MATSON MAKES HIS GATHER
LIKE wildfire the news spread through western Wyoming that Tait and Gilroy had been shot down in their sheep wagon by night raiders. Soon there was no ranch so deep-hidden in the hills, no herder’s camp so remote that the story had not been carried there. The tale was a nine-days’ wonder, a sensation that gave zest to colourless lives. The identity of the raiders was a mystery that promised much pleasant gossip.
Furtive whispers of names began to be heard. That of Falkner was mentioned first. He had made threats against Tait, and he was known to be quarrelsome and vindictive. Then the murmured gossip took up the name of McCoy, added shortly to it those of Cole and Silcott. It was known that all four of the suspected men had been absent from the round-up the night of the killing. Two of them were enemies of Tait, the others had been mixed up in the cattle-sheep feud. By their own statements they had all been together during the hours when the raid took place.
The gossipers had no direct evidence, but a great deal of opinion was whispered back and forth in corrals, on porches, and in the saddle. The sentiment was general that Tait had for a long time laid himself open to such an end. But Gilroy was a good citizen, not turbulent, friendly to his neighbours. His murder stirred a deep but not too loudly expressed resentment.
Meanwhile Sheriff Matson moved about his business of gathering evidence with relentless singleness of purpose. He, too, heard whispers and followed them to sources. He rode up and down the country piecing this and that together until he had a net of circumstance encircling the guilty ones.
From one of the herders whom McCoy had saved he gathered valuable information. The man had been awakened by the sound of firing. He had run to the door of the wagon in time to see Gilroy shot down. Tait was already down. The herder had been saved by one of the attackers who had stood between him and another and prevented the second man from murdering him. The first man had called the other one Hal. The raiders were all masked and he had not recognized any of them.
“I ain’t lost any of them raiders, Mr. Sheriff,” the man said with a kind of dogged weakness. “If I know too much, why someone takes a shot in the dark at me an’ that’s the last of Johnnie Mott. No, sir, I done told you too much already. I was plumb excited, an’ maybe I ain’t got it jest the way it was. He mighta called the other fellow Hardy instead of Hal.”
“He might have, but he didn’t, Mott. Keep yore mouth shut and you don’t need to worry about gettin’ shot. I’ll look after you if you’ll stay right here in town. You can hold down that job I got you as janitor at the court house. Nobody’s gonna hurt you any.”
One of the whispers Matson heard took him to Dunc King. That young man had, as usual, been talking too much. The sheriff found him at his mother’s ranch mending a piece of broken fence.
“ ’Lo, Dunc. How’s everything?” the officer asked by way of greeting.
The young man looked at him with suspicion and alarm. “Why, all right, I reckon. How’s cases with you, Sheriff?”
“I hear you had a little talk with Hal Falkner the night of the raid. Do you remember exactly what he said to you?”
“Why, no. I don’t remember a thing about it,” the young man returned uneasily. He knew his tongue had once more tripped him up.
“You will if you think hard, don’t you reckon? You remembered it well enough to tell Flanders and Mrs. Henson. I’ll start you off. Falkner an’ you were discussing the reason why so many men left camp after supper. He told you Larry Silcott had told him Tait was across the dead line again. Recollect that?”
“Why, no. I don’t guess I do, Sheriff.”
“You’d better, Dunc, onless you want to get into mighty serious trouble.”
“Sho! Nothing to that, Sheriff. Nothing a-tall. I might’ve got to shootin’ off my mouth the way I sometimes do. Kinda playin’ like I was on the inside, y’ understand.”
“Or, on the other hand, you might be trying to duck out from responsibility, Dunc. Don’t make any mistakes, boy. You’re going to come through with what you know.”
“But I’m tellin’ you I don’t know a thing,” the boy protested.
“Not what you told several other people. How about it, Dunc? You want to be an accessory to this crime?”
“No, sir, an’ I ain’t aimin’ to be either. If I knew anything I’d tell you, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know, can I?”
The young man was no match for the sheriff. Before Matson had left the place he knew all that King did.
Forty-eight hours later the sheriff with a posse rode up to the Circle Diamond Ranch. Rowan McCoy was sitting on the porch oiling a gun. The first glance told him that Matson had two prisoners, the second that they were Falkner and Silcott.
Matson swung from the saddle and came up the steps to the porch.
“I’ve got bad news for you, Mac,” he said bluntly. “You’re under arrest.”
The cattleman did not bat an eye. “What for?” he asked evenly.
“For killing Gilroy and Tait.”
“The damn fool’s going around arrestin’ everybody he knows, Mac,” broke in Falkner.
McCoy observed that Falkner was hand-cuffed and that Silcott was not.
He asked the sheriff a question. “Do I understand that you’ve arrested Hal an’ Larry for this, too?”
“Yes, Mac. Larry behaved sensible an’ promised not to make any trouble, so I aim to be as easy on him as I can. Falkner had other notions. He tried to make a gun play.”
“You takin’ us to Wagon Wheel, Aleck?”
“Yes.”
“You have a warrant for my arrest?”
The officer showed the warrant and Rowan glanced over it.
“All right,” said McCoy. “I’ll saddle up an’ be ready in a jiffy.”
“No need for that, Mac. Fact is, I’m not quite ready to start. Got a little more business to do first. If you don’t mind I’ll make the Circle Diamond my headquarters for a few hours,” Matson proposed amiably.
The owner of the ranch answered pleasantly but perhaps with a touch of sarcasm. “Anything you say, Aleck. If yore boys are here at dinner time I expect Mrs. Stovall can fix you-all up.”
“Sure, Mac, an’ if he needs horses or guns probably you can lend him a few,” Falkner added with an oath. “An’ maybe a puncher or two to join his damned posse.”
“No use gettin’ annoyed, Hal,” the ranch owner said quietly. “This looks like a silly business to us, but Aleck has to make his play. He’s not arrestin’ us for pleasure. I reckon he thinks he’s got some evidence, or maybe he wants to scare us into thinkin’ he has some so he can pick up something against someone else.”
“You’ll find I’ve got evidence aplenty, Mac,” the sheriff answered mildly. “No hard feelings, you understand. All in the way of business. Have I got yore word if I don’t put the cuffs on you that you’ll go with me to Wagon Wheel quietly?”
“Yes. We’re not desperadoes, Aleck. We are just plain hill ranchmen. If you’d just mentioned it we’d have come in without any posse to guard us.”
“H’mp!” The sheriff made no other comment. He glanced at Falkner by way of comment on McCoy’s criticism. “I’m leavin’ three of the boys here, Mac. Be back here myself in a few hours, I reckon. If I don’t get back I’ve arranged for you to make a start for town about two o’clock. That agreeable to you?”
“Any time that suits you,” McCoy answered.
The sheriff was back within the specified time limit. He brought with him Rogers and Yerby. From a remark he dropped later McCoy learned that Cole had been arrested earlier in the day at Wagon Wheel.
“You are makin’ quite a gather, Aleck,” said Rogers. “There are several other ranchmen up here you’ve overlooked. How about them?”
“I’ve got all I want for the present, Brad,” the sheriff replied.
His manner was not reassuring, nor was the fact that he had picked out and arrested just the six men who had been engaged in the night raid.
Silcott, temperamentally volatile, was plainly downhearted. McCoy manœuvred so that he rode beside him when they took the road.
“Don’t you worry, Larry,” the older man said in a cheerful voice, but one so low that it carried only to the ears of the man it addressed. “He can’t make his case stick, if we all stand pat on our story.”
“I’m not worried, Mac, but he must know something or he wouldn’t be arresting us. That’s a cinch.”
“He knows a little, an’ guesses a lot more, an’ figures probably that there’s a quitter among us. That’s where his case will break down. All we’ve got to do is to keep mum. In a week or so we’ll be ridin’ the range again.”
“Yes,” agreed Larry, but without conviction.