Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 22/Number 2/The Fluctuating Package/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
FOLLOWING UP SUSPICIONS.
ONE event followed another so rapidly that Ruthven could not keep track of them. He realized dimly that the horses were running away and that he was being bounced around in the back part of the wagon in imminent danger of going overboard. He had vague, uncertain glimpses of a bag of flour, a case of tomatoes, and a side of bacon dancing in the air; and then, after a few seconds of this demoralizing experience, something like an earthquake took hold of the mountain wagon and shook it as a terrier shakes a rat.
Following this, the storm gave way to a fearsome calm. Ruthven was dizzy and dazed. The first thing he comprehended was that he was no longer in swift and violent motion. He sat up, and, by degrees, took firmer hold of his unsteady faculties. Under him was the hard earth, and all around lay fragments of the mountain wagon. A wheel, beautifully smashed, was within easy reach of his hand. An axle stuck out of the ground a few yards off, with another wheel, fairly intact, on its upper end. The boards that had formed the box had been wrenched one from another and were scattered hither and yon. A little way off, at the side of the tail, lay a large bowlder. It was the reef on which the wagon had been wrecked.
Ruthven, after making sure that he had escaped with only a few minor bruises and contusions, arose to his feet and looked along the trail for the horses. They were not in sight. Facing the other way, he tried to discover some trace of the two holdup men. This was equally fruitless. In the middle distance, however, something moved which upon investigation proved to be William Martin. He was on the ground and struggling to get rid of the dashboard, through which he had run his head to the shoulders.
"Are you hurt, Martin?" Ruthven asked.
"Not a hull lot, I reckon. Pull this bloomin' thing off o' me, will you?"
Ruthven removed the dashboard. "I guess the horses ran away," he remarked uselessly.
"Oh, no," jeered the cowboy, "it ain't possible! They just started for the Musselshell in a hurry and didn't stop to consider. I ain't a-wonderin' they got skeered. Them road agents certainly threw a crimp into me. What can you expect o' bronks when a reasonin' human can't put up with such doin's?"
He hoisted himself erect and gazed northward. "I reckon Ginger and Pete are halfway to the ranch by now," he went on, and turned for a look the other way. "Highwaymen ain't in sight nuther. We must be a plumb mile from where they tried to stop us." He added quizzically: "Which 'u'd you ruther be, robbed or run away with?"
"Hobson's choice, Martin," said Ruthven, with a laugh. "It was out of the frying pan and into the fire, seems to me."
"I was all right till the seat jounced out," resumed Martin, "and when that went I went along. The ground h'isted itself and hit me an awful crack. Blamed if I know where or how I picked up the dashboard. There was a kind of blank after I come down, and when I got back to earth I was laborin' to git clear of that front end o' the wagon. I allow that vee-hick-le is beyond mendin'. This ort to convince the old man that Ginger and Pete ain't got the right dispositions to drive double, or"
He bit off his words abruptly. "Say," he asked in trepidation, "I wonder what-all's become o' them boots?"
"We'd better hunt around and find out," suggested Ruthven. "The robbers mentioned the boots, if I remember."
"They sure did. Wasn't that a funny stunt? Holdin' us up just for nothin' but to annex the old man's footgear. Come on and let's hunt."
They went back to the bowlder that had played such havoc with the wagon, but could not find the parcel in the wreckage; then, following the route taken by the runaway horses, they proceeded on and on, sharply scanning the ground as they went. The first thing they found was the box that had held the tomatoes. It was broken and empty. The cans were scattered in all directions. Later they found the flour, and presently the bacon. Then, just as they were about to lose hope, they happened upon the package. It was partly demolished. The wrapper was torn, the cord was broken, and the top of the pasteboard box was off. One of the tan bluchers had kicked through, and only its laced top lay in the original container. The other boot was with it.
"Gosh, I'm glad o' that!" breathed Martin thankfully. "I don't care a whoop about the wagon, but if anything had happened to them boots the old man would never have forgiven me."
Ruthven picked up the tan bluchers and looked them over curiously. There was nothing inside nor outside to arouse the least suspicion. He investigated the smashed pasteboard box, the torn wrapper, and even the cord. There was absolutely no clew to the mystery that had surrounded the package ever since McKenzie had passed it over the counter of the Burt City express office. At one side of the soiled and dusty wrapper Ruthven found the penciled cross which he had placed on the package for purposes of identification.
"What's on your mind?" asked Martin.
"Oh, nothing much," answered Ruthven wearily. "I've had a look inside the package when it weighed the heaviest, and all I've found is the footgear. This is enough to give a man a brain storm."
"Don't pester your mind with things you can't understand," advised the cowboy. "That's the shortest cut you can take to the crazy house. When Ginger and Pete git to the ranch some un will drive this way with another wagon to pick us up. I reckon we better collect all the freight in one place, and then sit down on it and wait."
This was a good idea. The cans of tomatoes, some of them badly dented, were gathered in and heaped in a pile, The flour was carried to the same spot, and then the bacon. On top of the plunder were placed Tom Barton's boots. While Ruthven worked he was thinking.
The man who had jumped into the road in front of the bronchos and leveled the six-guns was one whom Ruthven was confident he had never seen before. His voice had apparently not been disguised in the least, and it was strange in Ruthven's ears. But the other man, the one who had stepped out of the brush and walked toward the rear of the wagon, had somehow a familiar aspect. Without having seen his face, his build and bearing suggested Weasel Morrison. There had been no time to consider this point before, for the excitement connected with the bolting of the bronchos had left Ruthven a trifle bewildered, and with other things on his mind. Now the matter fairly forced itself on his attention.
Morrison, jumping from Seventeen between stations, could very easily have reached Dry Wash during the previous night by another passenger train or by a freight. But why was he there, on the trail to the ranch, making an attempt to hold up Martin and relieve him of that express package? Here was a clew which, if carefully followed, might solve the mystery of that Barton shipment.
Perhaps an hour and a half after the smash a man drove from the ranch with a team and buckboard and halted near the wreck and the two who were lounging in the shade by the pile of provisions.
"Don't you-all know how to drive, William?" the newcomer inquired.
"Don't try to rub it in, Hank Doubleday," growled Martin. "I reckon I've gone through a plenty without takin' any back talk from you. A couple o' road agents tried to hold us up and make off with the old man's boots."
"Go on!"
"And them long-legged trouble makers at the pole just nacherly cut loose and rambled across the landscape like a pair of skeered coyotes. That's a fact. This here," and Martin indicated the man beside him, "is Mr. Lewis Ruthven, Tom Barton's nephew from the lower ranch. He's goin' along to the Musselshell."
"I don't believe I'll go along, Martin," spoke up Ruthven.
"What!"
"Something ought to be done in the matter of those two chaps who tried to rob us. I guess I'll hoof it back to Dry Wash and see if they can't be located."
"How'll you locate 'em? You don't know who to look for. Better pass it up and keep on to the ranch with Hank and me."
"Tell my uncle I'll see him later," Ruthven answered, getting up and starting southward. "Maybe nothing will come of this, but I think we ought to try to do something."
"Well, if you've got the bit in your teeth I won't try to head you off; but say, I'll wait here while Hank drives you back to town."
"The walk will do me good. After being knocked around in the wreck I'll feel all the better for limbering up. So long!"
He started on with a swift, steady stride, and Martin and Doubleday watched him until he was nearly out of sight.
"And that's the cimiroon who trimmed Big Eph!" muttered Doubleday. "Too blamed bad he can't get along with his daddy, and is more or less of a black sheep."
"I'm not takin* much stock in that black-sheep talk," said Martin. "I reckon Ruthven is human and has his failin's, same's the rest of us; but he's got nerve. And build!' Say, Hank, did you look at the build of him? How'd you like to have him tackle you in a football scrimmage, eh? The old man said he was picked for an All-America Eleven. I don't think Barton is down on him much on account of the fuss he had with his father."
While the two cowboys continued to talk and to load the freight into the buckboard, Ruthven proceeded in the direction of town. He had not many miles to travel and was not a great while in covering them, but it was nearly two o'clock when he turned in at Grandy's store.
Grandy, of course, was surprised. "Didn't you start for the Musselshell?" he inquired.
"Yes," replied Ruthven, "but I came back. Horses ran away and strung the wagon along the road. I waited until another rig had come for Martin, and then I headed this way."
"Got all vou wanted of ranch life so quick?" said Grandy, with a knowing grin.
Ruthven paid no attention to the remark. "Have you seen any strangers in town, Grandy?" he inquired.
"One," was his reply. "He's over to the hotel now."
"Much obliged," said the other, and left the store.
Could it be possible that the stranger was Weasel Morrison? If so, then the fugitive crook was playing a bold hand to come into Dry-Wash and stop openly at the hotel. But that was the character of the man.
"Stranger putting up here, Atkins?" he asked of the hotel proprietor, who was sitting on the porch.
"Yes—Arthur Robinson, of Bismarck, North Dakota. He's in his room now, the room you had. I thought you had gone to Barton's ranch to"
Ruthven did not linger to explain why he had not continued on to the ranch, but hurried through the hotel office and up the stairs to the room he had occupied the night before. He was ready to take Morrison by surprise, if the stranger really proved to be the crook masquerading under a fictitious name. He rapped on the door.
"What's wanted?" called a voice—not Morrison's voice, but another even more familiar.
Ruthven stifled an exclamation of astonishment, and turned the knob. The door was unlocked and flew open. A hatchet-faced man sprang up from a chair and stared in amaze.
"Ruthven, by thunder!" he gasped. "Lewis Ruthven, of all men in the world!"
"Hackett!" exclaimed Ruthven. "Hackett, the detective who has been after Weasel Morrison for weeks and weeks. By George, I'll bet I know why you're here!"