Kitabı oku: «Stepsons of Light», sayfa 8
IX
“This to the crowd – speak bitter, proud and high,
But simply to your friend – she loves you not!”
– Le Bret – who scolds.
The five pursuers rode swiftly, with inquiry at several farms about the man on the blue horse. Some had seen him; some had not. He had been riding slowly and he had kept the main road to Greenhorn. They took the Greenhorn Island ford and found good swimming. The quarry had passed through Donahue’s an hour and a half before, taking the road to Arrey. They pushed on furiously. See and Lull fell behind a little.
“Say, this is a rotten deal!” said Charlie. “That man ain’t running away. Not on your life. He no more killed Adam Forbes than I did. You know how long ago we met him. If he was the man that built that branding fire, how does it happen the ashes were still hot when these fellows found it? By their tell and our timing that was near three hours later. We met him about three; if he made that fire it couldn’t have been later than two o’clock, by the looks of his horse. And he’s keeping the same steady gait, and going straight for Hillsboro, just as he told us. We’re gaining on him right along. He’s not trying to get away. Either he’s innocent or he’s got the devil’s own nerve.”
“Innocent. Pete thinks so, too. This crowd tells a fishy story. Did you notice how prompt Caney was to explain why they was there, and why they went down Redgate, and why the stranger shot Adam, and how Adam gave him a chance to shoot him in the back? Always Caney! Say, Hob, that man was too willing by half!”
“And that excitement. I wasn’t surprised at Jody, and I don’t know this man Hales – but wouldn’t you think Ed Caney had seen enough men killed not to fight his head like that? He didn’t have much use for Adam, either. Adam backed him down once. It was kept quiet, but Anastacio told me, on the dead. It tickled Anastacio. No, sir – those three fellows acted like they might be wishin’ to start a stampede. I’m not satisfied a little bit.”
“A grudge? But if one of these ducks is in, they’re all in. This is something else. Or of course it may have been some other person altogether, and these people may have merely lost their heads. Do you reckon that placer hunt of Adam’s might have had anything to do with it? Poor old Adam! We’ll find time to grieve for him after we get the man that rubbed him out.”
“I can’t hardly realize it. It won’t come home to us till we’ve seen him, I expect. I keep saying it over to myself – ‘Adam’s dead’ – but I don’t believe it. And only last night Edith sang that nightingale song after him – poor kid! Say – look at that, will you? You’d think Caney didn’t dare trust us to talk together.”
Caney dropped back to them.
“Can’t you two get any action out of them horses of yourn?” he snarled. “It’ll soon be dark on us. Your horses are enough sight fresher than ours.”
Charlie See jumped his horse up and reined him to his haunches beside Caney, eye to eye; he cocked his hat athwart.
“Now, Mr. Ed Caney,” he said sweetly, “any time you’re not just satisfied with the way I behave you know what you can do. This place is here and this time is now. Fly to it!”
“Why, what’s eating you, Charlie? This spitfire-wildcat-wolf-and-my-night-to-howl thing is a new lay, isn’t it? I always gave you credit for some sense.”
“Your mistake,” said Charlie. “You ride on. I don’t like deputy sheriffs much; especially deputies from Dona Ana; and most extra special and particular, tall deputies from Dona Ana with their faces pitted with smallpox, going by the name of Ed Caney, and butting into my private conversation. Me and old Stargazer will be in at the finish, and we don’t need anybody to tell us how fast to go or nothing like that at all. So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to ride on – that’s what!” said Caney. “You can come along or you can go to hell – I don’t care.”
“It’s a cruel world,” said Charlie. “I’ve heard people call you a fool, but I know better, now. Don’t you worry about us not keeping up.”
Caney drove home the spurs and drew ahead.
They galloped into Arrey.
Yes, they had seen a man on a blue horse. “Filled his canteen here. Peart pair!.. Which way? Oh, right up the big road to Hillsb’ro – him singin’ and the horse dancin’… Oh, maybe half an hour ago. He stayed here quite some time – admirin’ the mountains, I judge, and fillin’ his canteen – him and Josie. Better stay to supper, you-all; looks mighty like rain over yonder.”
They turned squarely from the river valley and pushed up the staircase road. The track was clear and plain, three old shoes and a new one. They climbed the first bench-land step, and saw the long gray road blank before them in the last flame-red of sun. Swift dusk dropped like a curtain as they climbed the next step and saw a slow black speck far ahead in the dim loneliness.
“Got him!” said Jody. “Here, one can trail along behind, while two of us take the right and two go on the left, keeping cover in little draws and behind ridges. We’ll have him surrounded before he knows we’re after him. Way he’s riding, we can head him off long before he gets to the Percha.”
“Fine!” said Hobby Lull. “Fine! He rides into an ambush at dark. Guilty – he fights of course. Innocent – of course he fights! Any man with a bone in his spinal column would fight. First-rate scheme, except that Charlie See and me won’t have it. Innocent, it isn’t hospitable; guilty, we won’t have him shot. The man that killed Adam Forbes has got to hang.”
Leaping, Charlie See’s horse whirled on a pivot and faced the others.
“Speed up, Hobby, and tell that man we’re holding all strangers, him most of all. I’ll hold this bunch. Beat it!”
His voice was low and drawling; he barred the way with quiet steady eyes. The storm-drenched wind blew out his saddle strings, the fringed edges of his gauntlets, the kerchief at his neck, the long tapideros at his feet; it beat back his hat’s broad brim, Stargazer’s mane snapped loose and level; horse and man framed against coming night and coming storm in poised wild energy, centered, strong and tense.
“You darned little meddlesome whiffet!” snarled Jody Weir savagely, as Lull galloped away.
See’s gun hand lay at his thigh. “Talk all you like, but don’t get restless with your hands. I’m telling you! Meddlesome? That’s me. Matt is my middle name. Don’t let that worry you any. I’ve got three good reasons for meddling. I know two of you, and I don’t know the other one. I don’t like waylaying – and I don’t like you. Besides, I love to meddle. Always did. Everybody’s business is my business. You three birds keep still and look sulky. Be wise, now! Me and a rattlesnake has got the same motto: You touch the button and I’ll do the rest.”
Black above and furnace flame below, the tumbling clouds came rushing from the hills with a mutter of far-off thunder. A glimmer of twilight lingered, and sudden stars blazed across the half sky to eastward, unclouded yet.
Hobby Lull cupped his hands and shouted through the dusk: “Hoo-e-ee!”
Johnny Dines halted the blue horse and answered blithely: “E-ee-hoo!”
“Sorry,” said Lull as he rode up, “but I’ve got to put you under arrest.”
“Anything serious?”
“Yes, it is. A man was killed back there to-day.”
“So you want my gun, of course. Here it is. Don’t mention it. I’ve had to hold strangers before now, myself.”
“It isn’t quite so vague as that – and I’m sorry, too,” said Lull awkwardly. “This man was killed in Redgate Cañon and you came through there. I met you myself.”
“Not that big red-headed chap I saw there?”
“That’s the man.”
“Hell, that’s too bad. Acted like a good chap. He chinned with me a while – caught up with me and gave me a letter to mail. Where do we go – on or back? If you take me to the John Cross wagon to-morrow they’ll tell you I’m all right. Down on the river nobody seemed to know where the wagon was. I’m Johnny Dines, Phillipsburg way. T-Tumble-T brand.”
“I’ve heard of you – no bad report either. You live on one county line and I’m on the other. Well, here’s hoping you get safe out of the mess. It isn’t pretty. We’ll take you on to Hillsboro, I guess, now we’re this close. There’s a lot more of us behind, waiting. Let’s go back and get them. Then we’ll go on.”
“Look now – if you’re going on to Hillsboro, my horse has come a right smart step to-day, and every little bit helps. Why don’t you shoot a few lines? They’ll come a-snuffin’ then, and we won’t have to go back.”
Hobby nodded. He fired two shots.
“You ride a Bar Cross horse, I see.”
“Yes. I’m the last hand.” Johnny grinned. “Hark! I hear them coming. Sounds creepy, don’t it? They’re fussed. Them two shots have got ’em guessing – they’re sure burning the breeze! Say, I’m going to slip into my slicker. Storm is right on top of us. Getting mighty black overhead. Twilight lasts pretty quick in this country.”
Rain spattered in big drops. Wind-blown flare of stars and the last smoky dusk and flickers of lightning made a thin greenish light. Shadowy horsemen shaped furiously through the murk, became clear, and reined beside them. Dines took one look at them and directed a reproachful glance at his captor.
“I might not have handed over my gun so nice and easy if I had known who was with you,” he remarked pleasantly. A high spot of color flamed to his cheek. “Just for that, you are going to lose the beauties of my conversation from now on – by advice of counsel. While you are putting on your slickers I merely wish to make a plain brief statement and also to call attention to one of the many mercies which crowd about us, and for which we are so ungrateful. Mercies first: Did you ever notice how splendidly it has been arranged that one day follows directly after another, instead of in between? And that maybe we’re sometimes often quite sorry some day for what we did or didn’t do some other day, or the reverse, as the case may be, or perhaps the contrary? Now the statement: I know two of you men, and I don’t like those two; and for the others, I don’t like the company they keep. So now you can all go to hell, home or Hillsboro, and take me with you, but I’ll not entertain you, not if you was bored to death. I’m done and dumb – till I tell it to the judge.”
X
“When the high heart we magnify
And the sure vision celebrate,
And worship greatness passing by —
Ourselves are great.”
– John Drinkwater.
Mr. George Gwinne sprawled at his graceless ease along two chairs; he held a long-stemmed brier-wood pipe between his bearded lips and puffed thoughtfully. The pipestem was long of necessity; with a short stem Mr. Gwinne had certainly set that beard alight. It was a magnificent beard, such as you may not see in these degenerate days. Nor did you see many such in those degenerate days, for that matter. It was long and thick and wide and all that a beard should be; it reached from his two big ears to below the fifth rib. It was silky and wavy and curly, and – alas for poor human nature! – it was kempt and kept – an Assyrian beard. Yet Mr. George Gwinne was, of all the sons of man, unlikeliest to be the victim of vanity. His beard was a dusty red brown, the thick poll of hair on his big square head was dusky red brown, lightly sprinkled with frost, his big eyes were reddish brown; and Argive Helen might have envied his brows, perfect brows in any other setting; merely comic here – no, no, “tragic” is the word, since all else about the man was coarse of grain and fiber, uncouth and repulsive.
His hands were big and awkward, and they swung from arms disproportionately long; his feet were big and flat, his body was big and gross, he was deep-chested and round-shouldered, his neck was a bull’s neck, his ears were big and red, his head was big and coarse and square, his face was gnarled where it was not forested, his chance-seen lips were big and coarse, his nose was a monstrous beak, his voice was a hoarse deep rumble. And somewhere behind that rough husk dwelt a knightly soul, kindly and tender and sensitive – one of that glorious company, “who plotted to be worthy of the world.”
He had friends – yes, and they held him high – but seeming and report held him pachyderm, and they trod upon his heart. Only to a few have time and chance shown a glimpse of the sad and lonely spirit behind those tired eyes – and they have walked softlier all their days for it. This is not his story; but there will be a heavy reckoning when George Gwinne’s account goes to audit.
Mr. Gwinne’s gaze rested benignantly on a sleeping man; a young and smallish man, very different from Mr. Gwinne in every respect, sprightly and debonair, even in sleep, with careless grace in every line of him, just as he had thrown himself upon the bunk. He had removed hat and boots by way of preparation for bed, and his vest served for a pillow. Long lashes lay on a cheek lightly tanned to olive, but his upper forehead was startling white by contrast, where a heavy hat had shaded it from burning suns. His hands were soft and white; the gloved hands of a rider in his youth. The bunk, it may be mentioned, was behind iron bars; Mr. Gwinne was chief deputy and jailer, and the sleeper was Mr. Johnny Dines.
Mr. Gwinne tapped out his pipe and spoke huskily: “Young feller, get up! Can’t you hear the little birds singing their praises to – ”
“Ur-rgh! Ugh! Ar-rumph-umph!” said Johnny, sitting up.
He started a little as his eyes fell on the bars. He pulled his shoulders together. Recollection followed puzzlement on his yet unguarded face; he passed his fingers through his tousled hair, making further tanglement. He looked at the absurd gigantic figure beyond the bars, and his eyes crinkled to smiling. Then his face took on an expression of discontent. He eyed his bed with frank distaste.
“I say, old top – no offense, and all that, but look now – I’ve never been in jail before. Is the establishment all scientific and everything? No objectionable – er – creepers, you know?”
“Why, you impudent young whelp! Damn your hide, I sleep here myself. If there’s a grayback in my jail I’ll eat your shirt. What in time do you mean by it, hey? Pulling my leg? You’d a heap better be studying about your silly neck, you young devil. Come out of that, now! Nine o’clock, past. Wish I had your conscience. Ten hours’ solid sleep and still going strong.”
“Gee, why didn’t you wake me up? Are they going to hold my preliminary trial this morning or wait till after dinner? I’m sort of interested to see what indiscriminating evidence they’ve got.”
“No trial to-day,” said Gwinne gruffly. “Justice of the peace is up in the hills beyond Kingston, doin’ assessments. They’ve gone after him, but they won’t get back till late to-night.”
“H’m!” Johnny rubbed his nose and looked searchingly at his ridiculously small and shapely feet; he wriggled his toes. “And don’t I eat till His Honor gets back?” he inquired diffidently.
Gwinne rose heavily and shambled to the cell. “If I let you out to eat breakfast with me like a white man – no pranks?”
“Nary prank,” said Johnny.
“She goes,” said Gwinne.
He unlocked the door. Johnny slipped on his high-heeled boots and followed his jailer to the kitchen.
“Water and washpan over there,” said Gwinne, and poked fresh wood in the fire. “Ham and eggs this A. M.” He rumbled a subterranean ditty:
Ham-fat, ham-fat, smoking in the pan —
There’s a mighty sight of muscle on a ham-fat man.
Johnny sent an amused glance up and down his warden’s inches.
“You must have been raised on it, then.”
“Hog and hominy. There’s a comb and brush.”
“Got a comb.” Johnny fumbled comb and toothbrush from his vest, and completed his toilet. “Haven’t you had breakfast yet?”
“Naw. I hated to wake you up, you was hitting it off so regular. And you’re the only prisoner I got now. Court’s just over and the sheriff he’s gone to Santa Fé with my only boarders. Lord only knows when he’ll get back,” said Mr. Gwinne parenthetically. “Jim is a good sheriff, a mighty good sheriff – but when he gets away from home he sees life through a glass darkly. They had him in jail, last time. So I thought we might as well be sociable.”
“Oh! Then you’re the party for me to jolly up when I want favors?”
“No,” said Gwinne regretfully, “I’m not. The justice is gone, the sheriff’s gone, and the district judge is always gone except when court sits here. But the prosecuting attorney – he serves for the whole district, five counties, like the judge, you know – why, by bad luck, he’s right here, a-hoppin’ and a-rarin’. So I’m under orders.”
“Well, so am I. What are they? What can I do to help?” The ham sizzled merrily. “Um-m!” said Johnny appreciatively.
“You might set the table. I’ll do the cooking to-day. If so be you get to be a star boarder you’ll have to do your share of the cooking – though I reckon they’ll want me to keep you under key if you’re bound over. Come to think, this prosecuting person would likely kick like a green bay horse if he knew I was lettin’ you mill round foot-loose. However, he don’t know. How many eggs? Hard or soft?”
“Oh, about four – medium. We can always cook more if we have to. And four pods of chili. But why has the prosecutor got it in for me? He don’t want to cinch me unless I’m guilty, does he?”
“It isn’t that, exactly. You see, it has got out that you ride for the Bar Cross. And the Bar Cross boys got Wade’s goat, some way, down in Cruces. I don’t know what they did, but he’s sure on the peck, and here’s where he stands to break even. Pour the coffee. Tin cow yonder on the shelf.”
“Oh, well – he may have a little fun coming to him,” said Johnny generously. “But let us hope, for his own sake, that he gives me a fair shake when it comes to my trial. If the Bar Cross and the John Cross aren’t just satisfied they are capable of any rudeness – abandoned ruffians! Say, I hope someone took care of my Twilight horse.”
“He’s all right. I put him up with Otto Gans, myself. There, she’s ready. Sientese!” The jailer seated himself opposite the guest. “No butter. You’ll have to excuse me.”
“Butter, hell. Whadya think I am – an incubator kid? Say, there’s a few old vets here in Hillsboro that used to know my dad – me, too, when I was a little shaver, some of them. Spinal Maginnis, George Perrault, Kayler, Nick Galles and Preisser. H’m, let me see – and Jake Blun, Mabury and Page. Could you manage me a palaver with some one or two of ’em after breakfast?”
“Pleasure first, pain afterwards,” growled Gwinne. “You eat a few lines while I hold high discourse to you about the good and great. District attorneys, now. Us being a territory thataway, district attorneys are appointed by the President – allee same like our judges and U. S. marshals and clerks of the court. All of ’em are appointed for four years, the same being the President’s term. Presidents being so constituted by a wise and beneficent Providence, they appoint men from states where said men and their friends, if any, vote for President, and not from our humble midst. ’Cause why? We’re not allowed to vote. More coffee?”
Johnny held his cup. Gwinne took up his discourse.
“Also, and moreover, they appoint politicians. We will not pursue this painful subject further except to add that, New Mexico being what and where it is, these appointees, while they might be first-class men and seldom were – they were always tenth-rate politicians. Because politicians rated higher than tenth-rate demanded something better. Yes. When Grover was in, they all came from Missouri, and they wasn’t so bad but what they might have been worse, with proper care. And now they’re all from darkest Injianny; a doubtful state. Something else, too. Even when they was well-meaning – which often was guessable – why, they’re not our people. We have our little ways and they have their own little ways, and they’re not the same little ways; and they rule us by their little ways. That’s bad. To judge a man by the standards of another time and place is prejudging, and that means oppression, and oppression breeds riots in hell. That is how most trouble starts, I reckon – not understanding, prejudging. Men don’t naturally like to press down. They’d a heap rather comfort and help – if they could just see the way clear. Helping someone out of a tight is just about the pleasantest thing a man can do. But these people Uncle Sam sends here to manage us, they don’t think our thoughts and they don’t speak our tongue. They ask for brick and we bring them mortar; they ask for bread and we rock ’em to sleep. That’s the way I look at it. Won’t you coincide with me?”
“Why, yes,” said Johnny, “now that you mention it – I don’t care if I do.”
The jailer eyed his captive with painful distrust. Then he sighed heavily.
“Flippant and inattentive! A bad mark. Nine more demerits and you’ll be suspended.” He rose and went to a closet and returned with a bottle and glasses. “A long drop and a quick finish!”
“Wishing you the same!” said Johnny Dines. The glasses clinked together.
“So you be advised and don’t waive examination,” resumed Gwinne. “Wade will want you to do that. Don’t you listen to Wade. You make your fight to-morrow. Old Andy Hinkle, the J. P., he’s a homespun. When he hits a drill he hits her with all his carcass, from the ground up, and when he goes a-judging, justice is what he wants. His habit and disposition is real earnest and he mostly brings back what he goes after. You could rake all hell with a fine-tooth comb and not find a worse man to try you – if you killed Adam Forbes. If you did kill him you’re goin’ to lose your shadow soon – and there’s your fortune told, right now.”
“It is my thinking that I will make old bones yet, and tell tales in the chimney corner. Now you sit back and smoke while I wash up,” said Johnny, gathering up the dishes. “I gotta ingratiate myself with you, you know. Go on, now – tell us some more. And how about me having a confidential with my friends?”
“That’s just it. I was a-preparing of your mind, so you wouldn’t be disappointed too much. This prosecuting person, Wade – he done instructed me not to let you see anyone except your lawyer.”
“Lawyer, hell! What do I want of a lawyer?”
“Oh! Then you claim to be innocent, do you?” Gwinne’s silken brows arched in assumed astonishment.
“Well, I hope so!” said Johnny indignantly. “If I was claiming to be guilty, why confab with my friends? Say, this is one raw deal if a fellow can’t get an even break.”
“Wade claims you might frame up something. He was particularly anxious the John Cross shouldn’t hear of it until after your preliminary. Undue influence and all that.”
“Frame up my foot! I didn’t kill that man and I reckon I can prove it if I have any chance to know what evidence they’re going to bring against me.” Again that angry spot glowed on the clear olive of his cheek. “How can I study it over when I don’t know what’s happened or what is said to have happened? I’ll have to go to trial in the dark – no chance to cipher on what’s what, like I would if I had a chance to thresh it out with my friends.”
“Well,” said Gwinne gently, “what’s the matter with me?”
“So that’s all?” said Gwinne, after Dines had told his story. “Sure of it?”
“Absolutely. He rode up while I was branding my long-ear. He gave me a letter to mail and gassed while he smoked a cig, and wandered back the way he came, while I oozed away down the cañon. No more, no less. Said he was prospecting, he did – or did he?” Johnny reflected; remembering then that Forbes in giving him a letter to mail had mentioned location notices. “Yes, he did.”
With the words another memory came into his mind, of the trouble with Jody Weir on day herd – about another letter, that was. This memory – so Johnny assured himself – flashed up now because Weir was one of his five accusers. No – there were only three accusers, as he understood it from the talk of the night before; three accusers, five to arrest him. Yet only one had come actually to make the arrest. Queer!
“Now,” said Johnny, “it’s your turn.”
He curled a cigarette and listened. Early in the recital he rubbed his nose to stimulate thought; but later developments caused him to transfer that attention to his neck, which he stroked with caressing solicitude. Once he interrupted.
“I never stole a calf in a bare open hillside, right beside a wagon road, never in my whole life,” he protested indignantly. “As an experienced man, does that look reasonable to you?”
“No, it don’t,” said Gwinne. “But that’s the story. Adam was found close by your fire – shot in the back and dragged from the stirrup; shot as he rode, so close up that his shirt took fire. And no one rode in Redgate yesterday, but you, and those three, and Adam Forbes.”
“Yes. That might very well be true,” said Johnny.
“It is true. They wouldn’t dare tell it that way if it wasn’t true. Tracks show for themselves. And they knew that good men would be reading those tracks.”
The prisoner rose and walked a little before he made answer. When he spoke at last it was in a more serious tone.
“You see, I’ve got inside information. I know several things you don’t know, that give a different meaning to all this evidence and all these tracks.”
“Well,” said Gwinne, “you need it. A horse’s track leads from the dead man to Garfield – a track that lacks one shoe.”
“My horse had lost a shoe,” said Johnny.
“Yes. You tacked one on him at Sam Gray’s store. But that is not the worst. The worst is that there are three of them and only one of you.” Johnny felt of his neck again, delicately. “By your tell there isn’t any man in the world to help out your bare word. If you have any fresh dope, spill it.”
“I happen to be in a position to state certainly, at first hand, something which modifies the other evidence,” said Dines slowly and confidentially. “I happen to know positively that I didn’t murder that man. That’s exclusive. You only hear me say it – but I know it. So you mustn’t be hurt if I’m not convinced. If the horse tracks say I’m the killer – the tracks are wrong, that’s all. Or wrongly read. You will be best served if you either accept the full assurance of my guilt, and so base your deductions on that, or else accept my innocence as sure, and read sign with that in mind. It gets you nowhere to fit those tracks to both theories. Such evidence will fit in with the truth to the last splinter, like two broken pieces of one stick. It won’t fit exactly with any lie, not the cleverest; there’ll be a crack here, a splinter left over there, unaccountable. For instance, if my accusers are right, the dead man’s horse went down Redgate ahead of me; my tracks will be on top of his wherever we took the same trail.”
“Exactly. That’s what they say. They might have been mistaken. It is hard and stony ground.”
“They may have been mistaken, yes. Someone else will see those tracks. Now you listen close. Listen hard. If it turns out that Jody Weir and his two pardners, coming down Redgate on a run to give the alarm, rode over and rubbed out all tracks made by my horse and the dead man’s horse, wherever they crossed each other – then that’s another mistake they made. For when I left Forbes there were only two fresh tracks in the cañon – tracks of two fresh-shod horses going up the cañon, keeping to the road, and made yesterday. I’m sorry they didn’t take me back to Garfield. I would have liked a peek at those tracks myself.”
“But it rained, and it rained hard.”
Johnny felt of his neck again.
“She sure did,” he agreed. “Started just as this man Lull picked me, like fruit on the bough. I forgot that. Well, anyway, if this Garfield place is half human, then a slew of men went up Redgate Cañon before the rain. There must have been some live ones in the bunch.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that none if I was you,” said the jailer. “I know Garfield, and I know old Pete Harkey, and he was taking the lead. If Adam’s horse came down the cañon after you did, he’ll know it. And if your track and the other were carefully ridden out where they crossed – why, old Pete will see that, too.”
Johnny raised his hand. “That’s what he will see! Hold that idea tight – squeeze it! If I am innocent, those tracks were ridden out and spoiled, till Adam Forbes’ horse went one way and mine another.”
“Well, then – Pete Harkey’ll see that, too; he will think about it once and twice. Don’t you worry. Jerome Martin and Jim-Ike-Jones went along, too, and old man Fenderson, maybe. They’ll see. That’s what they’re going for.”
“Hearsay evidence is no good in court. So I’m going to prophesy in writing – with you to witness and swear to the time of it – that all tracks this side of the murdered man are muddled. That written prophecy may not be evidence, but it will make the judge scratch his head.”
“As much as to say – ”
“Exactly. Someone killed Adam Forbes. You don’t want to forget that. If it wasn’t me – who was it? Well, let me tell you something. It was a mean man. Now you keep still a little, while I think over the meanest man I’ve seen lately.”
Johnny rolled another smoke; and when it was alight he spoke again.
“Curious, when we come to think of it, but the meanest things a man can do is what he does with his mouth. To kiss and tell, for instance; betrayal under trust. We go to church and hear about the crucifixion. We have no hatred for the hands that drove the nails or the soldier who stood guard – scarcely for the fanatics who hounded the innocent to a shameful death. Our loathing is for Judas Iscariot, who betrayed with a kiss.”
Gwinne eyed his captive benevolently.
“Good land of Goshen, son – what on earth has all this got to do with the price of hemp?”
“Everything to do with it. Demand for hemp is going to fluctuate violently if I can swing the deal I have in mind,” replied Johnny, with spirit. “I was just thinking about two traitors I know.”
In a prolonged silence Mr. Gwinne rumpled his beard and refilled his pipe.
“The two Garfield men and the other three did not seem to be agreeing very well,” he said at last. “Lull – he’s the one who arrested you – he went back to Garfield last night. Couldn’t sleep, he said, and they’d be wanting to know in Garfield. The other one, See, the least one, he was round here soon this morning wanting to talk it up with you. He was real feverish about the quarantine.”
