Hidden Gold, Wilder Anthony [best fiction books to read TXT] 📗

eyes travel around the littered, blood-spattered room. "From the looks o' this shebang we musta stung some of 'em pretty deep; but nobody was killed, I reckon. I hope Moran was the worst hurt, durn him!"

"He'll keep," Wade said grimly. "We've not done with him yet, Bill. We've only just begun."

CHAPTER X THE SENATOR GETS BUSY

It was daylight when the routed posse, with Race Moran in the lead, his left arm tied up in a blood-stained handkerchief, rode into Crawling Water. A bullet had pierced the fleshy part of the agent's wrist, a trifling wound, but one which gave him more pain than he might have suffered from a serious injury. None of the members of the posse had been dangerously wounded; indeed, they had suffered more in the spirit than in the flesh; but there had been a number of minor casualties amongst the men, which made a sufficiently bloody display to arouse the little town to active curiosity.

Under instructions from the leader, however, the fugitives kept grouchily silent, so that curiosity was able to feed only on speculations as to Wade's temper, and the fact that he had brought about Santry's release from jail. The story of that achievement had been bruited about Crawling Water since midnight, together with the probability that the Law would be invoked to punish the ranchman for his defiance of it. Popular sentiment was running high over the likelihood of such a step being taken, and the members of the posse were the targets of many hostile glances from the townspeople. At least two-thirds of the citizens were strongly in favor of Wade, but before they took active steps in his behalf they waited for the return of a horseman, who had hurried out to the ranch to learn at first hand exactly what had happened there.

Meanwhile Moran, in an ugly mood, had awakened the Senator from the troubled sleep which had come to him after much wakeful tossing. Rexhill, with tousled hair, wrapped in a bathrobe, from the bottom of which his bare ankles and slippered feet protruded, sat on the edge of his bed, impatiently chewing an unlighted cigar while he listened to Moran's account of the fracas.

"You went too far, Race,—you went too far," he burst out angrily at last. "You had no orders to jump the ranch. I told you...."

"We've been fooling around long enough, Senator," Moran interrupted sullenly, nursing his throbbing wrist. "It was high time somebody started something, and when I saw my chance I seized it. You seem to think"—his voice trailed into scorn—"that we are playing marbles with boys, but, I tell you, it's men we're up against. My experience has shown me that it's the first blow that counts in any fight."

"Well, who got in the hardest lick, eh?" Rexhill snorted sarcastically. "The first blow's all right, provided the second isn't a knockout from the other side. Why, confound it, Race, here we had Wade at our mercy. He'd broken into jail and set free a suspected murderer—a clear case of criminality. Then you had to spoil it all."

Moran smothered an imprecation.

"You seem to forget, Senator, that we had him at our mercy before, and you wouldn't hear of it. If you'd taken my advice in the first place, we'd have had Wade in jail instead of Santry and things might have been different."

"Your advice was worthless under the circumstances; that's why I didn't take it." Rexhill deliberately paused and lighted his cigar, from which he took several soothing puffs. To have been aroused from his bed with such news had flustered him somewhat; but he had never known anything worth while to come out of a heated discussion, and he sought now to calm himself. Finally, he spoke slowly. "What you proposed to me then was a frame-up, and all frame-ups are dangerous, particularly when they have little to rest upon. For that reason I refused to fall in with your ideas, Race. This release of Santry from jail is—or was—an entirely different thing, an overt criminal act, with Sheriff Thomas on our side as an unimpeachable witness."

Moran was suffering too keenly from his wound and smarting under his defeat too much to be altogether reasonable. His manner was fast losing the appearance of respect which he had previously shown his employer. His expression was becoming heated and contemptuous.

"You didn't base your refusal on logic at the time, Senator," he said. "It was sentiment, if I remember right. Wade had broken bread with you, and all that. I don't see but what that applies just as well now as it did then."

"It doesn't," the Senator argued smugly, still rankling from Wade's arraignment of him the day before, "because even hospitality has its limits of obligation. So long as I knew Wade to be innocent, I did not care to have him arrested; but I don't admit any sentiment of hospitality which compels me to save a known criminal from the hand of justice. Sheriff Thomas came in to see me last night and I agreed with him that Wade should be brought to account for his contempt of the law. Wade forced his way into the jail and released his foreman at the point of a gun. Even so, I feel sorry for Wade and I am a little apprehensive of the consequences that will probably develop from his foolhardiness."

"Well, by God, if there's any sympathy for him floating around this room, it all belongs to you, Senator." Moran tenderly fingered his aching wrist. "I'm not one of these 'turn the other cheek' guys; you can gamble on that!"

"But now where are we?" Rexhill ignored the other's remarks entirely. "We are but little better off than Wade is. He pulled Santry out of jail, and we tried to steal his ranch. The only difference is that so far he has succeeded, and we have failed. He has as much law on his side now as we have on ours."

Moran's head drooped a little before the force of this argument, although he was chiefly impressed by the fact that he had failed. His failures had been few, because Fortune had smiled upon him in the past; and doubtless for this reason he was the less able to treat failure philosophically. His plans at the ranch house had gone awry. He had counted on meeting Wade there in the daytime, in the open, and upon provoking him, before witnesses, into some hot-headed act which would justify a battle. The surprise attack had left the agent without this excuse for the hostilities which had occurred.

Rexhill arose and walked up and down the room in thought, his slippered feet shuffling over the floor, showing now and then a glimpse of his fat, hairy legs as the skirt of his bathrobe fluttered about. A cloud of fragrant smoke from his cigar trailed him as he walked, and from the way he chewed on the tobacco his confrères in the Senate could have guessed that he was leading up to one of his Czar-like pronouncements. Presently he stopped moving and twisted the cigar in his mouth so that its fumes would be out of his eyes, as his glance focused on Moran.

"There's just one way out of this mess, Race," he began. "Now heed what I say to you. I'm going to send a telegram to the Department of the Interior which will bring a troop of cavalry down here from Fort Mackenzie. You must go slow from now on, and let the authorities settle the whole matter."

The agent sat up alertly, as his employer, wagging a ponderous forefinger impressively, proceeded.

"You were not on the ranch for the purpose of jumping it at all. Mind that now! You and I stand for the majesty of the law in this lawless community." Moran's eyes began to twinkle at this, but he said nothing. "When you and Sheriff Thomas went out to the ranch, you carried two warrants with you, one for Santry, as the accessory, and one for Wade, as the principal, in the Jensen shooting. Yes, yes, I know what you are going to say; but I must save my own bacon now. Since Wade has proved himself to be a lawbreaker, I'm not going to protect him."

"Now, you're talking!" exclaimed Moran, delighted at the prospect of what such a course would start going.

"I'll have the matter of the warrants fixed up with Thomas," the Senator continued. "Now, follow me carefully. Thomas arrested Santry at the ranch, and then left you, as his deputy, to serve the other warrant on Wade when he came home. It was because of his knowledge of what was in store for him that Wade, after getting Santry out of jail, attacked you and your men, and it was in defense of the law that you returned their fire. It will all work out very smoothly, I think, and any further hostilities will come from the other side and be to our great advantage."

Moran looked at his employer in admiration, as the latter concluded and turned toward his writing table.

"Senator," the agent declared, as Rexhill took up his fountain pen and began to write on a telegraph form, "you never should have started in Denver. If you'd been born in little old New York, you'd be in the White House now. From this minute on you and I are going to carry this whole valley in our vest-pockets."

"You take this over and put it on the wire right away, Race. It's to the Secretary of the Interior and my signature on it should get immediate attention." Senator Rexhill handed over the telegraph form he had filled out.

"But what about State rights in this business?" Moran asked, anxiously. "Will they send Government troops in here on your say so?"

The Senator waved his hand in dismissal of the objection.

"I'll have Thomas wire the Governor that the situation is beyond control. This town is miles from nowhere, and there's no militia within easy reach. The State will be glad enough to be saved the expense, especially with the soldiers close by at Fort Mackenzie. Besides, you know, although Wade's ranch is inside the State, a good deal of his land is Government land, or was until he filed on it."

When Moran had left the room in a much easier frame of mind than he came into it, the Senator sat down heavily on the bed. He was puffing at his cigar and thinking intently, when he caught sight of the white, startled face of his daughter in the mirror of the bureau across the room. Whirling about, he found her standing in the doorway looking at him. Rexhill had never before been physically conscious of the fact that he had a spine, but in that moment of discovery a chill crept up and down his back, for her expression told him that she had heard a good deal of his conversation with Moran. The most precious thing to him in life was the respect of his child; more precious even, he knew, than the financial security for which he fought; and in her eyes now he saw that he was face to face with a greater battle than any he had ever waged.

"Father!"

"What, are you awake, my dear?"

He tried hard to make his tone cheery and natural, as he stood up and wrapped the bathrobe more closely around him.

"I heard what you said to Race Moran."

Helen came into the room, with only a dressing wrapper thrown over her thin night-dress, and dropped into a chair. She seemed to feel that her statement of the fact was accusation enough in itself, and waited for him to answer.

"You shouldn't have listened, Helen. Moran and I were discussing private business matters,