CHAPTER XIV
"What is the meaning of all the excitement?" queried Von Tromp, looking down from the window of Original's lodgings upon the Killer and his escort on the way to the jail. Original, who had comprehended the significance of Main Street's prodigy in a single glance, was tumbling into his clothes at top speed.
"The man you were talking about—the Killer," his answer came muffled by a woollen shirt that was just slipping over his head. "Somebody's just bringing him in."
What instinct it was that halted Original from being more specific as to the identities of the convoying party he did not know. Von Tromp's order for a pseudo attack upon Zang Whistler and the Spout gang rankled too freshly in Original's mind for him to volunteer the information that Whistler himself was that minute boldly riding up Main Street. Besides, the range inspector was jarred far off his usual balance by the unexpected spectacle of this outlaw and bitter enemy of the whole cattle clan coolly cantering through town.
As for Von Tromp, Original's announcement that it was the Killer who was prisoner between the riders appeared to sweep him into a flurry of excitement. He whirled upon the inspector.
"You say that fellow who 's tied to his horse is the man who 's been sniping unpopular sheepmen and marking their bodies with a pebble between the eyes? Good Lord, man, I must see him—must get to him before the district attorney begins to question him. It 's tremendously fortunate I happen to be in town just the time he 's captured. Blunt, you must fix it for me to see this man at once."
Original, busy strapping his holster in place over his left breast, paused to shoot a searching look Von Tromp's way.
"Why do you want to see this stinging lizard so bad? Lots of other men in this town want to see him, too—lookin' up to a cottonwood limb from the end of a rope."
"I 'm not in the habit of explaining my motives to any man," Von Tromp said stiffly, then in hasty afterthought: "The man certainly will need counsel. I wish to advise him of his rights and offer him my services. Therefore, Blunt, I want you to see the sheriff and arrange an audience for me with the prisoner." The man from Cheyenne flushed angrily.
Original was spinning the chambers of his .45, the hammer held back by a thumb which suddenly appeared to Von Tromp all too insecure in its hold. He slipped the weapon under the spring on the pad holster and donned his jacket before answering.
"Mr. Von Tromp, I don't borrow nothin' but bad luck and lightnin' and I never was raised a pet, so I don't make it a point to balk at most orders howsomever they come. But this time I pass. Looks to me like it would n't put new paint on your reputation nor on mine especial to have me dancin' up to Red Agnew an' begging an invitation for you to come down an' take tea with the Killer. Nobody knows you for a representative of—well, of certain people, but the minute they see me hooked up with a lawyer who wants to break into the Killer, they 'll know it 's true."
"What is true?" Von Tromp challenged. Original stepped close to him and gave him the answer fairly between the eyes:
"That the people who hire you and hire me have been paying for little stones on dead men's foreheads."
The lawyer's face went white with rage. His wide mouth opened and shut like a landed mullet's in an effort to frame phrases for his wrath. Finally:
"Who has bought you, Blunt? Who has reached you with money to turn traitor to your people and accuse them of being hirers of murder?"
Original's voice dropped very low; several men who once ranged the Big Country had learned to their sorrow that when he purred thus his gun hand was about to leap:
"Mr. Von Tromp, my price is so high there's no lawyer walking in tanned leather yet raised it. You 're lookin' white, Mr. Von Tromp—sorta fish-bellied. The air in this room 's kind of close—for two."
Von Tromp read the meaning in the other's concluding words without ambiguity. He took his hat from the door knob and tramped downstairs to the street. Original, absently twiddling tobacco in paper between the fingers of his right hand, watched from the window his recent visitor cross the street and turn in the direction of the jail.
"House pets like that ought n't run loose in this man's country 'thout a bell tied under their chins," he mused aloud. Then he, too, went down to the street, for Original knew the issues of this day would bulk large, and no man might foresee their outcome.
Into the froth of Two Moons' bubbling pot, near noon, rode another, bringing added spice to the already high savor of the broth of excitement. It was Woolly Annie, the sheep queen of Poison Spider, accompanied by her hopeful son Dolphus and a sheep foreman of forbidding appearance. Greatly altered was the lady's mien from that riotous mood of elephantine joy which had possessed her when she rode out of Two Moons a few days before. Her expansive features were clotted into a thundercloud whence lightning flashes from the eyes warned of a general low pressure and storm conditions. The set of her great span of shoulders and poise of her huge head both cried to Two Moons that somebody weighing about one hundred and ninety pounds and wearing overalls beneath a courtesy skirt was on the warpath with her scalp lock roached.
The three pulled rein at the hitching bar before the Occidental and before she dismounted Woolly Annie called to an acquaintance on the sidewalk in a great voice:
"Anybody seen them two rickety doodle bugs, Timberline Todd and Andy Dorson, hidin' under a wet log hereabouts? For if anybody has, just lead me to 'em so 's I can take 'em apart an' examine into their systems, pronto."
Immediately a crowd gathered, for Two Moons was in a state of nerves this day and ready to stampede at the popping of a sarsaparilla bottle. Woolly Annie did not play upon the crowd's expectancy; she unbosomed herself immediately and in rumbling organ tones of wrath:
"Three nights ago, me playin' horse here in Two Moons an' enjoying myself like a new-born schoolgirl because I thought I did n't have an enemy in the world outside ten or a dozen I could name offhand, an' what happens? Timberline Todd, Andy Dorson an' ten other crawlin' kiotes from the cattle outfits ride out to my range on Poison Spider, shoot up two sheep wagons before burning 'em an' then shoot down an' stampede two sheep bands."
The shepherdess of Poison Spider caught the glimmerings of an exultant grin on the face of a bow-legged man with chaps who stood on the fringe of the crowd. She pilloried him with a forefinger thick as a thole pin.
"Ye-ah, grin, you pore orphan idjit! Big joke, ain't it? Purty rich, I call it, to ride out to my sheep range an' bust up two bands of nigh onto twelve hundred muttons. Well, my men you shot at an' hogtied recognized five of your merry companions, an' if there 's a grand jury in this town with guts into 'em, a passel of sheep killers is goin' be inside Rawlins pen lookin' out before long. You!"—the lady's wrath nearly suffocated her—"hear me hang up my honk! Only thing the matter with this town, there 's not enough funerals, an' the funeral industry 's going to be flourishin' right soon."
A sympathetic murmur from the crowd caused the man with the chaps to erase himself from the immediate vicinity with some celerity. Woolly Annie stiffly dismounted and, with the fan-eared Dolphus and the black-visaged foreman as escort, she made her journey afoot up the street to the sheriff's office, a veritable pilgrimage of Dido crying revenge against the despoilers of her kingdom.
Not only did Main Street hear of the outrage against the sheep queen but—what was a far more potent appeal to the sympathies of the townsfolk—that one of the slaughtered bands had been the property of Hilma Ring, the girl left orphaned by the Killer's cowardly shot, the very girl whom that morning Two Moons had seen grimly riding in ahead of the murderer. Close to six hundred of her sheep had been either slaughtered or dispersed beyond all effort at a round-up.
Woolly Annie, in her turn, received news as startling as she dispensed: That Hilma Ring, together with Zang Whistler and Uncle Alf, had brought in the Killer; that all of them had entered the jail yard and none been seen since. The mother of the promising nine on Poison Spider's head-waters heaved a great sigh of relief at the information. She said her boy Dolphus had ridden over to the Ring home ranch on Teapot to tell Hilma of the moving of her band, had found the cabin deserted and evidences of a struggle therein.
Here was a fresh angle on the mystery of the morning's cavalcade through Main Street. Signs of a struggle in the girl's cabin! Then maybe she had caught the Killer single-handed when he came to complete his work of wiping out the Ring family and single-handed had overpowered him!
Supposition became cold fact before it had rolled from two tongues. From eating house to saloon and saloon to general store the electric report sped. Cattlemen had slaughtered twelve hundred sheep in a night, half of them belonging to the Ring girl; Hilma Ring, alone on Teapot Creek, had been visited by the Killer and had battled him into subjection. Hilma had been wounded. The Killer had been wounded. Somebody had been wounded; had not Woolly Annie's boy Dolphus seen blood all over the place?
Two Moons itched and burned with a fever of curiosity. Yes, and deeper—away down in the throbbing heart of the town—a lava lake of bitter hatred began to heave and glow with fiery incandescence. A feeling of climax pulsed through the air like the play of electricity before a thunderstorm. Even with none to proclaim it, all who were not of the cattle barony sensed that the time for settlement of scores was come; that the moment of hand grips with the forces which operated through the Killer and through the night slaughter of sheep was soon to strike.
Mild-tempered, bald-headed, little Squirrel-toothed Smiley, who was the proprietor of the Boston Cash Store and who sang tenor in the Two Moons Excelsior Quartette, was seen to enter Hopkins' hardware store and purchase a .45 with a barrel long as his forearm and a gaudy holster in Mexican-worked leather. Old Man Rogers, president of the Grangers' Bank, went out on the street and picked up two renegade cow-punchers to come and sit just inside the door of his establishment with their holsters moved round to the front—and Old Man Rogers was notoriously afraid of a giant fire-cracker.
The crowd that stood before the courthouse kept patient vigil hour on hour. No sign from the jail or the sheriff's office. Not a hint as to the four riders whom the swinging gate of the jail yard had swallowed up.
Woolly Annie was seen to enter the main door of the courthouse with her two attendant guards. She was absent from view about fifteen minutes, then reappeared on the court-house steps. Fire was in her eye. As she trundled grandly down the steps she announced for all to hear that that pink-eyed little house rabbit, Orpheus C. Strayman, the district attorney, had said he was too busy to hear her complaint about the sheep moving, and that Red Agnew must be combing the kinks out of his whiskers somewhere because she could not find him. She opined that unless she got some action mighty pronto she 'd have to break into the jail.
The curiosity of the hundred before the courthouse was whetted more when the tall, frock-coated stranger with the numerous fraternal pins, who had come in on the stage that morning, elbowed his way up to the steps and entered the mute house of mystery. He was out of view longer than the sheep queen had been, and when he descended the steps a possum's smile betokened the charity he felt toward all mankind.
The crowd could not know that Warren Von Tromp's smile was a false signal set on the bleak cliffs of his countenance with purpose to deceive. The result of his fifteen stormy minutes with the district attorney had been a flat denial of access to the Killer and a terse invitation to take his blankets and move to a mythical bourn of greater caloric intensity than Two Moons. Moreover, Strayman had chilled Von Tromp to the bone with the statement that the Killer had made a complete confession and did not want a lawyer until the time of his trial.
Von Tromp wondered and wondered if this were a lie. He yearned to believe it was. And yet he dared not let himself be convinced it was a lie.
One sign and another which his shrewd eyes noted in his progress back to the hotel forced him to the reluctant admission that Original Bill had been right in his refusal to stand sponsor for a strange lawyer come to offer his defense to the Killer. It would be distinctly embarrassing, not to say unhealthy, for the impression to spread through Two Moons at this juncture that he, Von Tromp, was on the ground to look after the Killer's interests. The man from Cheyenne quickly reviewed his interview with the district attorney to determine if by any possible slip on his part he had given that peppery official any clew to the identity of his employers.
Von Tromp sincerely hoped he had not. But here again he could not be sure. Strayman had impressed him as a blunt country oaf, but
Mr. Von Tromp, of Cheyenne, Washington and London, was in a state of nerves wholly surprising to one of his schooled temper.
Perhaps Von Tromp gave Orpheus C. Strayman credit for much more acumen than the little prosecutor possessed. One element in the man's make-up the wiser lawyer from Cheyenne completely overlooked: Strayman was careless in his handling of the spoken word.
For instance, after his fiery interview with Von Tromp, Strayman said casually to his assistant—A-Long-Drink-of-Water the town denominated this spare, rather sickly young man—"Something strange about that lawyer from the outside being Johnny-on-the-spot just when we 've nabbed the Killer."
That was all he said; perhaps that was the sum of what he thought, for this was a day big with mental explosions for Strayman. But when The-Long-Drink-of- Water went out for his noon dinner he whispered to a friend in the Rhinoceros Eating House the circumstances of Von Tromp's visit and quoted his chief as saying there was something strange about him.
This friend hurried to a saloon where the town worthies congregated and there rehashed the story with garnishment of his own. He quoted Strayman as saying: "Dam'd strange somebody got this lawyer on the ground so quickly." The accent was on the somebody.
Thence the ripple spread.
Original Bill had kept off Main Street all morning, for he sensed the temper of the town and he was not one rashly to tempt trouble. But his time had not been idle. In that sacrosanct upper room of the Capitol Saloon were several men of weight in the clan, and council was imperative. Original was with them. Also Timberline Todd and Andy Dorson. Original, catching an echo of the explosion Woolly Annie had touched off, had found the precious twain asleep in a livery stable and hustled them through back alleys to the Capitol's rear entrance and so to this innermost citadel of the cowmen. Neither needed injunction to stay put until nightfall.
To the men gathered about the green baize table Original recited everything of his interview with Von Tromp, coloring details not at all and recounting the lawyer's anxiety concerning the Killer as well as he could. It was this circumstance and Von Tromp's vehemence in the premises that brought grave comment from the gray heads about the table, from men whose code had been ever open fighting and no shooting through the crack of the door.
"Somebody up high has turned bad—like a last year's turkey egg," was the opinion of one. "I just did n't dast to let myself believe all this time our folks was paying money for killings."
"An' look where it puts us here on the range," growled another. "We either got to turn against the higher-ups down to Cheyenne or make a play to turn loose this thing in jail, which most men shoot under a barn."
So the council of desperation progressed. Men who felt themselves betrayed by a different breed of men who knew not the clean code, the strong code of the Big Country, saw themselves on the covering line of the Great Retreat—and fired on from behind.
Into the room burst old Dad Strayhorn. He threw wide his hands.
"Hell 's bust!" he said.
Original was first downstairs and on the sidewalk.
Down the street from the direction of the courthouse came the mob. It filled the street from gutter to gutter. Like the Wood of Birnam it came, all tossing foliage of heads and hats and arms upthrust. An ugly clamor of cries and bellowings swirled out from it.
Above the forefront of the mob appeared a grotesque and agonized figure, hatless, collar ripped and pronging upward like a horn, face bloodied, hands desperately gripped on something hidden by the heads below him.
The figure was that of Warren C. Von Tromp. He was riding the top rail of a corral.
Original saw all this in a glance. He stepped out into the middle of Main Street and stood there for an instant, right hand hanging easily from the lapel of his jacket. A figure alone in the path of the mob, dwarfed by it almost to pygmy proportions.
He began to walk slowly forward to meet the mad hundreds.