'd watched."
"I didn't watch. But Glass was in town, I saw him in the dance hall."
"You'll always see one of them right at hand, Ed. Another man's been after him a long time, I know it as well as you do, no matter how I found it out. If he can't get him, how can you?"
"I might have him arrested, in spite of my promise to Senator Nearing that I wouldn't," Barrett suggested, speaking of that course as one mentions a contemptible thing.
"You know why he asked you not to interfere."
"But you'd think a drowning man would want help, no matter what kind of water he's in."
"It must be that Findlay's got him mixed up in his cattle-stealing from other ranches besides this," she said. "I don't see what else Uncle Hal would fear so desperately. Nothing would ruin or disgrace him quicker than the discovery of that. They hung a cattleman for stealing when I was a little girl, took him from his house at night and left him strung to a pine."
"It may be that, Alma, but I hardly think it is."
Barrett thought of the young Englishman who had come there on a mission similar to his own, and of the inscription on his tombstone as quoted by Fred Grubb. All through the illness from his wound this thought had obtruded. He had come to the belief that Nearing had shot the stranger as he had attempted Barrett's own life, perhaps in a burst of passion and fear; that Findlay had witnessed the act, and held it over the cattleman with oppression that increased day by day.
Alma turned to him, a great earnestness in her eyes.
"We can find out what this secret power of Findlay's is," she said. "Will you help me do it? When we know what it is, we can break his cinch on poor old Uncle Hal."
"I'll help you find out what we can, Alma," he told her, not with dramatic emphasis, just in simple earnestness that had a far more convincing effect of sincerity.
"Where to begin, where to turn, without pulling the house down on our heads," said she.
"Cattle Kate," said Barrett, in the same assured, calm tone.
"Kate knows, if any living third person knows," Alma admitted, thoughtfully. "Or that old lawyer, Charley Thomson; I believe he knows."
"It would take money to get it out of him, and Findlay already has him roped. We'll have to count him out."
"Kate would know," said she, in her soft, thoughtful way. "But she'd never tell anything that would hurt Dale Findlay."
"If she got sore at him she would."
"That's a long shot, Ed."
"I believe we could cripple him, anyhow. But you might have to do something disagreeable to put it through."
"Count on me for anything, Ed."
"We'd have to make Kate jealous, that would be the easiest way. You can see the fire in that woman's eye that would burn a man up if she thought he'd double-crossed her."
"Kate's that kind of a girl," Alma agreed, looking at him sharply. "You seem to know her pretty well."
"I've only seen her once," he said.
"Oh, only once. And it would be my job to make her jealous?"
"Not unless you're game to go the limit, Alma. You might have to humble your pride and self-respect to the extent of talking to him once in a while"
"Oh, just talking to him wouldn't do it, Ed."
"Ride out with him, maybe, or go to a dance or two. Do they ever have any dances around at the ranches? The kind the cowboys are invited to, I mean."
"They don't invite to such affairs, just spread the news and they come. Yes, the open season for such rags will soon be on. Yes, I could go to a dance with Dale, and make love to him a little."
"No, no! no love-making anywhere! we'll draw the line at that."
Barrett discovered considerable alarm. At which Alma, looking very demure, nodded sagely.
"You'll make love to Cattle Kate," she said.
"Not on your life!" in great fervor of denial. "I'm not out to have any lady cuttin' notches in my ears with a gun."
"Oh well, then," said she.
"I know it wouldn't be a very pleasant thing for you, Alma, but all you've got to do is give Cattle Kate the slightest excuse to nail him for his frivolity. She'll do the rest."
"Dale used to want me to go to the dances with him, but he hasn't asked me lately. He used to be very mushy over me, it was a regular programme of his to ask me to marry him every two weeks."
"The devil it was!" said Barrett, looking so miserable that Alma laughed to cheer him up a bit.
"But nothing ever came of it," she sighed.
"I should hope not!" said he.
"I haven't been to one of the ranch dances for a long time, three or four years," she said, dropping her teasing and going back to the serious business in hand. "That was over at Four Corners, seven or eight miles back of where you boys are cutting hay."
"I've heard Dan mention it. Sort of community dance house, isn't it?"
"Built where two main roads cross, just like they build schoolhouses in places where they need them. People drive as far as sixty miles to attend the dances there, the belles and beaux sabreurs of the range. I wouldn't mind going once more."
"I think I'd kind of like it myself."
"You might take Cattle Kate," she suggested.
"I beg to be excused. I suppose," doubtfully, "it would be all right for you to go over there with that man?"
"Of course. He couldn't very well carry me off on the horn of his saddle—he wouldn't ever think of it, anyway—there isn't romance enough in Dale Findlay for that. No, seriously, Ed, I believe it's a great scheme. If we can get Kate after him like a hornet, she'll skin him alive."
"Yes, but we're overlooking something, Alma. Findlay isn't likely to feel very friendly to you after taking that shot at him up there at the hay-ranch."
"Don't worry over that—Dale isn't one of your onion-skinned men. He's been friendlier than in a long time, I seem to have advanced in his estimation considerably. The provoking part of it is, the wretch persists in it that I only interrupted another of his little jokes."
"If that man gets any funnier somebody will have to speak to him about it," said Barrett. "Has he been around here very much since then?"
"Nearly every day. But not to see me, just. That old sneak Thomson is nearly always with him now. There's some new scheme they're working out between them, pressing Uncle Hal, driving him to the wall. We've got to work fast, Ed, or it will be too late."
There in the sunny patio, the red and amber leaves falling around them, they worked out the best, the most promising plan they could devise for coming at Hal Nearing's secret, in all kindness and fidelity to him. But Barrett suspected, although he did not know, that in baring the secret which Nearing covered so jealously in his breast, they might multiply his sorrows and their own. Yet it were better that the patient die in the quick agony of the operation, than linger on in the sapping torture of an incurable disease.