Square Deal Sanderson Part 18

Sanderson turned. There was a mirthless grin on his face. He spoke loudly, calling the jailer.

When the latter appeared in the corridor beside Silverthorn, Sanderson addressed him without looking at the other:

"You ain't on your job a heap, are you? There's a locoed coyote barkin' at me through the door, there. Run him out, will you--he's disturbin' me plenty."

He turned from the door, stretched himself on the cot, and with his face to the wall listened while Silverthorn cursed.

CHAPTER XV

DALE PAYS A VISIT

Shortly after midnight Sanderson was sound asleep on the cot in the cell when a strange, sc.r.a.ping noise awakened him. He lay still for a long time, listening, until he discovered that the sound came from the window. Then he sat up stealthily and looked around to see, framed in the starlit gloom of the night, the face of Barney Owen, staring in through the window at him.

The sight of Owen enraged Sanderson, but his curiosity drove him to the window.

The little man was hanging to the iron bars; his neck muscles were straining, his face was red and his eyes bright.

"Don't talk, now!" he warned. "The boss of the dump is awake and he'll hear. He's in his room; there's n.o.body else around. I wanted to tell you that I'm going to knock him silly and get you out of this!"

"Why?" mocked Sanderson, lowly.

Owen's face grew redder. "Oh, I know I've got something coming, but I'm going to get you out all the same. I've got our horses and guns.

Be ready!"

He slipped down. Sanderson could hear his feet thud faintly on the sand outside.

Sanderson got into his clothes and stood at the cell door, waiting.

For a long time he heard no sound, but presently he caught the clank of a door, followed by a swift step, and Owen stood in the corridor before the cell door, a bunch of keys in his hand.

There was no word spoken. Owen unlocked the door, Sanderson slipped out, Owen pa.s.sed him the six-shooter he had lost in the barroom of the Okar Hotel, and the two slipped noiselessly down the corridor.

A minute later they were mounting the horses that Owen had brought, and shortly afterward they were moving like shadows away from the outskirts of Okar.

Not until they were well out in the big basin did either of them speak.

And then Sanderson said, shortly:

"Silverthorn was tellin' me you ga.s.sed everything. Are you feelin'

better over it?"

Owen's head bent over his horse's mane; his chin was on his chest when he answered:

"Come and kill me."

"h.e.l.l!" exploded Sanderson, disgustedly. "If there was anything comin'

to you killin' would be too good for you. You ain't done anything to me, you sufferin' fool--not a thing! What you've done you've done to Mary Bransford. When you see Dale an' Silverthorn grabbin' the Double A, an' Mary Bransford ridin' away, homeless--you'll have feelin's of remorse, mebbe--if you've got any man in you at all!"

Owen writhed and groaned.

"It was the whisky--the cursed whisky!" he whispered. "I can't let it alone--I love it! And once I get a taste of it, I'm gone---I'm a stark, staring lunatic!"

"I'd swear to that," grimly agreed Sanderson.

"I didn't mean to say a word to anybody," wailed the little man. "Do you think I'd do anything to harm Mary Bransford--after what she did for me? But I did--I must have done it. Dale said I did, Silverthorn said I did, and you say I did. But I don't remember. Silverthorn said I signed a receipt for some money from the Okar bank--three thousand, odd. I don't remember. Oh, but I'm--"

"Calling yourself names won't get you back to where you was before you made a fool of yourself," Sanderson told him, pityingly. "An' me tellin' you what I think of you won't relieve my feelin's a whole lot, for there ain't words enough layin' around loose.

"What I want to know is this: did you go clean loco, or do you remember anything that happened to you? Do you know who got the money you drew from the bank?"

"Dale," answered Owen. "He had that, for I remember him counting it in the back room of the hotel. There was more, too; I heard him telling Silverthorn there was about seven thousand in all. Silverthorn wanted him to put it all back in the bank, but Dale said there was just enough for him to meet his pay-roll--that he owed his men a lot of back pay.

He took it with him."

"My four thousand," said Sanderson, shortly.

"Yours?" Owen paled.

"Dale lifted my money belt," Sanderson returned. "I was wondering what he did with it. So that's what."

He relapsed into a grim silence, and Owen did not speak again.

They rode several miles in that fas.h.i.+on--Owen keeping his horse slightly behind Sanderson's, his gaze on the other's face, his own white with remorse and anxiety.

At last he heard Sanderson laugh, and the sound of it made him grit his teeth in impotent agony.

"Sanderson," he said, gulping, "I'm sorry."

"Sure," returned the other. "If I hadn't wised up to that quite a spell ago, you'd be back on the trail, waitin' for some coyote to come along an' get his supper."

They rode in silence for a long time. They came to the gentle slope of the basin and began to climb it.

A dozen times Owen rode close to Sanderson, his lips trembling over unuttered words, but each time he dropped back without speaking. His eyes, fixed wors.h.i.+pfully on the back of the big, silent man ahead of him, were glowing with anxiety and wonder.

In the ghostly darkness of the time before the gray forerunner of the dawn appears on the horizon they came in sight of the Double A ranchhouse.

Sanderson was still leading. The ranchhouse burst upon his vision as his horse topped a rise that had obscured his view of the ranchhouse, and he saw it, clearly outlined.

Riding down the slope of the rise he smiled. For there was a light in one of the ranchhouse windows. Mary had left it burn on his account, he divined.

He halted and allowed Owen to come near him.

"Mary ain't to hear about this deal tonight," he told the little man.

"Not a peep--understand?"

Without waiting for an answer he rode onward.

Thinking that, perhaps, in spite of the burning lamp Mary might be sleeping, Sanderson cautiously dismounted at the corral gates, and, leaving Owen to put his own horse away, he walked toward the house, stealthily, for he did not wish to awaken the girl.