“I RECKON I’LL HANG”
MATSON nodded a pleasant good-morning, offered his prisoner a cigar, and sat down on the bed.
“How’s everything, Mac?”
The cattleman smiled ironically. “Fine as silk, Aleck. How are they a-coming with you?”
“If there’s anything you want, Mac, if the grub don’t suit you or anything, just say the word.”
“I’m not complaining. You run a good hotel, Sheriff.”
Matson looked out of the barred window at the warm sunshine flooding the yard. From where he sat he could not see the blue, unclouded sky, but he knew just how it looked. When his gaze returned to McCoy it was grave and solicitous.
“I’m going to give you straight talk, Mac. Don’t fool yourself. Shoshone County has made up its mind. The men that killed Dan Gilroy are going to hang.”
“Sounds cheerful, Aleck.”
“I’m here for the last time to ask you to come through. If you’ll give evidence for the State I can save you, Mac.”
McCoy looked straight at him from cold, bleak eyes. “We discussed this subject once before, Sheriff. Isn’t once enough?”
“No,” returned the officer doggedly. “I’ve been talking with Haight. Inside of twelve hours he’s going to get a confession out of—well, never mind his name. But the man’s weakening. He’ll come through to save his skin. Mac, beat him to it.”
The cattleman laughed without mirth. “I reckon this confession talk is come-on stuff. Even if any of the boys knew anything, he wouldn’t tell it.”
“Wouldn’t he? You ought to know that there’s always a weak link in every chain. In every bunch of men there’s a quitter.”
“So you’re offering me the chance to be that quitter. Fine, Aleck! You’ve got a high opinion of me. But why give me the chance? By your way of it, I led the raid. There was bad blood between me and Tait. I outfitted some of the boys with guns, you say. According to your theory, I’m the very man that ought to be hanged.”
“I’m not a fool, Mac. I know you didn’t set out to kill. If you ask me who started the gun play I can come pretty near giving his name. It’s a cinch you didn’t. One of your party has been talking, and the rumour is that you saved the herders. Anyhow, I don’t want to see you hang if I can help it.”
“Good of you,” derided the prisoner.
“But that’s what is going to happen if you don’t take my offer. You are going to trial first—and for the killing of Gilroy. You’ll be convicted. The Governor daren’t commute the sentence. Last call, Mac. Will you come through?”
“No, Aleck. I don’t admit I have anything to tell, but if I had I expect I’d keep my mouth shut.”
“Then you’ll hang.”
“Maybe I will; maybe I won’t,” answered Rowan coolly. “I can throw a cat through some of your evidence.”
“Don’t you think it. I’ve got you tied up in a net you can’t break. One of the herders will testify he heard you called ‘Mac’ just after the shooting.”
This was news to McCoy, but he did not bat an eye.
“Heard someone called Mac, you mean, Sheriff. There are quite a few Macs in Shoshone County.”
“Perhaps you don’t know that we have a witness who saw Falkner take a rifle out of the Triangle Dot bunk house a few hours before the raid.”
“I heard Hal was anxious to shoot a deer for meat for the camp.”
“The gun was a .35 Winchester.”
“He used judgment. I always liked a .35 for deer,” commented the prisoner.
“A .35 will kill a man, too,” said Matson significantly. “The shells I picked up in front of the camp at Bald Knob would fit the gun taken from the rack at the Triangle Dot.”
“If I had an imagination like you, Aleck, I’d go in for writing these moving pictures. You’re plumb wasting it here.”
Matson rose. “No use spilling words. Are you going to be reasonable or not?”
The men looked at each other with direct, level gaze.
“I aim always to try to be,” replied McCoy.
“Well, will you come through with what I want, or will you hang?”
“Since you put it that way, Sheriff, I reckon I’ll hang.”
“You damn fool!” exploded the sheriff.
But there was no censure in his voice. The cattleman had done what he would have done under the same test—come clean as a whistle from the temptation to betray his accomplices.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” continued Matson. “But I’ve given you your chance. Don’t blame me.”
McCoy nodded. It was the business of a sheriff to run down crime. The cattleman was too good a sportsman to hold a grudge on that account, even if the officer fastened a rope around his neck.
Though Rowan had been under no temptation to turn State’s evidence, the sheriff left him worried at what he had predicted as to a confession. He might of course be telling the truth. The sheriff had said that there is a weak link in every chain. If so, who was the weak one among the prisoners?
Rogers and Yerby were married. It was likely that Haight and Matson might have been at their wives to harry them into a confession. Women did not always have the same point of view about honour when their feelings were involved. They might have insisted on their husbands saving themselves if they could. But, somehow, neither Rogers nor Yerby seemed the type of man to save himself at the expense of others. Rogers he had known a long time and had never found him anything but reliable. Yerby had been in the neighbourhood six or seven years. McCoy sized up the Texan as a simple man, frank and direct in his thinking. On all the evidence at hand he would live up to the code by which he guided his life.
The other three were single men. There would be less excuse for one of them if he betrayed his friends.
Larry Silcott! No, certainly not Larry. Rowan had tied the young fellow to him by a hundred favours. Moreover, Larry lived in the sunshine of popular applause. He could not go into the witness box to testify against his companions without for ever forfeiting the good opinion of all decent people. It could not be Larry.
Jack Cole! He felt confident it was not Jack. The young fellow was of the stuff that carries through.
This left Falkner. Rowan considered Falkner with no assurance of his loyalty. The man was wild, reckless, and undisciplined. It was hard to predict what he would do under any set of circumstances. He had the reputation of being game, but he was given to suspicions and resentments. It was possible that if they plied him in just the right way he might burst out in invectives against his companions. Suppose, for instance, Haight persuaded him that the others were planning to deliver him as the sacrifice. On the other hand, Falkner was in a different class from the others. He had fired the first shot. He had killed Gilroy and knew that McCoy knew it. If he went on the stand against the others his accomplices would be free to fling the onus of the murders upon him. No, Falkner would not dare weaken.
Rowan’s thoughts drifted from the problem Matson had left with him and reverted to his wife. He was more unhappy about his relationship with her than about the danger to his life. She had asked for his confidence and he had refused it. What else could he do? But his sick heart told him that she had opened a door to the chance of a better understanding between them and he had been forced to shut it again.
Life was full of little ironies that embittered and made vain the best intentions.