With Hoops of Steel Part 5

Marguerite Delarue's friends always thought of her and spoke of her as English, notwithstanding her French paternity. For her appearance and her temperament she had inherited from her English mother, who had given her also English training. Miss Delarue laughed at the forlorn dejection of Wellesly's face and figure.

"My face is a jovial mask," he gravely told her. "You should see the melancholy gloom that shrouds my mind."

"I hope nothing has happened," she exclaimed, with sudden alarm.

"That's just the trouble, Miss Delarue. It's because nothing does happen here, and I have to endure the aching void, that I am filled with such melancholy."

"Surely there was enough excitement yesterday and last night."

"Ah, yesterday! That was something like! But it was yesterday, and to-day the deadly dullness is enough to turn the blood in one's veins to mud!"

"Then everything is quiet down-town? There is no more danger of trouble?"

"There is no danger of anything, except that every blessed person in the place may lie down in his tracks and fall into a hundred years'

sleep. I a.s.sure you, Miss Delarue, the town is as peaceful as the plain out yonder, and birds in their little nests are not nearly so quiet as are the valiant warriors of Las Plumas."

"Oh, that is good! I am very glad, on my father's account. He is so aggressive in his opinions that whenever there is any excitement of this kind I am anxious about him until the trouble is over." She hesitated a moment, her lips trembling on the verge of further speech, and he waited for her to go on. "Mr. Wellesly," she said, a note of uncertainty sounding in her voice, "you are not prejudiced by the political feeling which colors people's opinions here. I wish you would tell me what you think about this matter. Do you believe Mr.

Mead has killed Will Whittaker?"

Wellesly noted her earnest expression and the intentness of her voice and pose, and he decided at once that this was not mere curiosity. He paused a moment, looking thoughtful. His keen, brilliant eyes were bent on her face.

"It's a hard question you've asked me, Miss Delarue. One does not like to decide against a man in such serious accusations unless he can be sure. The evidence against Emerson Mead, in this murder case, is all circ.u.mstantial, it is true, but, at least to me, it is strongly convincing." His eyes were almost closed, only a strip of brilliant gray light showing between their lids, but he was watching her narrowly. "We know that he has been stealing cattle from us. We have found many bearing our brand among his herds. Our men have even caught him driving them into his own bands. In fact, there is no doubt about this matter. Emerson Mead is a cattle thief of the wiliest sort." He paused a moment, noting the horrified expression on her downcast face.

But she did not speak, and he went on:

"About this murder, if murder it is, of course n.o.body knows anything with certainty. But in my judgment there is only one tenable theory of Will Whittaker's disappearance, and that is, that he was murdered and his body hidden. Mead is the only enemy he was known to have, and Mead had threatened to kill him. The evidence, while, of course, not conclusive, is shockingly bad for Mead."

She looked away, toward the Hermosa mountains looming sharp and jagged in the fierce afternoon sunlight, and he saw her lips tremble. Then, as if her will caught and held them, the movements ceased with a little inrush of breath. He lowered his voice and made it very kindly and sympathetic as he leaned toward her and went on:

"For your sake, I am very sorry for all this if Mr. Mead is a friend of yours. He is a very taking young fellow, with his handsome face and good-natured smile. But, also for your sake," and his voice went down almost to a murmur, "I hope he is not a friend."

There were tears in her eyes and distress, perplexity and pain in her face as she turned impulsively toward him, as if grasping at his sympathy.

"I have it!" he thought. "She is in love with Mead! Now we'll find out how far it has gone. Papa Frenchy couldn't have known of it."

"I can not say he is a friend," she said slowly. "He is scarcely an acquaintance. I have not met him, I think, more than half a dozen times, and only a few minutes each time. But he has always been so kind to my little brother that I find it hard to believe a man so gentle and thoughtful with a child could be so--criminal."

"Ah! Love at first sight, probably not reciprocated!" was Wellesly's mental comment. "I guess it is a case in which it would be proper to offer consolation, and watch the effect." Gradually he led the conversation away from this painful topic and talked with her about other places in which she had lived. Then they drifted to more personal matters, to theories upon life and duty, and he spoke with the warmest admiration of what he called the ideal principles by which she guided her life and declared that they would be impossible to a man, unless he had the good fortune to be stimulated and helped by some n.o.ble woman who realized them in her own life. It was admiration of the most delicate, impersonal sort, seemingly directed not to the girl herself, but to the girl she had wished and tried to be. It set Marguerite Delarue's heart a-flutter with pleasure. No one had ever given her such open and such delicate admiration, and she was too unsophisticated to conceal her delight. He smiled to himself at her evident pleasure in his words, and, with much the same feeling with which he might have cuddled a purring, affectionate kitten, he went a step farther and made love--a very shadowy, intangible sort of love, in a very indefinite sort of way.

Albert Wellesly usually made love to whatever woman happened to be at hand, if he had nothing else to do, or if he thought it would advance his interests. With men he was keen and forceful, studying them shrewdly, seeing quickly their weak points, turning these to his own advantage, and helping himself over their heads by every means he could grasp. In his dealings and relations with women he aimed at the same masterful result, but while with men this might be attained in many ways, with women he held there was but one way, and that was to make love to them.

Marguerite bade him good-by with the same deep pain still in her heart, but pleased in spite of herself. His words had been laden heavily with the honey of admiration of a sort that to her serious nature was most pleasing, while about them had hovered the faintest, most elusive aroma of love. In her thought, she went over their long conversation again and again, and dwelt on all that he had said with constant delight. For to women admiration is always pleasing, even though they may know it to be insincere. To young women it is a wine that makes them feel themselves rulers of the earth, and to their elders it is a cordial which makes them forget their years.

Marguerite Delarue had had little experience with either love or admiration. Her heart had been virgin ground when her face had first flushed under the look in Emerson Mead's brown eyes. And the first words of love to fall upon her ears had been the uncertain ones of Wellesly that afternoon. She conned them over to herself, saying that of course they meant only that he was a high-minded gentleman who admired high ideals. She repeated all that he had said on the subject of Mead's guilt.

"He seemed fair and unprejudiced," she thought, "but I can not believe it without certain proof. I know more about Mr. Mead than some of those who think they know so much, for I have seen him with my little Bye-Bye, and until they can prove what they say I shall believe him just as good as he seems to be."

So she locked up in her heart her belief in Mead's innocence, saying nothing about the matter to any one, till after a little that belief came to be like a secret treasure, hidden away from all other eyes, but in her own thought held most dear.

CHAPTER VI

The jail at Las Plumas was a spreading, one-story adobe building, with a large, high-walled court at the back. This wall was also of adobe, some ten feet high and three feet thick, without an opening, and crowned with a luxuriant growth of p.r.i.c.kly-pear cactus. At certain hours of the day the prisoners were allowed the freedom of this court, while a guard kept on them an occasional eye. Behind the court, and coming up to its very walls, was a small tract of land planted with vegetables, flowers and fruit trees and worked by an old Mexican who lived alone in a tiny hut at the farther end of the enclosure.

For two days after the night of Emerson Mead's arrest his friends tried every device known to the law to get him free of the prison walls. But each attempt was cleverly met and defeated by the opposing party, and he was still behind the bars. Then Nick Ellhorn and Thomson Tuttle held a conference, and agreed that Mead must get back to his ranch at once in order to save his affairs from further injury.

"That's what they are doin' this thing for," said Nick, "so they can get a good chance to steal all his cattle. And what they don't steal they'll scatter over the plains till it will be more than they're worth to get 'em together again. They think they can just everlastingly do him up by keepin' him in jail for a month."

Tuttle broke out with an indignant oath. "It's the meanest, low-downest, dirtiest, measliest trick they've ever tried to do, and that's sayin' a whole heap! But they'll find out they've got more to buck against than they're a-lookin' for now!"

"You bet they will! They've got to travel mighty fast if they keep up with this procession! Talk about measly tricks! Tom, that Fillmore outfit's the biggest cattle thief in the southwest. It's just plum'

ridiculous to hear them talk about Emerson stealin' their cattle! Why, if he'd stayed up nights to steal from them he couldn't have got even for what they've taken from him."

They talked over the plan Ellhorn had proposed and when it was all arranged Tuttle asked, "Shall we tell the judge?"

"Tell nothin' to n.o.body!" Nick exclaimed. "The judge will find it out soon enough, and if we don't tell him he won't bother us with advice to give it up. We've got some horse sense, Tommy, and I reckon we-all can run this here excursion without help from any darn fool lawyer in the territory. If they'd left it to us in the first place, we'd have had Emerson at home long before this."

"I guess we-all can play our part of this game if Emerson can play his."

"Don't you worry about Emerson. He's ready to ride the devil through h.e.l.l to get back to his round-up."

The next morning Nick Ellhorn hunted up the Mexican who worked the garden behind the jail and talked through the enclosure with the old man, who was crippled and half blind. Ellhorn talked with him about the garden and finally said he would like to eat some onions. The Mexican pulled a bunch of young green ones for him, and he sat down on a bench under a peach tree near the wall of the jail-court to eat them. He sent the Mexican back to his hut for some salt, and at once began whistling loudly the air of "Bonnie Dundee." Presently he broke into the words of the song and woke the echoes round about, as he and Emerson Mead had done on many a night around the camp-fire on the range:

"Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle my horse and call out my men."

There he stopped and waited, and in a moment a baritone voice on the other side of the wall took up the song:

"Come ope the west port and let us go free To follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!"

Ellhorn went on singing as he threw one of his onions, then another, over the wall. One of them came sailing back and fell beside the peach tree. Then he took a slip of folded paper from his pocket, tied it to another onion and sent it over the cactus-crowned adobe. The Mexican returned with the salt and they sat down together under the tree, chatting sociably. Presently Mead's voice came floating out from behind the wall in the stirring first lines of the old Scotch ballad:

"To the lords of convention, 'twas Claverhouse spoke: 'If there are heads to be crowned, there are heads to be broke!'"

Nick chuckled, winked at the old Mexican, and hurried off to find Tuttle.

That evening, soon after the full darkness of night had mantled the earth, Nick Ellhorn and Tommy Tuttle rode toward the jail, leading an extra horse. Ellhorn gave Tuttle a lariat.

"You'd better manage this part," he said in a low tone. "My arm's not strong enough yet to be depended on in such ticklish matters. I tried it to-day with my gun, and it's mighty near as steady as ever for shooting, but I won't risk it on this."

They rode into the Mexican's garden and Ellhorn stood with the extra horse under the drooping branches of the peach tree. They listened and heard the sound of a soft whistling in the _patio_, as if some one were idly walking to and fro.

"That's him!" Ellhorn whispered excitedly. "That's what I told him to be doing at just this time! He's listening for us!" Ellhorn whistled softly several bars of the same air, which were at once repeated from within. Tuttle rode beside the wall and threw over it the end of his lariat. He waited until the whistling ceased, and then, winding the rope around the pommel, he struck home the spurs and the horse leaped forward, straining to the work. It was a trained cow-pony, Mead's own favorite "cutting-out" horse, and it answered with perfect will and knowledge the urging of Tuttle's spurs. With a soft "f-s-s-t" the rope wore over the top of the wall and Mead's tall form stood dimly outlined behind the battlement of cactus. He untied the rope from his waist, threw it to the ground, and with foot and fist thrust aside the bristling, sharp-spined ma.s.ses, dropped over the outer edge, hung at full length by his hands for an instant, and landed in the soft earth at the bottom.

They heard his name called inside the _patio_. It was the guard, who had just missed him. As they quickly mounted there came over the wall the sound of hurrying feet and the rapid conference of excited voices.

Mead shot his revolver into the air and Ellhorn, lifting his voice to its loudest and fullest, sang:

"Come ope the west port and let us go free To follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!"