The Heart of the Range Part 72

The Judge paused and glanced round the room. Then his cold eyes returned to the face of Luke Tweezy who was beginning to look extremely wretched.

"Underneath the signature of Dale," continued the Judge, "somebody has copied that signature some fifty or sixty times. I wonder why."

"I dunno anything about it," Luke Tweezy denied, feebly.

"We'll come back to that," the Judge observed, softly. "G'on, Racey."

"I figure," said Racey, "that they'd hatched that forgery some while before Dale was killed. The killing made it easier to put it on record."

"Looks that way," nodded the Judge.

"Lookit here," boomed Jack Harpe, "you ain't got any right to judge us thisaway. We ain't on trial."

"Sh.o.r.e you ain't," a.s.serted the Judge. "I always said you wasn't. This here is just a talk, a friendly talk. No trial about it."

"Here's another letter, Judge," said Racey Dawson.

The Judge read the other letter, and again fixed Luke Tweezy with his eye.

"This ain't a letter exactly," said Judge Dolan. "It's a quadruplicate copy of an agreement between Lanpher of the 88 ranch, Jacob Pooley of Piegan City, and Luke Tweezy of Marysville, parties of the first part, and Jack Harpe, party of the second part, to buy or otherwise obtain possession of the ranch of William Dale, in the northeast corner of which property is located an abandoned mine tunnel in which Jack Harpe, the party of the second part, has discovered a gold-bearing lode."

"A mine!" muttered Swing Tunstall. "A gold mine! And I thought they wanted it for a ranch."

"So did I," Racey nodded.

"I know that mine," said Jake Rule. "Silvertip Ransom and Long Oscar drove the tunnel, done the necessary labour, got their patent, and sold out when they couldn't get day wages to old Dale for one pony and a jack. But Dale never worked it. A payin' lode! h.e.l.l! Who'd 'a'

thought it?"

"Old Salt an' Tom Loudon got a couple o' claims on the other side of the ridge from Dale's mine," put in Kansas Casey. "They bought 'em off of Slippery Wilson and his wife. Them claims oughta be right valuable now."

"They are," nodded Judge Dolan. "The agreement goes on to say that Jack Harpe found gold-bearing lodes in both of Slippery's old tunnels, that these claims will be properly relocated and registered--I guess that's where Jakey Pooley come in--and all three mines will be worked by a company made up of these four men, each man to receive one quarter of the profits. This agreement is signed by Jack Harpe, Simon Lanpher, and Jacob Pooley."

"And after Pooley was arrested," contributed Racey Dawson, "the Piegan City marshal went through his safe and found the original of this agreement signed by Tweezy, Lanpher, and Harpe."

Luke Tweezy held up his hand. "One moment," said he. "Where was the agreement signed by Harpe, Pooley, and Lanpher found?"

"In yore safe," replied Racey Dawson.

"Did you find it there?"

"Yep."

"What were you doing at my safe?"

"Now don't get excited, Luke. I happened to be in the neighbourhood of yore house in Marysville about a month ago when I noticed one of yore back windows open. I snooped in and there was Jack Harpe working on yore combination with Jakey Pooley watchin' him. Jack Harpe was the boy who opened the safe.... Huh? Sh.o.r.e, I know him and Jakey Pooley sicked posses on my trail. Why not? They hadda cover their own tracks, didn't they? But that ain't the point. What I can't help wondering is why Harpe and Pooley was fussin' with the safe in the first place.

What do you guess, Luke?"

Evidently Tweezy knew the answer. With a yelp of "Tried to cross me, you--!" he flung himself bodily upon Jack Harpe.

In a moment the two were rolling on the floor. It required four men and seven minutes to pry them apart.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE END OF THE TRAIL

Molly Dale looked at Racey with adoring eyes. "How on earth did you guess that the Bill Smith who robbed the Wells Fargo safe at Keeleyville and killed the agent was Jack Harpe?"

"Oh, that was nothing. You see, I'd heard somebody say--I disremember exactly who now--that Jack Harpe's real name was Bill Smith, that he'd shaved off his beard and part of his eyebrows to make himself look different, and that he'd done something against the law to some company in some town. I didn't know what company nor what town, but I had somethin' to start with when McFluke was let loose. I figured out by this, that, and the other that Jack Harpe had let McFluke loose. Aw right, that showed Jack Harpe was a expert lock picker. He showed us at Marysville that he was a expert on safe combinations. Now there can't be many men like that. So I took what I knew about him to the detective chiefs of three railroads. He'd done somethin' against a company, do you see, and of course I went to three different _railroad_ companies before I woke up and went to the Wells Fargo an'

found out that such a man as Jack Harpe named Bill Smith was wanted for the Keeleyville job. So you see there wasn't much to it. It was all there waitin' for somebody to find it."

"But it lacked the somebody till you came along," she told him with s.h.i.+ning eyes.

"Shucks."

"No shucks about it. That we have our ranch to-day with a sure-enough producing gold mine in one corner of it is all due to you."

"Shucks, suppose now those handwritin' experts Judge Dolan got from Chicago hadn't been able to prove at the time that the forgery and the fifty or sixty copies of yore dad's name were written by the same hand, ink, and pen? Suppose now they hadn't? What then? Where'd you be, I'd like to know? Nawsir, you give them the credit. They deserve it. Well, I'm sh.o.r.e glad yo're all gonna be rich, Molly. It's fine.

That's what it is--fine--great. Well, I've got to be driftin' along.

I'm going to meet Swing in town. We're riding south Arizona way to-morrow."

"Arizona!"

"Yeah, we're going to give the mining game a whirl."

"Why--why not give it a whirl up here in this country?"

"Because there ain't another mine like yores in the territory. No, we'll go south. Swing wants to go--been wanting to go for some time."

"Bub-but I thought you were going to stay up here," persisted Molly, her cheeks a little white.

"Not--not now," Racey said, hastily. "So long, take care of yoreself."

He reached for her hand, gave it a quick squeeze, then picked up his hat and walked out of the house without another word or a backward look.

"What makes me sick is not a cent out of Old Salt," said Racey, wrathfully, as he and Swing Tunstall walked their horses south along the Marysville trail.

"What else could you expect?" said the philosopher Swing. "We specified in the agreement that it was cows them jiggers was gonna run on the range. We didn't say nothin' about a mine."

"'We?'" repeated Racey. "'We?' You didn't have a thing to do with that agreement. I made it. It was my fool fault we worked all those months for nothing."

"What's the dif?" Swing said, comfortably. "We're partners. Deal yoreself a new hand and forget it. Tough luck we couldn't 'a' made a clean sweep of that bunch, huh?"