CHAPTER XXXI
THE LAST TRICK
"I'd take it kindly if you gents would stick yore guns on themantel-piece," said Judge Dolan.
Jack Harpe and Luke Tweezy looked at each other.
"I ain't wearing a gun," said Luke Tweezy, crossing one skinny kneeover the other.
"But Mr. Harpe is," pointed out Judge Dolan.
Jack Harpe jackknifed his long body out of his chair, which was placeddirectly in front of an open doorway giving into an inner room,crossed the floor, and placed his sixshooter on the mantel-piece.
"What is this," he demanded, returning to his place "a trial?"
"Not a-tall," the Judge made haste to assure him. "Just a li'lfriendly talk, thassall. I'm a-lookin' for information, and I've anidea you and Luke can give it to me."
"I'd like a li'l information my own self," grumbled Luke Tweezy. "Whenare you gonna make the Dales vacate?"
"All in good time," the Judge replied with a wintry smile. "I'll begetting to that in short order. Here comes Kansas and Jake Rule now."
"What you want with the sheriff?" Luke queried, uneasily.
"He's gonna help us in our li'l talk," explained the Judge, smoothly.
"I think I'll get my gun," observed Jack Harpe.
He made as if to rise but sank back immediately for Racey Dawson hadsuddenly appeared in the open doorway behind him and run the chillmuzzle of a sixshooter into the back of his neck.
"Never sit with yore back to a doorway," advised Racey Dawson. "Ifyou'll clamp yore hands behind yore head, Jack, we'll all be thehappier. Luke, fish out the knife you wear under yore left armpit, layit on the floor and kick it into the corner."
Luke Tweezy's knife tinkled against the wall at the moment that thesheriff, his deputy, and two other men entered from the street. Thethird man was Mr. Johnson, the Wells Fargo detective. The fourth manwore his left arm in a sling and hobbled on a cane. The fourth man wasSwing Tunstall.
"What kind of hell's trick is this?" demanded Jack Harpe, glaring atthe Wells Fargo detective.
"It's the last trick, Bill," said Mr. Johnson.
At the mention of which name Jack Harpe appeared to shrink inwardly.He looked suddenly very old.
"Take chairs, gents," invited Judge Dolan, looking about him in themanner of a minstrel show's interlocutor. "If everybody's comfortable,we'll proceed to business."
"I thought you said this wasn't a trial," objected Luke Tweezy.
"And so it ain't a trial," the Judge rapped out smartly. "The trialwill come later."
Luke Tweezy subsided. His furtive eyes became more furtive than ever.
"Go ahead, Racey," said Judge Dolan.
Racey, still holding his sixshooter, leaned hipshot against thedoorjamb.
"It was this way," he began, and told what had transpired that day inthe hotel corral when he had been bandaging his horse's leg and hadoverheard the conversation between Lanpher and Jack Harpe and later,Punch-the-breeze Thompson.
"They's nothing in that," declared Jack Harpe with contempt, twistinghis neck to glower up at Racey. "Suppose I did wanna get hold of theDale ranch. What of it?"
"Shore," put in Luke Tweezy. "What of it? Perfectly legitimatebusiness proposition. Legal, and all that."
"Not quite," denied Racey. "Not the way you went about it. Nawsir.Well, gents," he resumed, "what I heard in that corral showed plainenough there was something up. Dale wouldn't sell, and they were boundto get his land away from him. So they figured to have Nebraska Jonesturn the trick by playin' poker with the old man. When Nebraska--Theyswitched from Nebraska to Peaches Austin, plannin' to go through withthe deal at McFluke's from the beginning. And that was where Tweezycome in. He was to get the old man to McFluke's, and with the help ofPeaches Austin cheat Dale out of the ranch."
"That's a damn lie!" cried Tweezy.
"I suppose you'll deny," said Racey, "that the day I saw you ride inhere to Farewell--I mean the day Jack Harpe spoke to you in front ofthe Happy Heart, and you didn't answer him--that day you come in fromMarysville on purpose to tell Jack an' Lanpher about the mortgagehaving to be renewed and that now was their chance. I suppose you'lldeny all that, huh?"
"Yo're--yo're lyin'," sputtered Luke Tweezy.
"Am I? We'll see. When playin' cards with old Dale didn't work theycaught the old man at McFluke's one day and after he'd got in a fightwith McFluke and McFluke downed him, they saw their chance to producea forged release from Dale."
"Who did the forging?" broke in the Judge.
"I dunno for shore. This here was found in Tweezy's safe." He held outa letter to the Judge.
Judge Dolan took the letter and read it carefully. Then he lookedacross at Luke Tweezy.
"This here," said he, tapping the letter with stiffened forefinger,"is a signed letter from Dale to you. It seems to be a reply in thenegative to a letter of yores askin' him to sell his ranch."
The Judge paused and glanced round the room. Then his cold eyesreturned to the face of Luke Tweezy who was beginning to lookextremely wretched.
"Underneath the signature of Dale," continued the Judge, "somebody hascopied 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 whilebefore Dale was killed. The killing made it easier to put it onrecord."
"Looks that way," nodded the Judge.
"Lookit here," boomed Jack Harpe, "you ain't got any right to judge usthisaway. We ain't on trial."
"Shore you ain't," asserted the Judge. "I always said you wasn't. Thishere 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 hiseye.
"This ain't a letter exactly," said Judge Dolan. "It's a quadruplicatecopy of an agreement between Lanpher of the 88 ranch, Jacob Pooley ofPiegan City, and Luke Tweezy of Marysville, parties of the first part,and Jack Harpe, party of the second part, to buy or otherwise obtainpossession of the ranch of William Dale, in the northeast corner ofwhich property is located an abandoned mine tunnel in which JackHarpe, the party of the second part, has discovered a gold-bearinglode."
"A mine!" muttered Swing Tunstall. "A gold mine! And I thought theywanted it for a ranch."
"So did I," Racey nodded.
"I know that mine," said Jake Rule. "Silvertip Ransom and Long Oscardrove the tunnel, done the necessary labour, got their patent, andsold out when they couldn't get day wages to old Dale for one ponyand a jack. But Dale never worked it. A payin' lode! Hell! Who'd 'a'thought it?"
"Old Salt an' Tom Loudon got a couple o' claims on the other side ofthe ridge from Dale's mine," put in Kansas Casey. "They bought 'em offof Slippery Wilson and his wife. Them claims oughta be right valuablenow."
"They are," nodded Judge Dolan. "The agreement goes on to say thatJack Harpe found gold-bearing lodes in both of Slippery's old tunnels,that these claims will be properly relocated and registered--I guessthat's where Jakey Pooley come in--and all three mines will be workedby a company made up of these four men, each man to receive onequarter of the profits. This agreement is signed by Jack Harpe, SimonLanpher, and Jacob Pooley."
"And after Pooley was arrested," contributed Racey Dawson, "the PieganCity marshal went through his safe and found the original of thisagreement signed by Tweezy, Lanpher, and Harpe."
Luke Tweezy held up his hand. "One moment," said he. "Where was theagreement 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 ofyore house in Marysville about a month ago when I noticed one of yoreback windows open. I snooped in and there was Jack
Harpe working onyore combination with Jakey Pooley watchin' him. Jack Harpe was theboy who opened the safe.... Huh? Shore, I know him and Jakey Pooleysicked 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 iswhy 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 menand seven minutes to pry them apart.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE END OF THE TRAIL
Molly Dale looked at Racey with adoring eyes. "How on earth didyou guess that the Bill Smith who robbed the Wells Fargo safe atKeeleyville and killed the agent was Jack Harpe?"
"Oh, that was nothing. You see, I'd heard somebody say--I disrememberexactly who now--that Jack Harpe's real name was Bill Smith, that he'dshaved off his beard and part of his eyebrows to make himself lookdifferent, and that he'd done something against the law to somecompany in some town. I didn't know what company nor what town, but Ihad somethin' to start with when McFluke was let loose. I figured outby this, that, and the other that Jack Harpe had let McFluke loose. Awright, that showed Jack Harpe was a expert lock picker. He showed usat Marysville that he was a expert on safe combinations. Now therecan't be many men like that. So I took what I knew about him to thedetective chiefs of three railroads. He'd done somethin' againsta 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 wantedfor the Keeleyville job. So you see there wasn't much to it. It wasall there waitin' for somebody to find it."
"But it lacked the somebody till you came along," she told him withshining eyes.
"Shucks."
"No shucks about it. That we have our ranch to-day with a sure-enoughproducing gold mine in one corner of it is all due to you."
"Shucks, suppose now those handwritin' experts Judge Dolan got fromChicago hadn't been able to prove at the time that the forgery andthe fifty or sixty copies of yore dad's name were written by the samehand, ink, and pen? Suppose now they hadn't? What then? Where'd yoube, I'd like to know? Nawsir, you give them the credit. They deserveit. Well, I'm shore 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 wayto-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 hishat and walked out of the house without another word or a backwardlook.
* * * * *
"What makes me sick is not a cent out of Old Salt," said Racey,wrathfully, as he and Swing Tunstall walked their horses south alongthe Marysville trail.
"What else could you expect?" said the philosopher Swing. "Wespecified in the agreement that it was cows them jiggers was gonna runon the range. We didn't say nothin' about a mine."
"'We?'" repeated Racey. "'We?' You didn't have a thing to do with thatagreement. I made it. It was my fool fault we worked all those monthsfor nothing."
"What's the dif?" Swing said, comfortably. "We're partners. Dealyoreself a new hand and forget it. Tough luck we couldn't 'a' made aclean sweep of that bunch, huh?"
"Oh, I dunno. Suppose Peaches, Nebraska, and Thompson did get away. Wedid pretty good, considerin'. You can't expect everything."
"Alla same they'd oughta been a reward--for Jack Harpe, anyway. WellsFargo is shore getting mighty close-fisted."
"Jack did better than I thought he would. He never opened his yapabout Marie being in that Keeleyville gang."
"Maybe he didn't know for shore or else knowed better. Bull was inthat gang, too, and Bull got his throat cut. If Jack had done anyblattin' about Marie and Keeleyville he might 'a' had to stand trialfor murder right here in this county instead of going down to NewMexico to be tried for a murder committed ten years ago with all thatmeans--evidence gone rusty with age and witnesses dead or in jailthemselves most like. Oh, he'll be convicted, but it won't be firstdegree, you can stick a pin in that."
"I wonder if he did kill Bull."
"I wonder, too. Didja know who Bull really was, Swing?... Marie'sbrother. Yep, she told me about it yesterday."
"Her own brother, huh? That's a odd number. Alla same I'll bet shedon't miss him much."
"Nor Nebraska, neither. _He'll_ never come back to bother her again,that's a cinch. Who's that ahead?"
"That" was Molly waiting for them at a turn in the trail. When theycame up to her she nodded to both men, but her smile was all for RaceyDawson. He felt his pulse begin to beat a trifle faster. How handsomeshe was with her dark hair and blue eyes. And at the moment those blueeyes that were looking into his were deep enough to drown a man.
"Can I see you a minute, Racey?" said she.
Swing immediately turned his horse on a dime and loped along the backtrail. Left alone with Racey she moved her horse closer to his. Theirankles touched. His hands were clasped on the saddle-horn. She laidher cool hand on top of them.
"Racey," she said, her wonderful eyes holding him, "why are you goingaway?"
This was almost too much for Racey. He could hardly think straight. "Itold you," he said, hoarsely. "We're goin' to Arizona--minin'."
She flung this statement aside with a jerk of her head. "You used tolike me, Racey," she told him.
He nodded miserably.
"Don't you like me any more?" she persisted.
He did not nod. Nor did he speak. He stared down at the back of thehand lying on top of his.
"Look at me, boy," she directed.
He looked. The fingers of the hand on top of his slid in between hisfingers.
"Look me in the eye," said she, "and tell me you don't love me."
"I cuc-can't," he muttered in a panic.
"Then why are you going away?" Her voice was gentle--gentle andwistful.
"Because yo're rich now, that's why," he replied, thickly, the wordswrung out in a rush. "You've lots o' money, and I ain't got a thingbut my hoss and what I stand up in. How can I love you, Molly?"
"Lean over here, and I'll show you how," said Molly Dale.
THE END
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