Square Deal Sanderson, Charles Alden Seltzer [best ereader for comics TXT] 📗

appetites," she told him, shaking a finger at him. "And if you don't eat heartily I shall believe your long absence from home has taken some of the Bransford out of you!"

She pulled a chair out for aim, and took another at the table opposite him.

Sanderson ate; there was no way out of it, though he felt awkward and uncomfortable. He kept wondering what she would say to him if she knew the truth. It seemed to him that had the girl looked closely at him she might have seen the guilt in his eyes.

But apparently she was not thinking of doubting him—it was that knowledge which made Sanderson realize how contemptible was the part he was playing. She had accepted him on trust, without question, with the implicit and matter-of-fact faith of a child.

He listened in silence while she told him many things about the Bransfords—incidents that had occurred during his supposed absence, intimate little happenings that he had no right to hear. And he sat, silently eating, unable to interrupt, feeling more guilty and despicable all the time.

But he broke in after a time, gruffly:

"What's the trouble between Dale and the Nylands?"

Instantly she stiffened. "I forgot to tell you about that. Ben Nyland is a nester. He has a quarter-section of land on the northwestern edge of the basin. But he hasn't proved on it. The land adjoins Dale's. Dale wants it—he has always wanted it. And he means to have it. He also wants Peggy Nyland.

"Dale is a beast! You heard Peggy tell how he has hounded her. It is true; she has told me about it more than once. Dale hasn't told, of course; but it is my opinion that Dale put the Double A cattle into Ben's corral so that he could hang Ben. With Ben out of the way he could take the Nyland property—and Peggy, too."

"Why did he use Double A cattle?"

Mary paled. "Don't you see the hideous humor of that? He knows Peggy Nyland and I are friends. Dale is ruthless and subtle. Can't you understand how a man of that type would enjoy seeing me send my friend's brother to his death—and the brother innocent?"

"Why didn't you tell Dale the cattle did not belong to you?"

Mary smiled faintly. "I couldn't. To do so would have involved Ben Nyland in more trouble. Dale would have got one of his friends to claim them. And then I could have done nothing—having disclaimed the ownership of the stock. And I—I couldn't lie. And, besides, I kept hoping that something would happen. I had a premonition that something would happen. And something did happen—you came!"

"Yes," said Sanderson inanely, "I came."

He drew a large red handkerchief from a pocket and mopped some huge beads of sweat from his face and forehead. When the handkerchief came out a sheet of paper, folded and crumpled, fluttered toward the floor, describing an eccentric circle and landing within a foot of Mary's feet.

The girl saw that Sanderson had not noticed the loss of the paper, and she stooped and recovered it. She held it in a hand while Sanderson continued to wipe the perspiration from his face, and noting that he was busily engaged she smoothed the paper on the table in front of her and peered mischievously at it. And then, her curiosity conquering her, she read, for the writing on the paper was strangely familiar.

Sanderson having restored the handkerchief to its pocket, noticed Mary's start, and saw her look at him, her eyes wide and perplexed.

"Why, Will, where did you get this?" she inquired, sitting very erect.

"Mebbe if you'd tell me what it is I could help you out," he grinned.

"Why, it's a letter father wrote to a man in Tombstone, Arizona. See here! Father's name is signed to it! I saw father write it. Why, I rode over to Dry Bottom and mailed it! This man had written to father a long time before, asking for a job. I have his letter somewhere. It was the oddest letter! It was positively a gem of formality. I can remember every word of it, for I must have read it a dozen times. It ran:

"DEAR SIR:

"The undersigned has been at the location noted below for a term of years and desires to make a change. If you have an opening for a good all-around man, the undersigned would be willing to work for you. If you would want a recommendation, you can address Amos Burroughs, of the Pig-Pen Ranch, near Tombstone, where the undersigned is employed.

"Yours truly,

"DEAL SANDERSON."

Mary leaned forward in her chair and looked at Sanderson with eager, questioning eyes. Sanderson stared vacantly back at her.

She held the letter up to him. "This is father's answer, telling the man to come on. How on earth did you get hold of it?"

Sanderson had slumped down in his chair. He saw discovery and disgrace in prospect. In the total stoppage of his thoughts no way of escape or evasion suggested itself. At the outset he was to be exposed as a miserable impostor.

He groaned, grinned vacuously at Mary, and again produced the handkerchief, wiping away drops of perspiration that were twice as big as those he had previously mopped off.

Mary continued to stare at him, repeating the question: "How did you get it?"

Sanderson's composure began to return; his grin grew wider and more intelligent, and at the sixth repetition of Mary's question he answered, boldly:

"I wasn't goin' to tell you about that. You see, ma'am——"

"Mary!"

"You see, Mary, I was goin' to fool Brans—dad. I wrote, askin' him for the job, an' I was intendin' to come on, to surprise him. But before I told him who I was, I was goin' to feel him out, an' find out what he thought of me. Then I got your letter, tellin' me he was dead, an' so there wasn't any more use of tryin' to fool him."

"But that name, 'Sanderson?' That isn't your name, Will!"

"It was," he grinned. "When I left home I didn't want anybody to be runnin' into me an' recognizin' me, so I changed it to Sanderson. Deal Sanderson."

The girl's expression changed to delight; she sat erect and clapped her hands.

"Oh," she said, "I wish father was here to listen to this! He thought all along that you were going to turn out bad. If he only knew! Will, you don't mean to tell me that you are the Sanderson that we all know of here—that nearly everybody in the country has heard about; the man who is called 'Square Deal' Sanderson by all his friends—and even by his enemies—because of his determination to do right—and to make everyone else do right too!"

Again Sanderson resorted to the handkerchief.

"I don't reckon they've talked about me that strong," he said.

"But they have! Oh, I'm so happy, Will. Why, when Dale hears about it he'll be positively venomous—and scared. I don't think he will bother the Double A again—after he hears of it!"

But Sanderson merely smirked mirthlessly; he saw no reason for being joyful over the lie he had told. He was getting deeper and deeper into the mire of deceit and prevarication, and there seemed to be no escape.

And now, when he had committed himself, he realized that he might have evaded it all, this last lie at least, by telling Mary that he had picked the note up on the desert, or anywhere, for that matter, and she would have been forced to believe him.

He kept her away from him, fending off her caresses with a pretense of slight indisposition until suddenly panic-stricken over insistence, he told her he was going to bed, bolted into the room, locked the door behind him, and sat long in the darkness and the heat, filling the room with a profane appreciation of himself as a double-dyed fool who could not even lie intelligently.

CHAPTER VII KISSES—A MAN REFUSES THEM

There was a kerosene lamp in Sanderson's room, and when, after an hour of gloomy silence in the dark, he got up and lit the lamp, he felt decidedly better. He was undressing, preparing to get into bed, when he was assailed with a thought that brought the perspiration out on him again.

This time it was a cold sweat, and it came with the realization that discovery was again imminent, for if, as Mary had said, she had kept Sanderson's letter to her father, there were in existence two letters—his own and Will Bransford's—inevitably in different handwriting, both of which he had claimed to have written.

Sanderson groaned. The more he lied the deeper he became entangled. He pulled on his trousers, and stood shoeless, gazing desperately around the room.

He simply must destroy that letter, or Mary, comparing it with the letter her brother had written would discover the deception.

It was the first time in Sanderson's life that had ever attempted to deceive anybody, and he was in the grip of a cringing dread.

For the first time since he occupied the room he inspected it, noting its furnishings. His heart thumped wildly with hope while he looked.

It was a woman's room—Mary's, of course. For there were decorations here and there—a delicate piece of crochet work on a dresser; a sewing basket on a stand; a pincushion, a pair of shears; some gaily ornamented pictures on the walls, and—peering behind the dresser—he saw a pair of lady's riding-boots.

He strode to a closet door and threw it open, revealing, hanging innocently on their hooks, a miscellaneous array of skirts, blouses, and dresses.

Mary had surrendered her room to him. Feeling guilty again, and rather conscience-stricken, as though he were committing some sacrilegious action, he went to the dresser and began to search among the effects in the drawers.

They were filled with articles of wearing apparel, delicately fringed things that delight the feminine heart, and keepsakes of all descriptions. Sanderson handled them carefully, but his search was not the less thorough on that account.

And at last, in one of the upper drawers of the dresser, he came upon a packet of letters.

Again his conscience pricked him, but the stern urge of necessity drove him on until he discovered an envelope addressed to the elder Bransford, in his own handwriting, and close to it a letter from Will Bransford to Mary Bransford.

Sanderson looked long at the Bransford letter, considering the situation. He was tempted to destroy that, too, but he reflected, permitting a sentimental thought to deter him.

For Mary undoubtedly treasured that letter, and when the day came that he should tell her the truth, the letter would be the only link that would connect her with the memory of her brother.

Sanderson could not destroy it. He had already offended Mary Bransford more than he had a right to, and to destroy her brother's letter would be positively heinous.

Besides, unknown to him, there might be more letters about with Will Bransford's signature on them, and it might be well to preserve this particular letter in case he should be called upon to forge Will Bransford's signature.

So he retied the letters in the packet and restored the packet to its place, retaining his own letter to Bransford. Smiling grimly now, he again sought the chair near the window, lit a match, applied the blaze to the letter, and watched the paper burn until nothing remained of it but a crinkly ash. Then he smoked a cigarette and got into bed, feeling more secure.

Determined not to submit to any more of Mary's caresses, and feeling infinitely small and mean over the realization that he had already permitted her to carry her affection too far, he frowned at her when he went into the kitchen after washing the next morning, gruffly replying when she wished him a cheery, "Good morning," and grasping her arms when she attempted to kiss him.

He blushed, though, when her eyes reproached him.

"I ain't used to bein' mushed over," he told her. "We'll get along a heap better if you cut out the kissin'."

"Why, Will!"