Читать книгу Fool's Goal - B.M. Bower - Страница 8

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UNDER cover of the rhythmic shuffle of dancing feet pulsing through the haunting melody of a waltz song he had last heard in the ballroom of the Drake Hotel, Dale left the house and walked down the path. A wave of lonesomeness that had been steadily rising within him threatened to engulf his spirits when suddenly that particular waltz began, and though he called himself a fool he wanted to get away from sight and sound of the revelers. He had not come to Wyoming, he told himself savagely, to dance with country flappers on a floor as rough as Dalton's dining room, to the puerile music of a cheap violin and a piano that needed tuning.

What he wanted was to get up into the hills that rose darkly under the starlight, every wooded canyon hinting at mystery and adventure, every valley a paradise of grass and water for the cattle he hoped to own. He wanted to start out at dawn with rod and creel and whip the shadowy pools where the speckled trout had not learned too great a wariness and yet were able to put up a real fight. That trout streams played little part in the life of a ranch hand in haying time did not at first occur to him and when it did he brushed the thought aside as of little importance. Probably he would not actually go to work pitching hay; indeed, he doubted much whether Burnett expected it of him. It had been a mere camouflage of words calculated to further strengthen the general belief that he had been robbed of all he possessed, and now that he was out away from town, there was no valid reason why he should go on with it. Burnett knew he still had the money, and it was Burnett in whom he was particularly interested. These other ranchers didn't matter so much. They wouldn't be coming around during working hours, anyway, to see whether he was laboring with his hands; and he could easily arrange with Burnett for his board and room while he stayed.

A certain strain of persistence in Teasdale Emery, Senior, had been transmitted to the son. It cropped out now in his calm determination to go ahead with his plan of buying a ranch and cattle. Since his money was still his own, the sooner he invested it the sooner he would remove that particular temptation from his fellow men. Burnett could help him find the kind of place he had in mind, and in the meantime he hoped to solve the mystery of that robbery. While he realized that if Burnett were a thief and a hypocrite he might try to get hold of the money through some crooked business deal, Dale thought he could guard against that—since he was not so ignorant of business as Kittridge had seemed to think. But unless Burnett had something to gain by urging him to buy some worthless property, Dale believed his advice would be worth taking. And he didn't see how he could go far wrong in buying grazing land in this part of the country. The price, of course, he could investigate. There must be plenty of honest men in the country.

He was standing outside the gate where a pine tree made a convenient brace for his back, his face upturned to the hills, watching a strange, pale glow in the clouds just over a ridge. Above his head the Milky Way showed a diamond-studded pathway across the sky, and in his nostrils was the clean breath of meadows mingled with the pungent odor of the pine boughs high over his head. The lights of the house on the knoll, the ebb and flow of the music, the occasional bursts of laughter blended pleasingly into the picture, now that he could enjoy it from a distance. A typical range party, he supposed, though they seemed to have all the late dances at the tips of their toes and to comport themselves very much as his own crowd would have done in this same setting. Perhaps it was the modern note that had jarred upon him here in these wooded hills. He would have preferred them less sophisticated, more the picturesque characters of fiction. And as if his thought had conjured them from the night, two riders came slowly up and stopped near by, big range hats tilted a little over their brows, cigarettes glowing as they gazed up at the house.

"He oughta be here, all right," one said after a space of silence and apparent waiting. "He was coming out to-day, I'm sure of that."

"You'd think," said the other, "he'd kinda be on the watch for us. He knew we aimed to come."

"We might find out if his car's here," the first suggested, after another wait. "You go see while I keep an eye out for him here."

The second man turned and rode away a few steps, then leaned and peered toward the automobiles parked farther along the fence.

"He's here, all right. There's his car over there. I'd know it anywhere."

"Well, what you want to do?" the first asked impatiently. "I ain't going to set here all night. I'm hungry as a wolf. I'm going up to the house."

"Better not," the other advised. "Quin—"

"Say, who's that under that tree?" the first called sharply, though his tone was guarded. "Grab a couple stars and come on out, brother. I've got it right on ya."

"No need to get excited, you fellows," Dale assured them, moving out into the dim light of the moon which was just showing a yellow rind over the ridge where the clouds had been brightening. "If this is feud stuff, you can count me out. I'm a stranger here."

"Stranger? Where from and why? What you cached under that tree for?"

Vaguely the gun in his hand shone in the moonlight, and Dale laughed to himself at the facility with which the scene had changed for him.

"What you doing down here? Waiting for somebody?" A harsh note of suspicion in the low voice warned Dale that this was no rough joking.

"No, I was just watching the moon come up over the mountain. It's a sight one doesn't often get in the city."

"Oh! You that Chicago guy that was robbed the other day?" A perceptible change manifested itself in the other's tone and manner.

"Yes, I'm the guy," Dale confessed, grinning a little.

"Oh!" The fellow put away his gun. "Well, you'll have to excuse me. I kinda thought you was somebody else. Who all's up at the house?"

"Lord, I don't know! I'm a stranger here. I was introduced to several, but I don't remember many names. Dick somebody—"

"Dick Tallant."

"Bird Ellis—that name stayed with me—"

"Bird, yes. Bird's all right; good boy."

"Well, then I met the Daltons, naturally, and of course there's Hugh Mowerby and Quin Burnett and family, and a girl or two I danced with. One tall blond and another little plump one."

"You don't happen to know if Neal Somers is there?"

"No, I don't. I heard the name, but—"

"Say, would you mind going up there and slippin' the word to—"

"No, I wouldn't do that," his companion interposed. "I'll go up myself. Won't take but a minute."

"You'll have a fight on your hands if you ain't careful."

"Oh, I guess not. Hold my horse a minute, will you?" Before Dale could object the man slipped from the saddle, thrust the reins into Dale's hand and went off up the path, walking quickly but making very little noise.

"So you'd rather watch the moon come up than stay in the house and dance," Dale's companion observed with idle amusement. "If you wasn't packing so much money when you landed I'd say you're an artist. But they're always broke, according to all accounts."

"Somebody was certainly anxious that I should qualify, then. I'm not an artist, though. Good horse." Dale's free hand was busy, stroking the sweaty cheek of the friendly animal. "You've done some riding to-night; this fellow's pretty warm."

"Rough country back in there where we came from. Had to see a fellow we expected would be here, but the trouble with a dance is that it brings them that may have it in for you. A fellow's gotta be kinda cautious about bustin' in on a crowd up here. He don't know what kinda frame-up he's liable to run into." He glanced around, then reined his horse nearer to the great pine. "Might lead that cayuse over here in the shade," he suggested mildly. "No telling who all's here. I don't want any trouble, myself."

"Some sort of feud going on?" Dale obediently walked into the shadow, the horse following docilely at his heels.

"Well, I dunno as I'd call it a feud. I and Jack got into a kinda jam with an Iron Mountain bunch at a dance last winter. We polished 'em off pretty slick, but they ain't content to let it rest there. They sent us word to come heeled next time and we're tryin' to sidestep any more trouble. I ain't been to a dance since, nor Jack either. You say Quin's here?"

"Yes, and I came out with him. You know him pretty well?"

The other waited while he lighted a cigarette.

"Oh, yeah—I know him, all right," he said then, dryly.

"He's not in on the feud, is he?" Dale tried to read the other's face, but there under the pine the gloom was too great.

"Quin? No, he ain't got a thing to do with it—so far as any one knows."

"That may mean almost anything. You don't like him, do you?"

"Me?" The rider affected a tone of surprise. "I never said a thing to make you think that."

"I sensed it in your tone," Dale said, moving closer. "I asked because—well, I've had occasion to study him pretty closely, and as a stranger here I'm rather at a disadvantage. I'd like to know something more about him. He seems pretty prominent. He was a sheriff for some years, I hear. What made him give it up? Do you know?"

"W-ell, I know some of the talk that's been going the rounds. Nothing I'd want to swear to."

"That means unfriendly talk, of course." Dale waited and got no answer to that. "It's easy to accuse a man of being crooked," he said tentatively, "especially if he holds some office."

"And if there's crooked work goin' on," the other agreed.

"Was Burnett mixed up in it?" Dale persisted in the face of the stranger's very evident reluctance to talk.

"Quin? Not on your life! They don't make 'em any smarter than Quin," he added unguardedly. "He's got lots of friends too. Just lots of 'em."

"But you think he's crooked." Dale boldly declared.

"W-ell, I ain't saying a word against him."

"No," Dale grinned, "you've been careful not to."

Up at the house the dancing continued, the laughter breaking out now and then and drowning the music. From the sounds the rider called Jack had not precipitated any disturbance so far, but his partner was growing restive, his eyes constantly turning that way. Yet he seemed willing enough to talk, willing to be friendly. He wanted to know all about the robbery, and Dale described it briefly as a fair return for the meager information he had gleaned.

"W-ell, if I had fifty thousand dollars," the cowboy drawled when the story was finished, "I sure wouldn't pack it around with me like that. What's the matter with banks? Don't folks use 'em any more in Chicago?"

"Sometimes. I just thought I'd be away out in the country and maybe the money would be handier if I saw the kind of place I wanted. Often these old duffers who live off by themselves would rather have the cash, I imagine."

Abruptly the blurred figure drooped in the saddle, rocking with suppressed laughter. Dale patted the horse, talking to it softly and waited, wondering what was so funny about it.

"Oh, boy!" gasped the rider. "You sure got an imagination on you. Say, do you s'pose there's a man in the world that wouldn't like to have fifty thousand dollars in cash? Gosh! They needn't be half baked and live out in the hills to get that craving. You talk like it was fifty cents. Don't they realize the worth of money at all in Chicago?"

"Maybe not, the way you mean. Fifty thousand is a lot of money, of course; I know that," Dale retorted stiffly. "But it isn't so much when you're investing it in land and cattle."

"W-ell, no. But you can buy miles of land with that much money."

"I could have, you mean," Dale corrected him coldly. "You forget I was robbed."

"Yeah, that's right. Darn shame, ain't it? I might of rigged up some kinda deal with you, myself." He spat gravely on the burning end of his cigarette stub and flipped it away. "I've got a few head of cattle—" He glanced toward the house as footsteps sounded on the path.

"It's all right. I saw him," the man called Jack cheerfully announced, springing lightly over the rail fence beside them and taking the reins from Dale. "Thanks. Come on, Bill."

"So long," said the man Dale had talked with, and the two rode off down the valley; slowly at first, then at a gallop when they had passed the buildings. The swift clupet-clupet of their horses' hoofs came back out of the soft moonlight long after they had passed from sight.

Now that the moon was up and he could see the road, Dale walked along a trail which led up past the meadows and toward the hills, the incident of the two riders erasing the mood that had driven him out from the house and enticing him to more adventurous dreams. Who were Jack and Bill, and what was the quarrel that prevented them from mingling with the dancers? Whom had Jack gone to the house to see? Not Quin Burnett, he guessed, for the man called Bill betrayed a certain distrust of the old man. Was it Hugh? He had come out from town to-day—but so had others, he supposed. The number of cars parked alongside the yard fence proved that. Couldn't drive to the house because it was perched on that little hill. Think of the countless unnecessary steps taken on that path up from the gate! If he had been building Dalton's house he'd have set it just back of that magnificent pine tree; not up on the peak of that bald knoll. Maybe they built the place in Indian time, though, and wanted a clear view in all directions. They certainly had it, all right.

The squawk of an automobile horn recalled him to the fact that it was long after midnight and he was sleepy. The party was breaking up, by the sounds. He'd be able to get a little sleep, maybe, and to-morrow he would be up in the land of trout and antelope and deer—a cowman's paradise, according to Burnett.

The thought thrilled him. His imagination clung to it, tried to vision that country where no automobile had ever nosed around the turns or panted up the "dug road" spoken of by Mrs. Burnett in her matter-of-fact way. He turned and strolled back to the house, traversed a porch or two and found his room at the end of one of the newer wings, and went in, striking a match as he entered the door.

Almost immediately he saw that his suit cases had been moved from the spot where he had placed them. There was no mistaking, for he had been careful to remember their exact position as he left the room. Furthermore, when he investigated, he saw that all his baggage had been carefully searched and placed back just as carefully the way he had left it.

This time there had been no mutilation, no disturbance of his belongings, and had he not been rather painstaking in the arrangement of his things he might never have suspected. But since the affair in the hotel he had laid a little trap in the trunk. It was in the morocco-bound books that he found the betrayal. In the binding they were exactly alike, save for the hand-tooled titles on the back, but in packing the trunk he invariably placed the books in a row in the tray; first the three volumes of Shakespeare, beginning with Hamlet; then Browning, Shelley and the Kipling verse. Now Kipling topped the list and Shelley came between Shakespeare and Browning. It was very simple but it had proven effective.

So even here at Dalton's he was not to escape their prying search! And somehow the glamor of the moonlit hills vanished and a sinister note of greed crept into his consciousness of the quiet night.