The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 13
THE three friends' conference at the bunkhouse door, where they worked out the details of their proposed defiance of the cattle barons by turning granger in the forbidden bounds, was interrupted by the arrival of Nearing. Manuel was in bed by then, the house was dark, for the three conspirators against the dignity of the cattle barons had prolonged their talk far into the night. Nearing rode into the barnyard, pulling up short when he smelled their smoke.
"Who's there?" he hailed.
The three men answered, each for himself. Nearing did not speak again, and Fred Grubb, out of his long habit of caring for the horses of other men, went to take off the saddle.
"I've got to strike him for my time," Dan said, "but I believe I'll let it go till morning. I don't know, though; he may go off before daylight, he's roamin' the range like a wolf these days. I saw him away over on the other side of Eagle Rock canyon this morning."
"I've got some business with him tonight," Barrett said, getting to his feet.
Nearing had started toward the house, but walked slowly, for he was saddle-stiff and weary. He turned quickly when he heard Barrett hurrying after him.
"I'm surprised to find you here, Ed," he said.
"I know you are," Barrett returned with significant stress.
"What's wrong up at Eagle Rock camp that both of you fellows come down here? Who's looking after the horses?"
"Senator Nearing, I left Eagle Rock camp at noon with Fred Grubb, after he'd saved my life in that trap you and Findlay laid for me."
"What's the matter with you?" Nearing demanded, as if half way between vexation and anger. "I don't like that kind of a joke."
"After you left Findlay over west of Eagle Rock canyon this morning, Senator Nearing, he came to camp with two men, hot-foot on the arrival of a Mexican half-breed with one thumb—the fellow you delegated to come there and put out my humble light. He's over there at camp with a butcher knife through his heart, and the show-down has come between you and me."
"I don't know what you mean—damned if I know what you mean!"
"Fred Grubb can substantiate what I've said. The Mexican is dead, Alvimo killed him as he was slinging his gun to shoot me. That part of it wasn't on the books, Alvino's part; I thought you'd like to know."
Nearing stood as if trying to read in the dark in Barrett's face whether he might be demented. He made a poor pretense of it, as his unsteady voice betrayed.
"Come over here—let me get down to the bottom of this thing you're telling me. There's some mistake, Ed. I don't know anything about a Mexican with one thumb."
Nearing led the way to the front gate, plainly anxious that neither the men at the bunkhouse nor those inside his own dwelling should hear any part of what was to pass. There, in the shadow of the cedars where Alma and Barrett had stood three hours before, the cattleman put his hand on the young man's shoulder and peered again into his face.
"For God's sake, Ed, you don't mean to tell me you suspect me of a plot to murder you!"
"The Mexican was the man who got away that evening in the canyon," Barrett said, stern as judgment, backing out from under Nearing's hand. "You were more interested that day in seeing the thieves get away than stopped. Now this one comes openly into camp today with the avowed intention of killing me. What kind of a compact have you got with these rustlers, Senator Nearing? What hold has that fellow Findlay got over you that makes you step up and lick your bran out of his hand?"
"This is foolish talk from a man of your experience, Barrett—talk that I'd answer in just one way from any other man! Now, let me get at the bottom of your delirium. You say a Mexican was killed by Alvino, just as he was pulling his gun to shoot you. What had you done to provoke the man?"
Patiently, coolly as he was able to command his words, Barrett recounted the morning's experience, not forgetting the warning Manuel had given, nor Fred 'Grubb's positive identification of the slain man as the second thief.
"This is an ugly sort of charge to bring against a man, Barrett," said Nearing, almost convincingly grave and severe. "What motive can you supply out of your insane imagination; why should I want you taken off in this plotted, melodramatic way?"
"There's an old piratical axiom that covers the case," Barrett replied, unmoved by Nearing's sarcasm.
"If you mean that dead men tell no tales, why, in the name of God, should I want to stop your little tongue? Consider that I've dealt openly with you from the start, offered to show you the books, go into the business with you in every detail, which you refused. I sent you to the range knowing very well your purpose was to spy on me. If I'd been afraid of you getting anything on me, Barrett, wouldn't I have refused to put you to work?"
"You didn't expect me to find out anything. When we ran into those two thieves, and I broke the code by removing one of them from his profitable activities, I found out too much. Findlay wanted to pay me off for that from the very first minute. Neither of you expected a greenhorn to stumble into your secrets as headlong as I was pitched."
"Your imagination would be worth a fortune to you in fiction, Barrett, but it's a dangerous gift to let have free rein on the range. What advantage would there be to me in this compact of thieves you've framed? Why should any man rob himself?"
"I don't know, Senator Nearing. But I do know Findlay is the directing hand in the rustling that's making such wholesale raids on the herds of this company. Maybe you got involved with him in some way and can't pull out. He's got a lead on you some way that you don't seem to be able to break. I saw that the night he made you leave your gun off before he'd talk with you in the cabin up at Eagle Rock camp."
"Barrett"
Nearing stopped, stood silent a while. Barrett heard the latch of his throat click drily as he swallowed at the anxiety the darkness hid in his face. And again:
"Barrett"
"Senator Nearing, if you're involved with that crook and can't cut loose—if there's anything in this world I can do to help you, talk to me like a man!"
"There's nothing to all this nonsense, Barrett," Nearing gathered himself in the admirable strength that was his in hiding his emotions, holding his voice steady. "What can I do to satisfy you that everything's straight on the inside of this ranch?"
"Fire Dale Findlay, clean out his gang."
"That's an unreasonable demand, Barrett."
"From your side of it, Senator Nearing. You're in the boat with him; you're afraid, you can't fire him!"
"By God! Barrett!"
"It's a nasty dose, but you'll have to swallow it. You can either come clear with me, sir, fire that scoundrel and his men, or I'll report the facts as I know them to every stockholder in this company!"
"You'll never leave here to spread your damned slanders!"
Nearing spoke in choked, smothered voice; Barrett heard his pistol scrape the leather as he jerked it from the sheath.
Barrett had read the cattleman's desperate intention in his first word; it was as plainly revealed to him as if daylight had discovered the movement of his hand to his weapon. Barrett bent low, sprang forward, caught Nearing's arm as he threw the pistol down to fire.
They struggled breast to breast for a moment, Nearing making no sound save a low one in his throat like a strangled sob. In that brief struggle the pistol was discharged; its report broke fearfully upon the quiet of the night. The flash revealed Nearing's face close to Barrett's own, white, frightful in its passion and fear. By a wrench of Nearing's arm Barrett sent the weapon flying among the cedars near the gate.
Gustin and Grubb came running, the sound of their feet heavy in the stillness which fell again as suddenly as night closed after the momentary flash of Nearing's gun. In the house a woman's voice was raised in the clamor of alarm. Nearing and Barrett stood submerged in the deeper darkness of the cedars; near the corral gate the running men had stopped, listening, cautious of rushing into something they could not see. Before they started forward again the front door opened, and Alma came speeding to the spot where the actors in the averted tragedy stood.
"Uncle Hal! I heard Uncle Hal's voice!" she said, pausing a little way from the gate, a fearful tremor in her tone.
"I'm here," Nearing answered, shaken, hoarse, the dying flash of his passion and his fear that drove him to attempt Barrett's life, leaving him weak.
Alma was beside him in a bound, clinging to him, pleading to know what had happened. Barrett could see her face, dim and nebulous as a mist-hidden star, lifted to him in wild appeal.
"It was only—it was just—" Nearing groped, lost for a word to cover his cowardly attempt.
"I fired at something I imagined," Barrett said. "I was nervous after what happened today. I ought to have had more sense."
Grubb and Gustin came up, stumbling in the dark. They heard Barrett's explanation, and spoke to each other in low words. A white-clad figure stood in the door, the dim light of a lamp in an inner room reaching faintly into the hall.
"It's all right, Aunt Hope—it was Mr. Barrett, shooting at nothing," Alma explained, a tilt of contempt in her words.
"Nothing, nothing at all," said Nearing, catching quickly at the absolution offered, a comforting lightness in his relieved tone.
Manuel came around the house with a lantern, holding it high to peer under it. He stood so a moment, flooding the group with sudden light. Alma had thrown a cloak over her nightdress; her hair was in confusion. She stood clinging to her uncle's arm, the arm so lately lifted in murderous intent. A moment her great eyes swept Barrett, who stood a little distance farther along toward the gate; quick, searching, questioning eyes. From Barrett back to Nearing, and to the cattleman's empty holster. A wild light of revelation leaped into her face; she searched the ground in a fearful, sweep ing glance. Manuel lowered the light and came forward.
"Go to your aunt, child," Nearing directed the girl.
Alma turned obediently back to the porch, where Mrs. Nearing stood exclaiming and moaning. Nearing spoke in Spanish to Manuel, who retreated with his light.
"I'll see you two in the morning," Nearing said to Gustin and Grubb, by way of dismissal for them. "Yes, yes—I'll come in a minute"—to his wife, who stood at the porch railing calling his name.
Alma took her aunt into the house, closing the door as if to say that she knew very well that something remained unfinished between the two principals in the mysterious midnight conference that had been broken by such a dramatic interference. When Nearing and Barrett again stood alone, the cattleman unbuckled his belt and holster, and threw them on the ground near Barrett's feet.
"If you can find that fool gun of mine, Barrett, hang it on the porch," he said. "You ought to throw it in the river—I'm not to be trusted with it any more!"
Barrett did not speak. Trouble had multiplied upon him in these few minutes until he felt its sombre weight. Nearing turned toward the house; stopped, came back.
"Barrett, you're right about it. Findlay's got me where he could ruin me with a word. I can't discharge him, I can't discharge the lowest of his gang."
"Is there anything I can do to help you?" Barrett asked, moved with pity by the hopelessness of the man's word and bearing.
"Help!" Nearing repeated, infinitely bitter. "There is no help when a man like me can't help himself!"
He came a step nearer, leaned forward in his earnestness, speaking almost in Barrett's face.
"Can you think it a trivial matter, a compact between thieves, when I'd lift my hand against you to keep it locked a little longer with its damned consuming fire in my heart? Help! By God, Barrett! I tell you I've been riding the range like a madman for two days, hoping to rid myself of that wolf. But he's never alone; they're always with him, close to him as his shadow."
"But how long is this thing going to keep on?"
"Till one of us is dead!"
"He doesn't appear to be after you very hard," said Barrett, unable yet, for all the cattleman's dramatic earnestness, his half confession, to absolve him of some scoundrelly partnership in a criminal business that had grown out of his control.
"No; he wants to suck the last drop of my living blood!"
"But your friends, Senator Nearing"
"They can only destroy me if they interfere. I've suffered alone, I've burned, to avoid the disgrace and pain this scoundrel could bring to those who love me."
"I don't suppose it matters who—who—clears the atmosphere of that scoundrel, as long as it's done," Barrett said.
"Who can reach him if I fail? Barrett, you can't bring down a shadow with your gun. I've tried for two days to head off what they'd set to spring on you, but the wind is as vulnerable as that cat. He leads me on to my just vengeance only to laugh at me. But my hour will come!"
Barrett could feel the spirit of baffled vengeance, of hollow weariness, that bore on Nearing, making him old far beyond his years. The days since he had seen Nearing at Eagle Rock camp must have been filled with extraordinary cares and troubles to wear away his spirit so.
"Fire him, you say, turn him out. It's been my problem to get rid of him for, I don't know how long—years, years! How in the hell to do it, how in the hell to do it! There's only one way, by God! one way."
"Things must go on then, the way they've been going, till the clock strikes? We must keep on contributing our gain, and more, to this thief to keep his mouth shut and save you from the fire of your own kindling. Senator Nearing, it isn't square, it isn't right. It's got to stop, you've got to cut loose from that man, and do it at once. If you can't, deputize the power to me, some way, any way. I'll tell him he's fired, I'll rid the range of him!"
"Don't you understand, don't you understand?" Nearing repeated it slowly, dully, hopelessly, as one might appeal to the dead. "It can't be done, Barrett; I'm a ruined man the day he speaks, no matter who's in power for the company. To save myself, my name, my honor, my dearer than life, I've got to hold my place as president of this company till he's out of the way. After that—anybody—I don't care who."
Again he turned to the house; again he came back.
"I've told you more than any living soul besides myself and Findlay knows, Barrett. I've done this to square myself a little with you, to show you the provocation for my flare-up a little while ago. Consider my worried mind, consider—everything, and let it pass, will you, Ed?"
"I ought to have more sense than to go shooting at shadows," said Barrett, with regret as simply expressed as if it had been that way.
Nearing's gait was that of an old man as he mounted the steps and entered the house. Barrett groped about beneath the cedars until he found the pistol. He loaded the empty chamber, hung the weapon in its holster on the gate, and stood there revolving in his mind the confession he had heard from this man, in whom there seemed to be neither contrition nor remorse; only fear for the consequences of exposure. It seemed a strange moral bias for a man to adjust himself to, yet quite in keeping with the baronial ethics of the range.
Whatever it might be that Findlay held over him, it was not so grave that the president of the Elk Mountain Cattle Company could be justified in his treason to those who had trusted him, in one instance, at least, with their all, A man must be a coward in his soul who would go on living the life of a felon against his will, to shield himself from some rash, hot-headed deed.
Perhaps Nearing had pulled his gun on some other man as he had slung it on Barrett there at the gate. Murder might be the hold that Findlay held over him. But one man's word against another man's would not convict, especially when men held the relative positions in society of Nearing and the superintendent of the Diamond Tail.
Outside the crime of murder there were few in the code of the range to give a man concern, cattle stealing alone excepted. In the cattle barons' law that offense transcended all others. That was a crime which called for no trial. Condemnation went with the very discovery; sentence was outstanding against every member of that accursed and driven tribe.
So it came down at last in Barrett's conclusion that Nearing had been a rustler in his day, involved with Findlay, perhaps. Should Findlay betray him, Nearing might swing as the most despicable of outlaws on some bleak-limbed cottonwood at the river side. It must be that. There was not room for any other fear so great in the heart of a man who had faced so long the perils and hardships of the range.
Findlay alone must share this secret with Nearing, or it would not be a weapon of such force in his hands. Divide it between three men, or five, and it would grow correspondingly weaker. Nearing had not said'the secret was Findlay's alone, but his manner had justified that conclusion. He was ready, anxious, to do murder to free himself of the driving hand; he plotted against Findlay's life with the craft of a man seeking to destroy a cattle-killing beast, notorious for a hundred miles.
Barrett could picture that grim chase, that stalking, that tireless riding, that wait and watch for an unguarded moment. He could see the dark sneer of the hunted man's face, who rode in confidence, defiant, without fear, hedged around by watchful eyes. Nearing must be preserved, he must be kept alive to wear away his heart in vengeful, fatuous gnawing. Dead, the shadow under which Findlay pursued his wholesale robbery would be lifted; other hands would take up the direction of the company's business, Findlay would be forced to flee for his life. While Nearing lived this shameful robbery must go on. Unless, unless
There would be no such ending, though, to Nearing's disgraceful bondage. Findlay would not lay himself open to the peril of the cattleman's long-burning vengeance. It seemed logical that Findlay had confined his stealing to the Diamond Tail ranch for the past several years, at least. It would have been folly to extend his operations, Barrett reasoned, and run risks, when he could work his deviltry in safety there. And to put an end to the loss that was ruining the company, eating up the little patrimony that was so much to the Barretts; to end this tragic, shameful, disastrous conspiracy, Dale Findlay must die. There seemed to be no other way.
Barrett forgot his companions who waited for him anxiously at the bunkhouse door; forgot the lapse of time, for a little while the place. He stood in the black shadow of the cedars, his thoughts projected over the range like a sweeping searchlight beam, seeking to compass the fall of this dark robber, who held the soul of a man, no matter how weak and guilty a man, in his hand and crushed it, little by little, day by day.
A soft sound in the path behind him drew him back from this thought-winging search, Alma. She had struck a match to look under the cedars for her uncle's gun, missed from his holster when she stood beside him there a little while ago, the truth half guessed.
She bent low, holding the branches aside, the light of her match strong on her face. Barrett was not more than twenty feet from her, but unseen. She applied another match to the flickering spark of the first, pushing her search with little rustlings among the branches. Barrett hoped she would pass without discovering him.
A little while in that spot, and she gave over the search, turning to the cedars on the other side of the gate, close against which Barrett stood. When her next match flashed, held in the cup of her hand against the low breath of wind, she discovered him, and the weapon she sought hanging beside him on the fastenings of the gate.
Alma started, exclaiming softly in surprise. Her little flame, caught for a moment unshielded, was whipped out by the wind.
"I didn't know anybody was here," she said, in the senseless speech of confusion.
"I should not have been," Barrett returned, in confusion scarcely less than her own. "I guess I was moonstruck—on a cloudy night."
"You know what I came to look for."
"It's here," he said, "Senator Nearing asked me to hang it on the porch. He was tired carrying the weight of it."
She touched his arm when she reached to take the heavy belt and pistol; she ran her fingers along it, as one blind, until she found his hand. Firm and warm, friendly and assuring, was the pressure of her fingers for the moment before she relieved him of his charge.
"I slandered you tonight, Mr. Barrett," she owned in contrition. "You are a man among men!"
She sped away to the house again as silently as she had come. Perhaps Barrett might be forgiven if, at that moment, he felt himself very nearly a hero, after all.