Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 05 - Law O' The Lariat(1935) (34 page)

 
          
Wondering
and wholly impressed by this quiet little man with the shrewd, dominating grey
eyes, the citizens crowded round. There were scowling, sulky faces among them,
but no one ventured a protest. The nearest approach to it came from Bart.

 
          
“Keep
an eye on the prisoner—he ain’t cleared yet,” he audibly told his followers.

 
          
“As
he returned to gaol voluntarily, I doubt if he will run away, Mr. Bartholomew,”
the Governor commented. “But he shall stand inside the ring on my left, and if
you will take the opposite position, you will be able to watch him yourself.”

 
          
The
rancher scowled but complied. Severn noticed that Snap had contrived to secure
a place just behind where he himself was standing.

 
          
The
Governor turned to Lufton. “I should like to see the evidence the prisoner
produced,” he began.

 
          
He
compared the writing in the account-book carefully with the two slips and then
looked at Bartholomew.

 
          
“You
think these are forgeries?”

 
          
“Don’t
think a-tall—I know they are,” retorted the rancher. “Very clever ones,” Bleke
said dryly, and Lufton squirmed uncomfortably. “Let us have your story,
Embley.”

 
          
The
Judge gave a brief but complete account of his abduction and subsequent
interview with the owner of the Bar B, and then, at the request of the
Governor, Phil told her experience. When she had ended, Bleke turned to
Bartholomew.

 
          
“What
influence had you over these outlaws?”

 
          
“The
chief of ‘em owed his life to me.”

 
          
“And
when you failed and returned to Hope, why didn’t you organise a rescue?” asked
the Governor.

 
          
“I
gave a promise—that was the condition—an’ I keep my word, even to such as
them,” Bart retorted.

 
          
“How
did you get these bills?” was the next question.

 
          
“Never had ‘em.
Severn lied when he said he found ‘em in my
desk,” the big man replied.

 
          
He
was recovering his assurance, and his lips curled contemptuously. At a gesture
from Embley, the man Patch stepped forward, and the lawyer said
sharply :

 
          
“This
is the Governor of the Territory. Take your hat off, fellow.”

 
          
The
witness shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed. “If His Excellency
don’t
mind, I’d ruther not for a while,” he replied huskily.

 
          
Bleke
waved a hand impatiently. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Tell your tale and see
that it’s the truth, or I shall know how to deal with you.”

 
          
Standing
there, his hat slouched over his face and his thumbs hooked in his belt, the
bandit shot a covern glance at Bartholomew, who was watching him uneasily. The
rancher was feeling uncomfortable; he had taken little notice of the fellow
when he had ridden in, but he now knew him for one of the White Masks.

 
          
“I’ll
start with the bank robbery, though that ain’t the beginning,” the witness
said, his voice low, hoarse, but pitched so that all could hear. “I was one o’
the two who went in; the man who held the horses is—dead.” A spasm of
satisfaction flitted across Bart’s face at the news. “I didn’t fire the shot
that downed Rapson.”

 
          
“Who
did?” Bleke asked.

 
          
The
witness pointed. `Bartholomew,” he answered.

 
          
Gasps
of amazement, mingled with bursts of derisive laughter, those of the accused
being the loudest, followed the statement. “Why, yu darnn fool, less’n half an
hour after the robbery I was in town organisin’ a posse to search out the
thieves,” the Bar B man sneered.

 
          
“Yeah,
a mile outa town yu left us, changed yore clothes an’ hoss for others yu had
cached, rode around through the brush an’ come into Hope from the other side,”
Patch said, adding quietly, “I follered yu.”

 
          
“It’s
a cursed lie, an’ I’ll twist yore—”

 
          
“Let
the man tell his story; I’ll listen to you afterwards, Bartholomew,” the
Governor intervened. He handed the alleged forgeries to Patch, and asked, “What
do you know of those?”

 
          
“Bartholomew
wrote ‘em,” was the unhesitating reply. “Ignacio had orders to wipe Severn out,
an’ got wiped out hisself.”

 
          
“Ignacio’s
alive now,” the Bar B man protested.

 
          
“I
saw him shot,” the witness went on stolidly. “He ambushed Severn an’ got what
he deserved. The abduction o’ Miss Masters an’ the plantin’ o’ the stolen bills
at the Lazy M were done by Bartholomew’s orders, an’ Severn’s money was taken
to him. Bartholomew was The Mask.”

 
          
The
rancher laughed scornfully.

 
          
“Yu’ve
taught this skunk—a confessed outlaw and thief—a pretty tale to save yore
friend’s hide, ain’t yu, Embley?” he jeered.

 
          
The
lawyer directed his answer to the Governor. “I did not know what this man was
going to say,” he explained. “He enabled us to escape, and insisted upon
accompanying us, giving no reason.”

 
          
Bleke
nodded, his grey eyes cold and his features expressionless. For the time he was
a judge, without friends or foes, there to weigh impartially the evidence put
before him.

 
          
“What
do you know about Masters?” he asked.

 
          
“A
goodish bit,” Panch replied. “I know that when he lost his wife it broke him
up; he let go all
holts
an’ went on the batter, drinkin’
an’ gamblin’ with a mighty hard crowd. There come a day when the Desert Edge
stage is held up an’ the driver killed. Some here’ll remember it.”

 
          
A
chorus of confirmatory
nods,
grunts and “Yu betchas”
greeted the statement.

 
          
“Well,
that job was pulled off by the gang Masters was hellin’ around with,” Patch
continued. “He come out of a drunken daze the mornin’ after it happened, an’
was told that he’d not on’y took part in the robbery, but done the shootin’,
an’ he was shown a paper to that effect, signed by one o’ the others. Not bein’
able to recollect where he was the day before, he believed it. The fella that
had the paper promised it’d never be used—said he got it as a protection for
the rest. As yu know, the road-agents never were traced.

 
          
“The
shock of it jolted Masters straight agin. He gave up racketin’ about an’ went
back to his ranch, but he wasn’t the same man; the memory o’ that mad crime—for
he didn’t doubt he’d done it—preyed on his mind, an’ then the devil that held
that damnin’ evidence began to prey on him, too.”

 
          
He
paused a moment. The silence was broken only by the birds and the stamping
hoofs of restless horses. The Bar B owner had lost his look of scornful
unbelief, and there was fear in his eyes. He glanced furtively round, but he
was hemmed in; there was nothing for it but to brazen things out. After all,
they could have no prof; Masters was dead, and so were the others.

 
          
“At
first it was only small sums of money,” the witness went on, “but they grew in
size until at last Masters could raise no more. Then he had to give cattle, an’
he began to see that nothin’ less than his ranch an’ his daughter would satisfy
this human leech who, in the guise of a friend, was suckin’ him dry. He looked
round for some way o’ savin’ what was left o’ his property, an’ the idea came
to him that if he warn’t there, the power o’ the blackmailer would be gone. So
he put a trustworthy man in charge o’ the Lazy M, an’ then—faded.”

 
          
“And
the name of this—blackmailer?” the Governor asked. Patch pointed again.
“Bartholomew,” he said quietly.

 
          
The
rancher had known what was coming and was ready. He swept off his hat and bowed
ironically to the Desert Edge lawyer.

 
          
“Embley,
I gotta hand it yu, yo’re a good romancer, an’ yore pupil done it damn well,”
he said. “But talk is easy an’ don’t prove nothin’.” He turned to the man who
had so boldly accused him. “How comes it yu know such a helluva lot about
Masters? Mebbe yu killed him yoreself.”

 
          
The
outlaw considered the matter for a moment and then said deliberately, “I s’pose
I did, in a manner o’ speakin’.” A threatening murmur came from where the Lazy
M outfit stood, and hearing it he flung up his head and laughed. “Aw right,
boys,” he cried, and the huskiness had gone from his voice, “don’t get het up;
I’m goin’ to bring yore boss to life agin.”

 
          
With
a quick gesture he whipped off his hat, took
the parch
from his eye, and said, “Phil”.

 
          
The
girl had been staring at him, unable to recognise the father she had given up
hope of seeing again in the bearded man before her, but at the sound of her
name spoken in the familiar voice, doubt could no longer exist, and with a cry
of “Daddy”, she ran to his arms.

 
          
For
a few moments the cheering mob forgot everything save that the missing man, for
whose murder another had been nearly done to death, had reappeared so
dramatically. Severn, too, came in for part of the congratulations, men
fighting to pat his back or shake him by the hand. The cowpuncher endured their
enthusiasm with a saturnine smile; he knew that many of them would have hanged
him with the utmost cheerfulness a short half hour earlier, had the cards
fallen differently.

 
          
To
Black Bart, the reappearance of the missing rancher had been a well-nigh
crushing blow, and for a moment flight seemed to be his only hope of escaping,
at the best, a long term of imprisonment. One swift glance told him that in the
excitement he was being neglected, and he began to slowly edge his way out of
the crowd.
But there was one other who, little interested in Masters,
was greatly so in Bartholomew.
The latter had only progressed a few
yards
when :
’Oh, don’t,” came a satirical warning
whisper.

 
          
The
Bar B man turned and saw that the speaker was Snap. The gunman’s hands hung
loosely over the butts of his forty-fives, and the slitted eyes and corded
jaw-muscles conveyed the threat that was not in the words. The cattleman
stiffened and stood still. Then he squared his shoulders, and his lips pursed
in an ugly pout as a new thought came to him; Masters alive might still be
used.

 
          
The
Governor’s voice was heard, calling for order. The milling mob fell back, all
eyes on the little man who, dropping as it were from the sky, dominated them by
the sheer power of his personality.

 
          
“I
think, gentlemen, that Mr. Masters has more to tell us,” Bleke said.

 
          
With
one arm round his daughter, the man who had been missing so long resumed his
story. “There ain’t much more, but what there is means a lot—to me,” he began.
“When I left the Lazy M, I went to The Sink, where I had another hoss, clothes
an’ grub cached ready. I changed, shoved my old duds into a cleft in the
rocks—”

 
          
“An’
a rifle,” Severn commented, with a grin at the sheriff, who was looking very
unhappy.

 
          
‘Why,
no,” Masters said in surprise. “I left the gun on the hoss when I turned him
loose, after shootin’ a jack-rabbit an’ bloodying the saddle; yu see
,
I wanted to be reckoned dead. Then I drifted into the
Pinnacles country an’ lay doggo. Soon as I got a fair crop o’ whiskers, I
joined the White Masks, tellin’ ‘em I’d lit outa Texas ‘bout ten clear jumps
ahead of a sheriff’s posse; they fell for it.” He looked at Severn. “Yu got my
warnin’s?”