"BUD AND JELLY; ONE OR BOTH"
With two of the boys—Mark Hanley and Bob Leverett—on guard over the bodies of Bat Johnson and Ed White, the remainder of the party returned to the house in a thoughtful mood. Certain small details puzzled them, and Bud appeared to be the most worried man among them, though he did not say much. What he did do was give Gelle a meaning glance and tilt of the head when no one was looking, and then stroll out to the well some distance away and down hill at that—too many ranchers seeming to believe that the cook needed exercise. In a couple of minutes Gelle came walking circumspectly down the slope, his face twisted with pain of moving.
"What's eatin' on yuh, Bud? Thought I told yuh I got about four inches of rib wound around my backbone," he complained, as he came up.
Bud's eyes were somber as on the day of the bank tragedy, and he gave no sign of sympathy—proof of how worried he was.
"Jelly, there's going to be a kick-back in this thing if we aren't mighty careful. Bradley and Delkin are wondering right now how polite they can be about Palmer's money being gone. Are you sure he came straight here to the house from town?"
"Yeah, I saw him ride up to the gate and open it and ride in. I wish now I'd throwed down on the ole coot before he got into the house. I'd 'a' saved me a busted rib. But I was scared maybe the rest was right behind him, Bud, an' I wanted to git 'em all. Gittin' Palmer inside the house, what I done to him wouldn't be publick. That's what comes of bein' a hawg," he added grimly. Then he came back to the meat of Bud's question. "Why, Bud, is Palmer's cash missin'?"
"Yes, and Bat Johnson and Ed White were dead before they reached the ledge. They didn't have any money to speak of; a little chicken feed in their pants pockets was all. Our boys don't know where the stuff was hidden, and I went with Delkin and the others to town and came back with them. So you see, Jelly—"
"Yeah, I see, all right." Gelle's eyes went cold as they bored into Bud's mind. "Well, what d' you think about it yourself, Bud?"
"I?" Bud looked at him straight. "Whatever you say, Jelly, goes with me."
Gelle stared longer, exhaled a long breath and relaxed to a mirthless grin.
"I oughta lick you, Bud, fer needin' my word. But friendship wabbles when there's money in sight, so—I never went near the damn' place after I packed that back-load of gold away from it. You was behind me—behind us all, fer that matter." Gelle's sudden grin turned a little sardonic. "Still, whatever you say goes with me! I kin be as good a friend as you kin, Bud."
Bud had to laugh, though he felt little enough like it.
"You win, Jelly. I'd have had to do some quick work, but I suppose it would have been humanly possibly for me to duck back up the ledge, grab Palmer's money and come along with it until I saw a place to ditch it where I could come back after it. Fast work—but I did stand in the fringe of the trees by the ledge and watch the stables here until you fellows were out of sight. I wanted to make darn sure you weren't seen."
"Well, I didn't go back either. But the fact remains that the cache is cleaned out—in a hurry, by the look of things around there. And these two dead men dropped in the open, just inside the gate and before they had been to the ledge. For one thing, Jelly, our boys weren't so very far behind them, so Bat and Ed wouldn't have had time to get the stuff, hide it somewhere else and then get into a fight over it and kill each other off before our boys came. They'd have had to do faster work than I would to have raided the cave while you fellows crossed the open down there."
"And awn the other hand, you fellers rode off and left me in easy walkin' distance of the money, and the old man sound asleep and snorin'." Gelle reasoned it out soberly, stating the evidence against himself quite as impartially as Bud had done in his own case. "Yea, I'm the pelican, too, that told Delkin to grab the works. Looks like I'm bogged, right now, and sinkin' fast. Bud, on the face of it, you an' me both is guilty as hell. Ain't we?"
"On the face of it, yes." Bud studied the evidence while he finished rolling a cigarette. "Of course, we can't tell yet just how it will affect the case against Palmer. Not at all, maybe. That's something we have nothing to do with. I wanted you to know the money Delkin left in the cache was gone—how much, none of us know, of course. It's mighty mysterious, don't you think? Say, Jelly, what about those shots? Are you dead certain you heard more than five?"
"Shore I am. But I couldn't prove it, Bud—not in a thousand years. Snowball, his word ain't no good, so there y' are. I believe in my heart that somebody else was after that boodle and Bat and Ed White, they run into 'em, goin' after it theirselves. But that ain't proof. Say, Bud, d' you s'pose Butch Cassidy rode over on the quiet—"
"I've been thinking of Butch. He's that stripe, and so is the rest of the Frying Pan outfit in my opinion. But as you say, Jelly, opinions aren't proof. Besides, Skookum says he didn't tell Butch where his grandfather had his money hidden. I'll take the kid's word. He wouldn't lie—not to me, or any one he likes. Butch tried to pump him, all right, but Skookum says he didn't tell Butch anything much that we didn't hear in the cook house."
"Did the kid say what ole Palmer's money was—gold or paper or whatever?"
"He said he saw a lot of gold money in a sack. You were looking over Delkin's shoulder, Jelly. What did it look like to you?"
"Gold. Jest about what the old thief would take and hide, Bud. Prob'ly most of it was stole, and bills has got numbers on. Then again, gold ain't spoilable. What you laughin' at, Bud?"
"At us, Jelly. Delkin certainly must know Palmer's money was in gold. And Lark's loaded up with gold coin—"
"So we got our alibi right there, Bud. Fur's that goes, the Fryin' Pan's got some honest gold money."
"And there is their alibi. And Delkin is sure to consider Lark's gold as an out for us, just as we can believe that Butch would account for any gold he flashed."
"Can't we ketch 'im? Why don't you take out after 'em an' see if you can't pick up their trail? Gosh, Bud, if the money's gone, you 'n' me knows Butch musta glommed it. I'd go, only fer this damn' rib."
"Better have one of the boys hitch up a rig and take you into town, Jelly. Old Doc Grimes isn't much force, but he ought to be able to fix you up all right. I'll take Bob and see if we can't pick up their trail. He'll keep his mouth shut."
"Yeah. Talk is what we want damn' little of, Bud. One word is all them pelicans would need to send them down into the breaks—and I ain't a doubt in the world but what they got hide-outs down in there where they kin live a year if they feel that way, and never show a head. You beat it now, Bud. I'll gwan down an' take Bob's place. I kin walk slow. An' I'll have some lie thunk up fer Delkin an' Bradley, time they git t' askin' questions about you. They're so tickled to git their claws on Palmer that they won't say much. We'll let on like you 'n' Bob had t' go home fer somethin'. I'll fix it."
At the house Delkin and Bradley were having quite enough to occupy their minds without watching the coming and going of the Meadowlark boys. Palmer was conscious, sitting up in a chair and getting somewhat the best of an amateurish third degree which Delkin and Bradley were attempting to give him. Palmer had a wet towel tied around his head, and the loose folds collected extra moisture and sent it trickling down his seamed, sallow face and his collar. Palmer's eyes were just as human as a snake's with an opaque, impersonal glitter that masked effectually the thoughts shuttling back and forth in his brain. Now and then he barked a question of his own which proved how well his brain was working in spite of the gash on his head.
"Killed two of my men, ay? Come on to my ranch and shot down two men in cold blood—that what you're tryin' to tell me I'm responsible fer?"
"We didn't shoot your men," Delkin explained, when he should not have replied to the charge. "They shot each other. They were after the loot from the bank, and they're lying down there inside your pasture fence, waiting for the sheriff to look them over when he gets here. Even you thieves and murderers can't hang together, it seems. They meant to get the plunder and leave you in the lurch."
"Plunder? What plunder is that?"
"The stuff you folks stole from the bank—"
"Looky here, Mr. Delkin. You be careful what you say! It ain't safe to make charges you ain't prepared to prove. I'm just remindin' you now that there's a law that takes care of malicious slander. I can't answer fer Bat an' Ed, but I want you to understand the bank owes me over seven thousand dollars that I had on deposit—and that was stole—so you claim. You been hand-in-glove with the Meddalark right along, and I'm the loser by it. Ef I was you folks, I wouldn't shoot off my mouth too much about that bank robbery."
Delkin and Bradley withdrew to talk it over, and it was then they discovered that Bud and Gelle were missing. With Tony and Jack Rosen on guard at the house, they hurried down to the pasture and found Gelle reclining in the grass with his hat over his eyes to shield them from the slanting rays of the sun, and Mark Hanley sitting cross-legged beside him, killing time by carefully whittling a stick to a sharp point and cutting the point off so that he could sharpen another; an endless occupation so long as the stick lasts.
"Bud? Him an' Bob, they went home quite a while ago. Us boys can't all of us be away more 'n a few hours at a stretch, an' Lark had give them first four a coupla days off. I jest come awn in with Bud fer the day, but now I'm kinda laid out so I can't ride, and Bob, he went home in my place." Gelle vouchsafed a glance apiece to Delkin and Bradley before he let the hat drop down again over his face. They could not know, of course, that beneath the hat his lips were twitching with ironic laughter.
"Yeah, they been gone half an hour, mebbe more," Mark contributed idly. "How long do we have to set here an' keep them unlovely dead from feelin' lonesome?"
Without answering, Delkin turned and walked back to the house, Bradley following close.
"What do you think about it, Jim?" Bradley asked, when two thirds of the distance had been covered.
"Brad, it doesn't matter what we think or don't think," Delkin told him irritably. "We'll do well to keep it to ourselves, no matter what it is. We won't mention Palmer's money to the sheriff, Brad. The Meadowlark boys have done a lot for the bank—we mustn't overlook that. I suppose they felt they had a right to collect their own damages from Palmer for starting all that talk about them."
"They?"
"Bud and Jelly; one or both. I wouldn't think Bud would have had time to do it, or the inclination. But you can't tell what's going on in a man's mind. Jelly, of course, had the chance and he's the one that suggested taking it. No, sir, we've got to keep our mouths shut for the present, anyway."
"Let it look like them two down there—Bat and Ed White—got away with it," Bradley suggested, all in favor of protecting customers as good as the Meadowlark outfit. "We've got Palmer dead to rights, anyway, and we've got the bank property back. I guess we can afford to let Palmer hunt his own money, eh?"
"They were both in on it," Delkin went on glumly. "I saw them holding a little private confab down by the well. Bud felt as if he'd better get the stuff into the Basin, I guess, before we asked him about it. But damn' it, Brad, I can't believe either of those boys would steal money!"
"You heard Jelly. They don't call it stealing, Jim, when they annex something that a thief has cached away. Buried treasure, maybe, is what they'd call it. Anyway, they'd have a name that made it sound all right. Well, we'll have to let it go for the present. But I wish they'd kept their hands off that money!"