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Meadowlark Basin

<h2>CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</h2> <h3>LARK WOULD HAVE DONE THINGS DIFFERENTLY</h3> "Well, so-long, Lark." Bud held his nervous buckskin to a prancy circling while he and Lark indulged in one of those last-minute dialogues without which two persons seem unable to part in complete satisfaction. "If you can get Jelly off to one side, you might tell him that Bob and I are going to stick to the trail like a burr to a dog. And of course you'll know what to say to Delkin. Use your own judgment about telling him the facts." "You better bed down somewhere and take a snooze," Lark advised perfunctorily. "I'll go 'long and meet Bob. I know these hills better than anybody, I guess. You go awn into town and git into bed somewhere. Then you can attend the inquest if they hold one. Mebbe they might not, seein' it's a clear case, s' far as they know. You go awn, Bud, and let me handle this deal." "No. This is my job, Lark. I'll take that rifle of yours, though. I was so afraid Maw would pump something out of me and tell it to Marge that I rushed off without anything much except the grub. I wanted it cooked, so we won't need to make a smoke. No, you go on in and say I came back home and you sent me out on the range. And, Lark, if I don't bring Butch in and turn him over to the sheriff, it won't do any good whatever to say anything to Delkin and the others. They'll believe what they please—and that won't be very favorable to Jelly and me. Just let it ride; and don't worry about Bob and me, will you? No telling how long we'll be out. One of us will ride in to the ranch if it's necessary—and I'd a good deal rather handle it without interference if it's all the same to you." "Oh, all right, if you feel that way about it, Bud. You shore got me up early enough—jest to ride a piece down the road with yuh! Go ahead and handle it without interference then! Mebbe later on you'll be darn glad of a little plain old help! Needn't think Butch is goin' to be easy to take—he'll go down harder 'n cod-liver oil. But all right—have it yore way; you will anyhow." Whereupon, Lark put spurs to his horse and loped on down the trail towards Smoky Ford, talking to himself. He had been coolly pushed aside, robbed of a share in what promised to be a risky piece of business. Impudent, he called it, and forgot how he had deliberately pushed Bud to the front and encouraged him to use his own judgment. No, Lark would have done it differently; followed old Bill's methods more closely. Old Bill would have taken his riders and gone boldly after Butch, and made what he would have called a clean-up over at the Frying Pan. Bud might believe that Kid was ignorant of Butch's plans, but Lark did not. It would surprise him to discover that Kid was in on the deal. Still, Bud might wake up to facts and realize that after all an older head might hold a few ideas worth considering. Bud, however, was not awake to much of anything save the fact that he was beginning to lose interest in anything but sleep; and that the buckskin was a tricky brute in the hills and not to be compared with the Walking Sorrel. The buckskin had a way of climbing hills in leaps that gave no thought to secure footing, but left him winded at the top. His manner of descending a steep slope was quite as reckless and consisted of a series of slides interspersed with dancing sidewise and taking fright at various objects. Bud had saddled him because he happened to be in a corral where he was handy, but he was wishing now—when he roused sufficiently to wish for anything except sleep—that he had taken the time to catch a horse out of the pasture. It might have proved quicker in the long run. So, slipping, sliding, fighting the buckskin and guarding as best he could his burden of food, Bud arrived in the course of time at the spring beneath the sandstone cliffs. By that time he was indifferent to everything. It would have taken Butch Cassidy himself to rouse Bud to the fighting point. He was glad, in a dull, apathetic way, that he had made the trip from the ranch so that Bob could eat before he got as hungry as Bud had been. He managed also to picket the buckskin in the middle of good grass, and to put the supplies up on a shelf of rock away from small prowlers. After that Bud dropped down in the shade of the cliff, pulled his hat over his eyes, gave one huge sigh and dropped like a plummet into the oblivion of dreamless slumber. At the Palmer ranch black Sam was shuffling back and forth across the kitchen, clearing away the débris of a scanty breakfast well-cooked, where nine men had eaten silently and gone their ways; all except Gelle, who had volunteered to remain on guard over Palmer until the sheriff was ready to take him away to the county seat. The coroner had just arrived, and was down in the cow pasture looking over the scene of the double killing and arguing with the sheriff in the intervals of rolling a fresh chew of tobacco relishfully from cheek to cheek. Sam turned scared eyes toward Lark before he remembered his manners and ducked his head in what passed for a bow. Gelle, on a bench before the door, grinned cheerful greeting. "You musta heard the news and got up b'fore breakfast," Gelle bantered. "Bud git in last night?" Lark swung down and sat on the bench beside his "top hand"—as Gelle loved to consider himself. "Bud got in this morning before daylight. Hauled me outa bed and started me out thinkin' I was goin' to git some excitement, mebbe. Then he hazed me awn in whilst he took out across country to meet Bob." "Which means, I guess, that they didn't have no luck last night." Gelle's voice betrayed his disappointment. "Depends on what you call luck," Lark retorted. "That fool kid rode over to the Fryin' Pan, laid out in the yard with Kid Kern till Butch come ridin' in, then up and sticks a gun in Butch's ribs and tells him to come clean with that money he'd stole outa the pasture here. What's more, the darn chump got away with it, and come home without a bullet hole through him. I dunno how it strikes you, Jelly, but I'd call that luck." "And didn't he git the money?" "Naw." Lark stopped while he lighted a cigarette. "He got the laugh." "How's that? I been awn the anxious seat all night, Lark, worryin' about Bud and that damn' gold of Palmer's. Aw, he can't hear. I've got him tied to the bed back in another room. And the coon's only about half there. Go awn, Lark. I'm achin' to know what happened." "That's jest the trouble, Jelly. Nothin' atall happened. Kid, he sided in with Bud and said if Butch had come over here and robbed Palmer's cache he'd turn him over to the sheriff himself. Bud thinks he meant it, but I dunno. Butch didn't have nothin' on his saddle but his slicker, and he give Bud the laugh. That's about all there was to it, fur as I could make out. Bud, he come shackin' along home about three this morning, et everything in sight and packed off what's left to feed Bob with. "Bob stayed out in the hills. They got the idee they can back-track Butch and find out where he cached the stuff. But I dunno—like lookin' fer a needle in a haystack, to my notion. My Jonah, what a mess! How'd you bust yore rib, Jelly? Bud said you'd done it, but he never said how. Gimme some facts, fer gosh sake!" By the time Gelle had told all he knew, had heard or surmised, Delkin, Bradley, the sheriff and the coroner came walking up from the pasture, still arguing. They greeted Lark, then drifted back to the subject of the two dead men. The sheriff sensed the work of a third man there, but the others insisted that the killing had been an impromptu duel, the coroner holding that the position in which the men lay had no bearing upon that point, since death was not instantaneous in either case and both had evidently staggered a few feet before falling. "Kinda funny they'd both be facin' the same way—toward that ledge where you folks got your money," the sheriff pointed out, with a stubborn tilt to his chin. "If they went down fightin' each other, wouldn't they be likely to fall facin' each other? They hadn't started to run, neither of 'em. Looks to me like they both went down shootin' at somebody up on that ledge. You can think what yuh please about it—that's what I think." "There couldn't have been anybody on the ledge," Delkin stated positively. "Bud Larkin was with us; Jelly, here, was at the house with a broken rib; Palmer and the old man were tied up in the bedroom and the coon was here in the kitchen. The four Meadowlark boys had left town ten minutes behind the two Palmer men, and not more than five minutes ahead of us. They heard the shooting as they rode up. The four will swear that Jelly and the coon were here at the house—and as a matter of fact, the rest of us arrived so soon after the shooting that it would have been physically impossible for these two to get back up here." "Well," retorted the sheriff, quickly, "are these all the men there is in the world, Mr. Delkin?" "All that could possibly have known anything about what was on the ledge. Bud Larkin found the money and came straight in after us, leaving Jelly to guard the old man that works here. We came right back, got the money and took it on in to town, still leaving Jelly on guard out here. He brought his prisoner to the house—a very wise thing to do, I may say—and so was here when Palmer came, and while capturing him he broke a rib, as you know. You can ask the doctor here whether he would be able, with that broken rib, to run from the pasture up here in, say, one minute." "Couldn't have done it without a broken rib," stated the coroner, expectorating a generous amount of tobacco juice. "They shot each other. No reason why they shouldn't, is there? They were both after the money, and each man wanted to get there first. Be funny if they didn't fight over it. Guess we better hold an inquest and thrash this thing out before a jury. How soon can you get a jury together, Stilson?" The coroner must have been out of humor with the sheriff, because usually he addressed him familiarly as Jim. "Hour, maybe. That quick enough? You get your witnesses together, and a few facts to show, and I'll have the jury ready to listen to 'em quick enough to ketch 'em before they melt." He probably referred to the facts. Lark, sitting quietly on the bench during the discussion, wondered why no one mentioned Palmer's money (or what was tacitly conceded to be Palmer's money) which had been left in the cache and was now missing. Delkin and Bradley seemed to avoid any unnecessary reference to money. Lark was on the point of mentioning the one great inducement to murder, the one thing that would call a man to the ledge. He was even tempted to tell what he knew of Butch Cassidy. But while the others wrangled his caution came whispering and urging him to wait. If Delkin and Bradley failed to mention the mysterious disappearance of Palmer's gold, it was for one reason. They were grateful to Bud and to Gelle and meant to protect them. Lark appreciated that spirit even while he resented their suspicions. Both emotions held him silent after the first impulse to speak had passed. They knew all about that money being gone, he reflected. If they saw fit to cover up the loss before the sheriff, it would ill become him to drag the thing to the surface and tell the sheriff something that might throw suspicion—or worse—upon the Meadowlark. He joggled Gelle unthinkingly with his elbow, cautioning him to silence, and brought a yelp of pain from that tightly bandaged young man, and a stealthily vicious jab afterwards to show that Gelle had not missed Lark's meaning. <hr class="tb" /> There followed the usual commonplace running to and fro on horses sweating under the urge of their riders' haste to be somewhere else immediately. The coroner's inquest was called, and practically all of Smoky Ford bustled out to Palmer's ranch and squatted on run-over boot heels and drew diagrams in the dust with little sticks, explaining gravely to any who would listen that the robbery, the murder, and the killing of Bat Johnson and Ed White took place in this or that particular manner. All I can say is, Marge should have been there with her notebook; two or three notebooks, rather. Figuratively speaking, the various Sherlocks placed the noose on Palmer's neck a dozen times for a dozen different reasons. They openly mourned that Bat and Ed were past hanging, and there was not a man present who had not known all along that Palmer was at the bottom of the whole thing. So much for the loyalty of neighbors of that type when a man of Palmer's type is called to account for his sins. The inquest might well be called an anticlimax, since the citizens of Smoky Ford had the thing all settled in their minds before the investigation was officially begun. Palmer puzzled and disappointed them and came near to a lynching, that day, merely because he refused to testify and would only say, with baleful self-possession, that since they were all set on laying the guilt on him, they could go ahead and think what they pleased; his lawyer would have something to say about it when the thing came to a trial. (It was at this time that Palmer edged close to death.) The sheriff, being just a bit keyed up by opposition, made a clean sweep of it and took black Sam along with Palmer, and the old man Blinker as well. They might or might not be implicated in the crime, but at least they should prove useful as witnesses. By mid-afternoon the inquest was over and the sheriff had left for the county seat with his three prisoners, leaving his two deputies ostensibly in charge of Palmer's ranch pending a more satisfactory arrangement. In reality, the sheriff had some hope of solving the mystery of the shooting of two men in broad daylight and within sound of the house, and he had left two men where one would have been sufficient, with secret instructions to make a careful search for some clew to an unknown member of the gang. The last shovelful of moist, rocky soil had been carelessly tossed upon Bat Johnson's heaped grave, and the two rough mounds marked by stakes driven into the ground, each bearing a name and date burned hastily with a hot iron. The burial party, in haste to join their fellows, were riding through the gate on their way to town when Maw appeared. Maw was mad. Never before since her arrival at the Meadowlark a few years before had she been treated as Bud and Lark had treated her that morning. Never before had they failed to tell her all that happened or was about to happen, and Maw did not propose to stand it much longer. She had waited until nine o'clock and then had ordered old Cap and Charlie hitched to the beloved "top buggy" which Lark had given her, and she had bundled Marge and a lunch basket in beside her and started for town. They needn't think, said Maw, that she was going to sit and fold her arms and act like a fool just because they treated her like one. Wherefore she challenged the nearest horseman, who was eyeing Marge with interest. "How do? See anything of Bud Larkin around here?" Maw was pretty fair at reading signs, and the trampled yard just across the fence with jumbled tracks leading through the gate had told her a story of events. "No, mom, Bud ain't been here t'day atall." "Lark been here? Bill Larkin?" "Yes, mom, Lark was here and he left right after the inquest." The horseman fiddled with his reins and kept his horse backing and sidling, showing off before Marge. "Inquest! For the love of Moses, has old Palmer been killed at last?" Maw sucked so hard upon her new teeth that she almost swallowed them. "No, mom, he's been took to jail. It's Bat Johnson an' Ed White the cor'ner has been settin' on. They was shot yeste'day." Maw opened her mouth to speak further of her astonishment, then closed it abruptly, took the buggy whip from its socket and struck old Charlie smartly across the rump. Maw's face had gone the color of rancid tallow. There, conjured vividly before her by unreasoning fear, rode the vision of young Bud staggering into the kitchen hollow-eyed and ravenous; wolfing food sufficient for two ordinary appetites and going off with a sackful of supplies. "I do hope I'll get some decently exciting material out of this," said Marge, all in a flutter. "Do you suppose something worth while has actually taken place, and I'll—" "Put up that everlastin' notebook!" snapped Maw. "Things ain't picturesque when they're happenin' to your own!" She pulled the indignant horses from a lope as expertly as a man could have done, and sent them trotting their best down the road to town. "I've got to find Lark and see what's to be done—and it ain't a bit kind or p'lite to use the troubles of your own folks, Margy, to put in stories. If's Buddy's on the dodge for killin' a couple of men, you ain't goin' to put him into no story—you mark what I tell you. Buddy don't want to be no heero. And if he don't want to be, he sha'n't be. Time I put my foot down, I guess." "I'd make Palmer the murderer, of course," Marge placated absently. "What's he been taken to jail for, do you suppose?" "I dunno—and I don't care. Buddy's on the dodge. I knew it when he cleaned out the pantry without sayin' a word about where he was goin'!" Maw sucked in her teeth, tapped both horses across their broad backs with the whip, and went lurching on down the road to town, leaving a cloud of dust behind her. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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