The White Desert

by Courtney Ryley Cooper

CHAPTER XIII

Ten minutes after that, Barry Houston was alone in his office. Jenkins was gone, discharged; and Houston felt a sort of relief in the knowledge that he had departed. The last of the Thayer clan, he believed, had been cleaned out of his organization—and it was like lightening a burden to realize it.

That the lease and stumpage contract were fraudulent, Barry Houston was certain. Surely he had seen neither of them; and the signing must have been through some sort of trickery of which he was unaware. But would such a statement hold in court? Houston learned, a half-hour later, that it wouldn't, as he faced the family attorney, in his big, bleak, old-fashioned office.

"It's all right, Barry, for you to tell me that you didn't sign it," came the edict. "I'd believe you—because I feel sure you wouldn't lie to me. But it would be pretty thin stuff to tell to a jury. There is the contract and the lease in black and white. Both bear your signature which, you have declared in the presence of witnesses, to be genuine. Even when a man signs a paper while insane, it's a hard job to pull it back; and we certainly wouldn't have any witnesses who could swear that you had lost your reason."

"Nope," he concluded, giving the papers a flip, as though disposing of the whole matter, "somebody has just worked the old sewing-machine racket on you—with trimmings. This is an adaptation of a game that is as old as the hills—the one where the solicitors would go up to a farmhouse, sell a man a sewing-machine or a cream separator at a ridiculous figure, let him sign what he thought was a contract to pay a certain amount a month for twelve months—and then take the promissory note which he really had signed down to the bank and discount it. Instead of a promissory note, they made this a contract and a lease. And just to make it good, they had their confederate, a legalized notary public, put his seal upon it as a witness. You can't remember when all this happened?"

"According to Jenkins—who put the notary seal on there—the whole thing was put over about a week or so before I left for the West. That's the date on them too. About that time, I remember, I had a good many papers to sign. A lot of legal stuff, if you'll remember, came up about father's estate, in which my signature was more of a form than anything else. I naturally suspected nothing, and in one or two instances signed without reading."

"And signed away your birthright—to this contract and lease. You did it with no intention of giving your land and flume and flume site away, that's true. If one of the men would be willing to confess to a conspiracy, it would hold water in court. Otherwise not. You've been bunked, and your signature is as legal and as binding as though you had read that contract and lease-form a hundred times over. So I don't see anything to do but to swallow your medicine with as little of a wry face as possible."

It was with this ultimatum that Houston turned again for the West, glad to be out of Boston, glad to be headed back once more for the mountains, in spite of the fact that the shadows of his life had followed him even there, that the ill luck which seemed to have been perched continuously on his shoulders for the past two years still hovered, like a vulture, above him. What he was going to do, how he could hope to combat the obstacles which had arisen was more than he could tell. He had gone into the West, believing, at worst, that he would be forced to become the general factotum of his own business. Now he found there was not even a business; his very foundations had been swept from beneath him, leaving only the determination, the grim, earnest resolution to succeed where all was failure and to fight to victory—but how?

Personally, he could not answer the question, and he longed for the sight of the shambling little station at Tabernacle, with Ba'tiste, in answer to the telegram he had sent from Chicago, awaiting him with the buggy from camp. And Ba'tiste was there, to boom at him, to call Golemar's attention to the fact that a visit to a physician in Boston had relieved the bandaged arm of all except the slightest form of a splint, and to literally lift Houston into the buggy, tossing his baggage in after him, then plump in beside him with excited happiness.

"Bon!" he rumbled. "It is good you are back. Ba'teese, he was lonely. Ba'teese, he was so excite' when he hear you come. He have good news!"

"About what?"

"The railroad. They are near' through with the tunnel. Now they shall start upon the main road to Salt Lake. And they shall need timbers—beaucoup! Ties and beams and materials! They have ask for bids. Ah, oui. Eet is, what-you-say, the swollen chance! M'sieu Houston shall bid lower than—"

"How, Ba'tiste?" Houston asked the question with a dullness that caused the aged trapper to turn almost angrily upon him.

"How? Is eet putty that you are made of? Is eet—but no, Ba'teese, he, what-you-say, misplace his head. You think there is no chance, eh? Mebbe not. Me'bbe—"

"I found a copy of that contract in our files. The clerk I had in the office was in the conspiracy. I fired him and closed everything up there; as far as a Boston end to the business is concerned, there is none. But the damage is done. My lawyer says that there is not a chance to fight this thing in court."

"Ah, oui. I expec' that much. But Ba'teese, he think, mebbe, of another way. Eh, Golemar?" He shouted to the dog, trotting, as usual, beside the buggy. "Mebbe we have a, what-you-say, punch of luck."

Then, silent, he leaned over the reins. Houston too was quiet, striving in vain to find a way out of the difficulties that beset him. At the end of half an hour he looked up in surprise. They no longer were on the way to the mill. The road had become rougher, hillier, and Houston recognized the stream and the aspen groves which fringed the highway leading to Ba'tiste's cabin. But the buggy skirted the cabin, at last to bring into sight a snug, well-built, pretty little cottage which Houston knew, instinctively, to be the home of Medaine Robinette. At the veranda, Ba'tiste pulled on the reins and alighted.

"Come," he ordered quietly.

"But—"

"She have land, and she have a part of the lake and a flume site."

Houston hung back.

"Isn't it a bad bet, Ba'tiste? Have you talked to her?"

"No—I have not seen her since the day—at the flume. She is here—Lost Wing is at the back of the cabin. We will talk to her, you and I. Mebbe, when the spring come, she will lease to you the lake and the flume site. Mebbe—"

"Very well." But Houston said it against his will. He felt, in the first place, that he would be presuming to ask it of her,—himself a stranger against whom had come the accusation of murder, hardly denied. Yet, withal, in a way, he welcomed the chance to see her and to seek to explain to her the deadly thrusts which Fred Thayer had sent against him. Then too a sudden hope came; Ba'tiste had said that Agnes Jierdon had become friendly with her; certainly she had told the truth and righted the wrongs of malicious treachery. He joined Ba'tiste with a bound. A moment more and the door had opened, to reveal Medaine, repressed excitement in her eyes, her features a trifle pale, her hand trembling slightly as she extended it to Ba'tiste. Houston she received with a bow,—forced, he thought. They went within, and Ba'tiste pulled his queer little cap from his head, to crush it in the grasp of his massive hands.

"We have come for business, Medaine," he announced, with a slight show of embarrassment. "M'sieu Houston, he have need for a flume site."

"But I don't see where I could be of any assistance. I have no right—"

"Ah! But eet is not for the moment present. Eet is for the springtime."

She seemed to hesitate then and Houston took a sudden resolve. It might as well be now as later.

"Miss Robinette," he began, coming forward, "I realize that all this needs some explanation. Especially," and he halted, "about myself."

"But is that any of my affair?" Her old pertness was gone. She seemed white and frightened, as though about to listen to something she would rather not hear. Houston answered her as best he could:

"That depends upon yourself, Miss Robinette. Naturally, you wouldn't want to have any business dealings with a man who really was all that you must believe me to be. It isn't a pleasant thing for me to talk about—I would like to forget it. But in this case, it has been brought up against my will. You were present a week ago when Thayer accused me of murder."

"Yes."

"Eet was a big lie!"

"Wait just a minute, Ba'tiste." Cold sweat had made its appearance on Barry Houston's forehead. "I—I—am forced to admit that a part of what he said was true. When I first met Ba'tiste here, I told him there was a shadow in my life that I did not like to talk about. He was good enough to say that he didn't want to hear it. I felt that out here, perhaps I would not be harassed by certain memories that have been rather hard for me to bear in the last couple of years. I was wrong. The thing has come up again, in worse form than ever and without giving me a chance to make a denial. But perhaps you know the whole story?"

"Your story?" Medaine Robinette looked at him queerly. "No—I never have heard it."

"Then you've heard—"

"Only accusations."

"Is it fair to believe only one side of a thing?"

"Please, Mr. Houston," and she looked at him with a certain note of pleading, "you must remember that I—well, I didn't feel that it was any of my business. I didn't know that circumstances would throw you at all in my path."

"But they have, Miss Robinette. The land on my side of the creek has been taken from me by fraud. It is absolutely vital that I use every resource to try to make my mill what it should be. It still is possible for me to obtain lumber, but to get it to the mill necessitates a flume and rights in the lake. I've lost that. We've been hoping, Ba'tiste and myself, that we would be able to induce you to lease us your portion of the lake and a flume site. Otherwise, I'm afraid there isn't much hope."

"As I said, that doesn't become my property until late spring, nearly summer, in fact."

"That is time enough. We are hoping to be able to bid for the railroad contract. I believe it calls for the first shipment of ties about June first. That would give us plenty of time. If we had your word, we could go ahead, assemble the necessary machinery, snake a certain amount of logs down through the snow this winter and be in readiness when the right moment came. Without it, however, we can hardly hope for a sufficient supply to carry us through. And so—"

"You want to know—about heem. You have Ba'teese's word——"

"Really—" she seemed to be fencing again.

Houston, with a hard pull at his breath, came directly to the question.

"It's simply this, Miss Robinette. If I am guilty of those things, you don't want to have anything to do with me, and I don't want you to. But I am here to tell you that I am not guilty, and that it all has been a horrible blunder of circumstance. It is very true in one sense—" and his voice lowered—"that about two years ago in Boston, I was arrested and tried for murder."

"So Mr. Thayer said."

"I was acquitted—but not for the reason Thayer gave. They couldn't make a case, they failed absolutely to prove a thing which, had I really been guilty, should have been a simple matter. A worthless cousin, Tom Langdon, was the man who was murdered. They said I did it with a wooden mallet which I had taken from a prize fight, and which had been used to hammer on the gong for the beginning and the end of the rounds. I had been seen to take it from the fight, and it was found the next morning beside Langdon. There was human blood on it. I had been the last person seen with Langdon. They put two and two together—and tried to convict me on circumstantial evidence. But they couldn't convince the jury; I went free, as I should have done. I was innocent!"

Houston, white now with the memories and with the necessity of retailing again in the presence of a girl who, to him, stood for all that could mean happiness, gritted his teeth for the determination to go on with the grisly thing, to hide nothing in the answers to the questions which she might ask. But Medaine Robinette, standing beside the window, the color gone from her cheeks, one hand lingering the curtains, eyes turned without, gave no evidence that she had heard. Ba'tiste, staring at her, waited a moment for her question. It did not come. He turned to Houston.

"You tell eet!" he ordered. There was something of the father about him,—the father with a wayward boy, fearful of the story that might come, yet determined to do everything within his power to aid a person he loved. Houston straightened.

"I'll try not to shield myself in any way," came at last. The words were directed to Ba'tiste, but meant for Medaine Robinette. "There are some things about it that I'd rather not tell—I wish I could leave them out. But—it all goes. My word of honor—if that counts for anything—goes with it. It's the truth, nothing else.

"I had come home from France—invalided back. The records of the Twenty-sixth will prove that. Gas. I was slated for out here—the recuperation hospital at Denver. But we managed to persuade the army authorities that I could get better treatment at home, and they gave me a disability discharge in about ten months—honorable, of course. After a while, I went back to work, still weak, but rather eager to get at it, in an effort to gather up the strands which had become tangled by the war. I was in the real-estate business then, for myself. Then, one afternoon," his breath pulled sharp, "Tom Langdon came into my office."

"He was your cousin?" Ba'tiste's voice was that of a friendly cross-examiner.

"Yes. I hadn't seen him in five years. We had never had much to do with him; we," and Houston smiled coldly with the turn that Fate had given to conditions in the Houston family, "always had looked on him as a sort of a black sheep. He had been a runaway from home; about the only letters my uncle ever had received from him had asked for money to get him out of trouble. Where he had been this time, I don't know. He asked for my father and appeared anxious to see him. I told him that father was out of town. Then he said he would stay in Boston until he came back, that he had information for him that was of the greatest importance, and that when he told father what it was, that he, Langdon, could have anything my father possessed in the way of a job and a competence for life. It sounded like blackmail—I could think of nothing else coming from Tom Langdon—and I told him so. That was unfortunate. There were several persons in my office at the time. He resented the statement and we quarreled. They heard it and later testified."

Houston halted, tongue licking at dry lips. Medaine still gave no indication that she had heard. Ba'tiste, his knit cap still crushed in his big hands, moved forward.

"Go on."

"Gradually, the quarrel wore off and Tom became more than friendly, still harping, however, on the fact that he had tremendous news for my father. I tried to get rid of him. It was impossible. He suggested that we go to dinner together and insisted upon it. There was nothing to do but acquiesce; especially as I now was trying to draw from him something of what had brought him there. We had wine. I was weak physically. It went to my head, and Tom seemed to take a delight in keeping my glass full. Oh," and he swerved suddenly toward the woman at the window, "I'm not trying to make any excuses for myself. I wanted if—after that first glass or two, it seemed there wasn't enough in the world. He didn't force it on me—he didn't play the part of a tempter or pour it down my throat. I took it readily enough. But I couldn't stand it. We left the cafe, he fairly intoxicated, myself greatly so. We saw the advertisement of a prize fight and went, getting seats near the ring-side. They weren't close enough for me. I bribed a fellow to let me sit at the press stand, next to the timekeeper, and worried him until he let me have the mallet that he was using to strike the gong.

"The fight was exciting—especially to me in my condition. I was standing most of the time, even leaning on the ring. Once, while in this position, one of the men, who was bleeding, was knocked down. He struck the mallet. It became covered with blood. No one seemed to notice that, except myself—every one was too excited. A moment more and the fight was over, through a knock-out. Then I stuck the mallet in my pocket, telling every one who cared to hear that I was carrying away a souvenir. Langdon and I went out together.

"We started home—for he had announced that he was going to spend the night with me. Persons about us heard him. It was not far to the house and we decided to walk. On the way, he demanded the mallet for himself and pulled it out of my pocket. I struggled with him for it, finally however, to be bested, and started away. He followed me a block or so, taunting me with his superior strength and cursing me as the son of a man whom he intended to make bow to his every wish. I ran then and, evading him, went home and to bed. About four o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by the police. They had found Tom Langdon dead, with his skull crushed, evidently by the blow of a club or a hammer. They said I did it."

A slight gasp traveled over the lips of Medaine, still by the window. Ba'tiste, his features old and lined, reached out with one big hand and patted the man on the shoulder. Then for a long time, there was silence.

"Eet is the lie, eh?"

"Ba'tiste," Houston turned appealingly to him "as I live, that's all I know. I never saw Langdon after he took that mallet from me. Some one killed him, evidently while he was wandering around, looking for me. The mallet dropped by his side. It had blood on it—and they accused me. It looked right—there was every form of circumstantial evidence against me. And," the breath pulled hard, "what was worse, everybody believed that I killed him. Even my best friends—even my father."

"Ba'teese no believe it."

"Why?" Houston turned to him in hope,—in the glimmering chance that perhaps there was something in the train of circumstances that would have prevented the actuality of guilt. But the answer, while it cheered him, was rather disconcerting.

"You look like my Pierre. Pierre, he could do no wrong. You look like heem."

It was sufficient for the old French-Canadian. But Houston knew it could carry but little weight with the girl by the window. He went on:

"Only one shred of evidence was presented in my behalf. It was by a woman who had worked for about six months for my father,—Miss Jierdon. She testified to having passed in a taxicab just at the end of our quarrel, and that, while it was true that there was evidence of a struggle, Langdon had the mallet. She was my only witness, besides the experts. But it may help here, Miss Robinette."

It was the first time he had addressed her directly and she turned, half in surprise.

"How," she asked the question as though with an effort, "how were you cleared?"

"Through expert medical testimony that the blow which killed Langdon could not have been struck with that mallet. The whole trial hinged on the experts. The jury didn't believe much of either side. They couldn't decide absolutely that I had killed Langdon. And so they acquitted me. I'm trying to tell you the truth, without any veneer to my advantage."

"Bon! Good! Eet is best."

"Miss Jierdon is the same one who is out here?"

"Yes."

"She testified in your behalf?"

"Yes. And Miss Robinette, if you'll only talk to her—if you'll only ask her about it, she'll tell you the story exactly as I've told it. She trusted me; she was the only bright spot in all the blackness. I may not be able to convince you—but she could, Miss Robinette. If you'll only—"

"Would you guarantee the truth of anything she should tell me?"

"Absolutely."

"Even if she told hidden things?"

"Hidden? I don't know what you mean. There's nothing to be hidden. What she tells you will be the truth, the whole truth, the absolute truth."

"I'm—I'm sorry." She turned again to the window. Houston went forward.

"Sorry? Why? There's nothing—"

"Miss Jierdon has told me," came in a strained voice, "things that perhaps you did not mean for her to tell."

"I? Why, I—"

"That she did pass as you were struggling. That she saw the blow struck—and that it was you who struck it."

"Miss Robinette!"

"That further, you confessed to her and told her why you had killed Langdon—because he had discovered something in your own father's life that would serve as blackmail. That she loved you. And that because she loved you, she went on the stand and perjured herself to save you from a conviction of murder—when she knew in her heart that you were guilty!"