FALKNER TALKS
WITH the news that Rowan would not have to pay with his life, Ruth’s anxiety took on another phase. Their happiness had come to grief. It was likely that the tentative separation caused by her anger at his unfaithfulness would prove to be a final one. But her imperative need was to demand the truth about the sheep raid killings. At the bottom of her heart was still a residuum of deep respect for him. It was impossible to believe that this clean, lean-flanked Westerner with the steadfast eyes was a common murderer who had stolen up at night to compass the death of his enemy from cover. Moreover, there was a reason—a vital, urgent, compelling one—why she must think the best she could of the man she had married.
This reason took her to Sam Yerby’s cell at the county jail. She and the Texan had struck up one of the quick, instinctive friendships that were scattered along Ruth’s pathway. They had a common sense of humor. When she poked friendly fun at his speech he did not resent it. The girl had completed her conquest of him by taking a great interest in Missie and the baby. She had embroidered for the little fellow a dress which Sam thought the daintiest in the world.
The tired eyes of the old cattleman lit when she came to the door of his prison.
“It’s right good of you, Miss Ruth, to come and see the old man before he goes over the road.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Yerby.” She choked up. “But everybody tells me you won’t have to stay in very long, and I’m going to look out for Missie and Boy.”
Tears filmed his eyes. The muscles of the leathery face worked with emotion.
“I cain’t thank you, Miss Ruth, but I reckon you know what I’m thinking.”
“Missie is going to teach Boy what a good man his father is, and when you come out you and he will be great friends.”
He nodded. Speech at that moment was beyond him.
“All the boys are going to look after your stock just as if it belonged to them. They’ll take care of your brand at the round-up and make the beef cut for you just the same.”
“That’s right kind of them. I sure do feel grateful.” He looked shyly at his visitor. Sam knew that all was not well between her and Rowan. “What about you, Miss Ruth? You-all are losing a better man than Missie ever had. He’s a pure, Mac is.”
Her live eyes fixed themselves on him. “There’s something I want to know, Mr. Yerby—something I have a right to know. It’s—it’s about the sheep raid.”
“Why don’t you-all go to Mac and ask him?”
“I’ve been to him. He wouldn’t tell me; said he couldn’t.”
A puzzled expression of doubt lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t reckon I can tell you then.”
“You’ve got to tell me. I’ve a right to know. I’m going to know.” She said it with an imperious little accent of feminine ferocity.
“O’ course in regards to what took place——”
“Did you start that night intending to kill Joe Tait?”
“No, ma’am, we didn’t. Rowan told the boys time and again there wasn’t to be any killing. He planned it so it wouldn’t be necessary.”
“Then how was it?”
“I’ll tell you this much: Someone went out of his haid and began shooting. Inside of three minutes it was all over.”
“Did—did Rowan kill either of them?” she whispered.
“I don’t know who killed Tait. Several of the boys were firing. Mac didn’t kill Gilroy. I’m ’most sure of that.”
“You’re not dead sure,” she insisted.
“I’m what you might call morally certain. But there’s one man can set yore mind at rest, if you can get him to talk.”
“Who?”
“Hal Falkner. He knows who started the shooting and who killed Dan Gilroy.”
“I’ve hardly met him. Do you think he would tell me?”
“Maybe he would.” He smiled a little. “I notice you mostly get yore way. Hal’s rough-and-ready. Don’t you mind it if he acts gruff. That’s just his way.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“I reckon it won’t do any harm. But I can tell you one thing, anyhow. If you give Mac the benefit of all the doubts, it will be about what’s right. He saved the herders from Falkner. Silcott testified to that. Before Gilroy was shot I heard yore husband holler to stop firing. Now wouldn’t it be onreasonable to figure that he gunned Dan himself right away? If Mac wouldn’t tell you-all what happened it was because we had all made a solemn agreement not to talk.”
“Do you think that is it?”
“I shorely do.”
“I’m so glad.”
“An’, Miss Ruth?”
“Yes, Mr. Yerby?”
He hesitated before he made the plunge. “I won’t see you-all again for a long time, maybe never. You’re young and proud and high-heeled, like you-all got a perfect right to be. But I want to say this: If you live to be a hundred, yo’ll never meet any one that’s more of a man than Rowan McCoy. He’s white clear through. I’ve seen a right smart of men in my time. Most o’ them had a streak of lean and a streak of fat, as the old saying goes. But yore husband, he assays ’way up all the time. Good luck or bad makes no difference with him. He’s the real stuff.”
A wistful little smile touched her face. “He has one good friend, anyhow.”
“He has hundreds. He deserves them, too.”
“I’ve got to say good-bye now, Mr. Yerby.” She gave him both hands. Tears blurred her eyes so that she could scarcely see him. “Good-bye. Heaps of luck—oh, lots of it! And don’t worry about Missie and Boy.”
“I’ll not worry half so much now, little friend. And I’m hoping all that luck will come to you, too.”
From Sheriff Matson Ruth secured a permit to see Falkner.
The cow-puncher was brought, hand-cuffed, into the office of the jailer. It was an effect of his sudden, furious temper that his guards never took any chances with him. None of the friendly little privileges that fell to the other prisoners came his way.
“Mrs. McCoy wants to talk with you, Hal,” explained Ackerman, the jailer. “Don’t make any mistake about this. I’ll be in the outer room there with a gat. I’ve got a guard under the window. This is no time to try for a get-away.”
Falkner looked at him with an ugly sneer. “Glad you mentioned it, Steve. I’ll postpone any notions I may have in that line, but, take it from me, they are merely postponed. When the time comes I’m going.”
Ackerman shrugged his shoulders and left the room. He thought it altogether likely that some day Falkner would have the top of his head blown off, but he did not want to have to do the job.
“I’ve come to ask a favour of you, Mr. Falkner,” Ruth blurted out.
Her courage was beginning to ebb. The man looked so formidable now that she was alone with him. His reputation, she knew, was bad. More than once, when she had met him on horseback in the hills, the look in his burning black eyes had sent little shivers through her.
“A favour of me, Mrs. McCoy! Ain’t that a come-down? Didn’t know you knew I was on the map. You’re sure honouring me,” he jeered.
It was his habit to take note in his sullen fashion of all good-looking women. When he had seen her about the ranch or riding with her husband or Larry Silcott he had resented it that this slender, vivid girl who moved with such quick animal grace, whose parted lips and shining eyes were so charmingly eager, had taken him in apparently only as a detail of the scenery.
Now his dark eyes, set deep in the sockets, narrowed suspiciously. What did she want of him? What possible favour was there that he could give her?
“I want to know about the Bald Knob raid,” she hurried on. “Maybe I oughtn’t to come to you. I don’t know. But I’ve got to know the truth of what happened that night.”
“Why don’t you go to your husband, then?” he demanded. “Mac knows as much about it as I do.”
“I went to him. He wouldn’t tell me; said it wouldn’t be right to tell anything he knew.”
“That so?” From his slitted eyelids he watched her closely, not at all certain of what was her game. “Then if it wouldn’t be right for Mac to tell you, it wouldn’t be right for me, would it?” The strong white teeth in his coffee-brown face flashed in a mocking grin.
“That was before the trial. Mr. Yerby said he wouldn’t talk then because you had agreed not to.”
“Oh! So you’ve been to Yerby?”
“Yes. He couldn’t tell me what I want to know.”
“And what is it you want to know particularly?”
“You know what Mr. Silcott testified about—about where the shooting started from and about where the shot came from that killed Mr. Gilroy. I want you to tell me that it wasn’t Rowan fired those shots.”
He considered her a moment warily, his mind loaded with suspicions. Was this a frame-up of some sort? Was she trying to trap him into admissions that would work against him later?
“Well, the trial is past now. Mac can talk if he wants to. Why don’t you go to him?” he asked.
“I’d rather you would tell me.”
He grinned. “Nothing doing to-day, my dear.”
Then Falkner met one of the surprises of his life. Fire flashed from this slim slip of a girl. Her eyes attacked him fearlessly.
“You wouldn’t dare say that if you and Rowan were free,” she blazed.
He let slip a startled oath. “That’s right. I wouldn’t.” The cow-puncher laughed hardily. He could afford to make this admission. Nobody had ever questioned his courage. “All right, ma’am. Objection sustained, as the judge said when Haight kicked on any answer to one of his fool questions. I’ll take back that ‘my dear.’ ”
“And will you tell me what I want to know?”
“That’s another proposition. You got to give me better reasons than you have yet why I should. Do you reckon I’m going to put my cards down on the table while you pinch yours up close? What’s the game? What are you aiming to do with what I tell you?”
“Nothing. I just want to know.”
“What for?”
A little wave of pink beat into her cheeks. “I don’t want—if I can help it—to think of my husband as—as a——”
“A murderer. Is that it?” he flung at her brutally.
She nodded her head twice. The word hit her, in his savage voice, like a blow in the face.
“Then why don’t you ask Mac? Are you afraid he’d lie to you?”
“I know he wouldn’t,” she answered with spirit.
“Well, then?” He watched her with hard eyes, still doubtful of her.
“I’m his wife. Isn’t it natural I should want to know the truth?”
“What are you trying to put over on me? Why don’t you go to Mac and ask him?”
She threw herself on his mercy. “We—we’ve quarrelled. I can’t go to him. There’s nobody else to tell me but you.”
There were dark shadows under the big eyes in the colourless face. She had suffered, he guessed, during these last weeks as she never had before. Life had taken toll of her pride and her gaiety. She looked frail and spent.
Something in the dreariness of her stricken youth touched him. He spoke more gently:
“According to Silcott’s story it lies between me and Mac. If he didn’t fire those shots, I did. Do you reckon I’m going to tell you that he didn’t fire them? Why should I?”
Her eyes fell full in his. “Because I’m entitled to know the truth. I’m in trouble and you can help me. You’re no Larry Silcott. You’re a man. You stood firm at the risk of your life. Even if it is at your own expense, you’ll tell me. Rowan would do as much for your wife if you had one.”
Ruth had said the right word at last, had in two sentences touched both his pride and his gratitude.
“I reckon that beats me, ma’am,” he said. “I owe Mac a lot, and I’ll pay an installment of it right now. Yore husband never fired his gun from start to finish of the Bald Knob raid.”
The light in her eyes thanked him more than words could have done.
“While I’m at it I’ll tell you more,” he went on. “Mac laid the law down straight that we weren’t gunning for Tait. He didn’t want to take me along because he knew I was sore at the fellow, but when I insisted on going the others overruled him. After the killing Mac never once said ‘I told you so’ to the others for letting me go along. What’s more, when they asked questions about who killed Gilroy and who started the shooting, he gave them no satisfaction. He let the boys guess who did it. If Mac had said the word, the rest would have rounded on me. I would have been hanged, and they would have got short sentences. Your husband is a prince, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“I got him and the other boys into all this trouble. He hasn’t flung it up to me once. What do you know about that?”
“I’m so glad I came to see you. It’s going to make a great difference to me.” There was a tremor in her voice that told of suppressed tears.
Ackerman came to the door: “About through?”
The prisoner lifted his upper lip in a sneer. “Better throw your gat on me, Steve. I might make trouble, you know.”