CHAPTER XXVI: A TALL BLUFF
Things were not going so smoothly at the Oasis. Sailor Jones had arrived at the point where he was becoming unmanageable. He stood alone at the end of the bar and dared anybody to touch him. Every one in the saloon knew he was as drunk as a man might become and still keep his feet, but to outward appearances he was as sober as a judge.
And he was not to be ignored. Breezy tried to get close enough to grab his gun, but failed. Sailor was an old lobo wolf, drunk enough to imagine he was cornered and ready to kill. He kept his little bloodshot eyes upon Amos Baggs, who was perspiring copiously.
“I’m gonna kill shomebody pretty quick,” he said coldly.
The sheriff came over beside the bar and Sailor gave him a venomous glance. Ben grimaced despairingly. Amos caught his eye and indicated a strong desire to commune with the sheriff. Sailor had become the centre of attraction, it seemed. No one wanted to injure the old man, and they knew it would require drastic measures to stop him, so their best bet was to let him alone until the whisky reacted and put him down.
Len Ayres left his game and came over to the bar, ten feet away from Sailor Jones.
“What are yuh drinkin’, Sailor?” he asked pleasantly.
“Ain’t drinkin’,” sullenly. “Don’t nobody touch me. I’m in the market for a scalp and I’m not askin’ for much ha’r.”
“Don’t be a dang fool, Sailor. Let’s have a good time.”
“I’m havin’ a good time.”
The sheriff went over to Baggs, who whispered earnestly. The sheriff frowned heavily, shook his head. The other players seemed uneasy. Harry Cole got up from his table and came over there, keeping an eye on Sailor Jones.
Just a little, wizened old man, with deep-sunk eyes and fox-tail hair, his collar hiked up around his flaring ears, Sailor was almost mummylike in his immobility, the palm of one skinny hand rubbing the point of his hip above his holstered gun.
“Wash ’m, Shailor?” mumbled Whispering owlishly. “I’m for yuh, ol’-tim’r. Bite ’m, Tige!”
“You shut up,” warned Breezy, who felt obliged to show some authority.
“You shut me up, will yuh?” Whispering straightened himself belligerently. “You try ’t!”
“My Gawd—you, too!” wailed Breezy. “I guess we better wire for the troops.”
Baggs was getting up from his chair, shielding himself with the sheriff. His idea was to get out of there. Sailor laughed harshly, and snarled:
“Sher’f, you better pray along with Amos Baggs.”
The sheriff stopped; Baggs stopped. There was not much of Baggs projecting outside the bulky outlines of the sheriff, but Baggs didn’t know it. Possibly he felt much larger than the sheriff.
“I—I never done anything to him,” wailed Amos. His voice sounded thin and weak in the smoke-hazy room.
“Sound yore A-string,” said Breezy foolishly.
“Sailor,” the sheriff’s voice was not too confident, “if you start anythin’⸺”
But the sheriff didn’t finish his warning. A man staggered in the front door; a man in his shirt sleeves, blood running down the side of his face, his mouth wide open, as though he had been running a long ways. It was the man who did the cleaning in the Oasis; the swamper, as he was called.
The menace of Sailor Jones was forgotten. The man staggered and would have fallen, except that the sheriff grasped his arm. Every one in the place was on his feet now. Harry Cole came forward, staring at the man.
“What in hell happened to you?” asked Breezy.
The man looked at Cole but did not speak. His face was the colour of ashes, and he seemed about to collapse.
“I’ll take him in my room,” said Cole quickly. “No, I can handle him alone. Jerry, did you get kicked by a horse?”
The swamper’s head sagged, but he did not reply. Some one suggested getting a doctor. Baggs seemed to forget Sailor Jones and came down past him, watching Cole and the swamper going toward the door of Cole’s private room.
Suddenly the back door opened and in came Jack Pollock. It seemed as though he had tried to make his entrance as inconspicuous as possible and had run slap into the spotlight. He was without a hat and minus his usual starched white collar.
Harry Cole had halted with the injured swamper when Pollock made his abrupt entrance, and Pollock came toward them, hardly knowing what else to do. No one spoke. Pollock had not closed the door behind him. He came close to Cole.
“Your door was locked,” he said, as though explaining why he had entered the saloon.
Many of those present did not know Pollock was supposed to be on his way to San Francisco. The swamper was sagging like a drunken man and Cole was trying to hold him up with one hand.
It was then that Hashknife Hartley stepped in through the rear doorway, stopped short and looked around. He was without a hat, his bandages slightly askew. Pollock’s head jerked around and he watched Hashknife from over his right shoulder.
“I reckon we’re all present,” said Hashknife slowly. “Ah, there’s our old friend, Amos Baggs. Yes, we’re all here and accounted for, gentlemen. Sheriff’s here, deputy’s here. Len, are you here?”
“Over here, Hashknife!” called Len.
“Good boy! Len, take a look at Mr. Baggs and Mr. Cole. These two men owe you five years—five years of bustin’ rocks. Prentice was the third member, but they killed him, because he might talk. I’ve got ’em cinched so tight that any jury on earth would hang ’em on my evidence alone!”
It was said in such a matter-of-fact way, so coldly confident, that every one was stunned.
“They tried twice to kill me,” said Hashknife, “because they knew I’d hang ’em higher than a kite!”
Harry Cole’s right hand whipped in under his coat and a blued Colt flashed from a shoulder holster, but he was too slow, even with all his speed. Hashknife fired once, and the shock of the heavy bullet, striking Cole in the left shoulder, whirled him on his heel and he went down flat, with the sagging swamper falling half across him.
And almost at the same instant Sleepy, who had entered the front door, came with a football rush, folded both arms around the middle of Amos Alexander Baggs, and they crashed down in the middle of the floor, with Sleepy on top of him.
Pollock, who had jerked aside, seeking a way out, possibly thinking that he had not been included, was brought up short when Hashknife’s gun barrel dug deeply into his ribs.
“You ain’t goin’ no place, Pollock,” he said shortly.
The crowd was moving forward now, coughing from the powder fumes, wondering aloud what it was all about. Sleepy jerked Amos to his feet. The skid on the rough floor had removed some skin from the bridge of Amos’s nose, and the shock of the exposé seemed to have caved in his morale.
“I can talk, can’t I?” he panted anxiously. “Can’t I tell what I know? I have that right, sheriff. I—I know my rights. I’ll talk.”
No doubt Amos could see the outline of the gallows, and he wanted to save his skin at the expense of his confederates. Hashknife stilled the hubbub.
“Let him talk, if he wants to, boys. He has a right.”
“I know I have,” whined Amos.
Hashknife said a few short words to Len, who stared at him in amazement, but went hurrying out of the place. The sheriff moved the men back from Amos, who was panting heavily.
“Go ahead and talk,” said Hashknife. “Nobody stoppin’ yuh.”
Amos gulped and began:
“I never killed anybody. Honest to God, I never killed anybody. Harry Cole pulled the jobs. He was sheriff and I was the prosecutor. He wanted money. Prentice was crooked. He wanted Len’s wife. We needed some one to blame for the two robberies, so we framed to incriminate Len. Prentice stole that hat, and the bank robbery was a fake, but we sent Len to the penitentiary. I swear that’s the way of it. We didn’t think Len would come back here. Prentice didn’t have any nerve, and he worried. He thought somebody might find out about it; so he drank. Cole was afraid he’d talk, so he killed him. I didn’t know about it until after it was all done. But I never hurt anybody. I’m innocent of that. All I ever did was to protect them and take my share.”
“Cole tried to kill me, eh?” grinned Hashknife.
“I know he did. Pollock helped him the last time.”
“You dirty liar!” screamed Pollock.
“Oh, I’ve got yore derringer,” said Hashknife. “You left your callin’ card, Jack Evans. Yeah, I think there’s still a reward for you in Redfields.”
“Cole was right,” gritted Pollock. “He had the dope on you. I thought he was crazy. Well, damn you, all you can do is send me back to Redfields. I can square that all right.”
Some one had brought the doctor, who went to work on Cole and the swamper. The sheriff walked around in a daze, after putting handcuffs on Pollock. He came to Hashknife.
“I said you was a pest,” he said seriously. “Wasn’t that funny? I did, I tell yuh. Thought you was a pest; you and yore questions. I have to laugh.”
“Go ahead,” said Hashknife. “You can laugh, if you feel thataway.”
Breezy had charge of Amos Baggs and seemed to be getting a lot of joy out of his job. Harry Cole wasn’t dead, and the doctor said he would probably live, but Cole did not seem to have any opinions in the matter.
Suddenly another hush. The roar of conversation slowed down to dead silence. Len Ayres was coming in, and beside him, looking very white and wide-eyed, was Nan. Baggs looked at her, wet his dry lips with his tongue and stared down at the floor.
Len touched Amos on the arm and the lawyer looked up at him.
“Do you want to tell this part of it?” he asked. “Or shall I ask the lady to tell it? She don’t know what it’s all about—yet.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Amos huskily.
“Don’t lie about it,” warned Len. He turned to Nan. “You tell it.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know what it was all about.”
“Nan, don’t lie to me!” Len cried. “I knew all the time that you wasn’t the rightful heir to the Box S. I could block yuh any time I wanted to, but I—I didn’t. Somethin’ held me back, somethin’ that told me if I went slow I’d mebby clear myself.”
“Yo’re as clear as a bell, Len,” said the sheriff. “Baggs confessed the whole thing. Cole and Prentice and Baggs pulled the job. You are cleared of everythin’.”
Nan impulsively reached out and grasped Len by the arm.
“Oh, I’m glad!” she said. “Just so glad.”
“Are yuh? Then come clean on this deal, Nan. I’ve got the goods on yuh, so yuh might as well tell us.”
Nan looked around at the circle of faces, some of them blurred by the eddying tobacco and powder smoke. She looked at Hashknife, and his gray eyes were watching her closely.
“I took a dead girl’s name,” she said slowly. “She was my room-mate. We were both poor and out of jobs. She was killed in a wreck, and Jack Pollock was hurt at the same time.
“There was a letter to her from Amos Baggs, telling her to come and claim her inheritance. There was a hundred-dollar cheque in the letter. Well, I took it and came here. I’m an impostor. My name is Nan Whitlock—not Singer. Mr. Baggs said he’d send me to prison. Pollock had told him that I wasn’t the right girl. Baggs tried to get me to sign papers out at the ranch. He said I would be sent to jail if I didn’t sign them, but I—I said I’d rather go to jail.
“They—Baggs and Pollock—brought me to town that night and were going to send me to San Francisco, but we were late getting here and Pollock had lost his pocket-book, which contained the tickets and his money. They said they would protect me from the law until they could safely ship me away; so they took me to a house and kept me there, locked up. I—I didn’t know just why they were afraid to send me away. Then to-night I heard the shooting in the house, and—and that is about all I know.”
“Thank heaven!” said Len. “That’s good news.” He turned savagely on the handcuffed Baggs. “I’ve got the goods on you, Baggs. You or some of yore gang murdered Harmony Singer. I knew it, but I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t prove anythin’, but Hartley did. So you picked a girl named Singer to inherit the ranch, eh? Goin’ to buy her out and split the pot, eh? You fool! His name wasn’t Singer. His name was Ayres. He was my uncle, Baggs. But he was kinda wild in New Mexico; so he changed his name when he came here. His name was Jim Ayres. Here!” he handed a folded paper to Hashknife. “Read it out loud, Hashknife. That’ll explain.”
It was an old sheet of writing paper, slightly yellowed, and the writing was in ink, slightly hard to decipher. Hashknife read aloud:
“‘This is to certify that Len Ayres has paid me the sum of ten thousand dollars⸺’”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Len. “That ten thousand is the money I inherited about six months before this gang sent me to the penitentiary. Go ahead, Hashknife.”
“‘Ten thousand dollars in cash, and I hereby give him one-half of the Box S Ranch and everything on it, and one-half of the money in the bank, and of future profits. Len don’t want no deed, so this is a bill of sale. And this is also to certify that in case of my death, everything I own belongs to Len Ayres, and he is to give Whispering Taylor and Sailor Jones a home for life, or as long as he can get along with them. Very truly yours, Jim Harmony Singer Ayres. P.S.—This is my right name, except the Singer part, which is an adopted brand, and nobody’s business.’”
“The warden at the penitentiary kept that for me,” said Len slowly. “I didn’t want a deed, and I reckon most of yuh boys present know why. I managed to save this much out of the wreck.”
“You knew?” said Nan, looking up at him. “Was that why you said, Len, when I asked you if you didn’t trust me, ‘I’ll tell yuh about it some time’?”
Len looked at her closely, and there was a half smile on his thin, drawn lips.
“I reckon it was, Nan. But this ain’t no place to tell yuh about it. C’mon.”
They turned together and walked out of the saloon. Breezy took Baggs and Pollock, and Sleepy went with him. The doctor was working over Cole in Cole’s own room, while the swamper was sitting in a chair near the door, his head bandaged temporarily. He had been the one who carried the tray to the Prentice home.
The sheriff came to Hashknife, his eyes curious.
“What evidence did yuh have against them for all that stuff, Hartley?” he asked.
“Not a bit, Dillon; just a hunch.”
“You mean—you bluffed? How did yuh find the girl?”
“Imagination,” smiled Hashknife. “I had their tickets, and I knew they never left here. Where could they go, I wondered. What better place than the Prentice home, owned by Cole? They had to be fed. I saw a Chinaman bring a tray here. That would solve the problem. So we hid out there to-night and watched a tray come in. When that swamper took it to the Prentice house I had to bat him over the head, and it almost ruined things. But, as it was, it worked out right. Pollock was fool enough to try and warn Cole. The stage was all set when I came in, and they didn’t stop to realise that I didn’t have evidence. I didn’t ask questions, Dillon; I told ’em what they’d done—and they knew it was true.”
“Golly, but yo’re lucky! I’d never ’a’ thought of that.”
“Yeah, I’m lucky. It’s shore hard work, buildin’ up luck.”
Hashknife turned and started to walk out. On the bar rail sat Whispering and Sailor, dead to the world. Whispering had an arm thrown around Sailor’s shoulders and they were both snoring lustily.
“You boys can go home again,” said Hashknife softly, but they didn’t hear him.
He walked outside and crossed the street. In front of the sheriff’s office he found Nan, Len, and little Larry. Hashknife would have avoided them, but it was impossible. Len held out his hand and they gripped tightly.
“Dad never done nothin’ wrong,” said Larry. “Ain’t it great?”
“Shore is great, Larry,” replied Hashknife. “That fixes yuh up now.”
“And the mule stepped on the kite to-day, but I can make another—if we ever git any wind.”
“Even the wind will come, if yuh wait long enough, Larry.”
Hashknife noticed that Nan was crying, and that Len put an arm around her.
“Why don’t you thank him, Len?” she asked.
“Honey, they never built enough words. I can’t think what to say.”
“Thasall right,” said Hashknife. “Everythin’ is all right.”
He walked past them to where Sleepy was coming from the door of the sheriff’s office, and they slipped away in the darkness together. They rode to the rear of the hotel, where they secured their war bags. Their rent was all paid up.
They tied the bags to their saddles and mounted.
“East of here,” said Sleepy softly, “there’s some tall hills, and they say it’s twenty-five miles to the nearest town in that direction. I dunno what else is on that side of the hill.”
“Let’s take a look, pardner,” said Hashknife, and they rode away in the darkness.
On the south road a little while later, while a moon peeped over the rim of the Broken Hills, sending its blue rays down across the Manzanita range, travelled a slow-moving buckboard, loaded to capacity.
Len and Nan were on the seat, with Larry wedged between them, while in the back of the equipage, fitted in like sardines in a can, rode Whispering Taylor and Sailor Jones, both snoring heavily, at peace with the world. They were all going back home.