The Fighting Shepherdess

  CHAPTER XXIII

  WHEN THE BLACK SPOT HIT

  Teeters moved in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.

  Outwardly, there would seem to be no possible connection between hispresence in the living room at Happy Wigwam making himself even morethan ordinarily agreeable, and the confession he desired to wring fromthe murderer of Mormon Joe.

  Years of "Duding," however, had given Teeters a confidence in himselfand his diplomacy which would seem to be justified, for, as he rightlyargued, "A man who can handle dudes can do anything."

  Now, he knew that if he had come to Mrs. Taylor and bluntly asked theuse of her supernatural gifts in Kate's behalf she would have refusedhim.

  Kate had gone to Teeters in despair after her failure with Mullendore,hoping that he might have something to suggest which had not occurred toher. She had told him all that had happened, and among other things,that she knew now that the "breed" had negro blood in him.

  "It probably accounts for his secret belief in an old-fashioned,brimstone hell," she had added. "He denies it, of course, but I'm sureit's the one thing he's really afraid of."

  The information had impressed Teeters.

  "You go back and keep the varmit alive until I git there," he hadadvised her. "I got a black speck in my brain, and every time it hitsthe top of my head I get an idea--I think it's goin' to strikedirectly."

  The present visit was evidence that it had done so. The situation wasone which demanded all his subtlety, but what possible bearing the deepinterest with which he was eying the garment Mrs. Taylor was repairingcould have upon it, the most astute would have found it difficult toimagine.

  The bifurcated article of wearing apparel was of outing flannel, roomywhere amplitude was most needed, gathered at the waist with adrawstring, confined at the ankle by a deep ruffle--a garment of amazingugliness.

  "I suppose," Teeters ventured guilelessly, "them things is handier thanskirts to git over fences and do chores in?" Then, with an anticipatoryair, he waited.

  He was not disappointed. Mrs. Taylor laid down her work and, throwingback her head, burst into laughter that was ringing, Homeric,reverberating through the house like some one shouting in a canyon. Itcontinued until Teeters was alarmed lest he had overdone matters.

  She subsided finally and, wiping her streaming eyes on a ruffle, shook aplayful finger at him:

  "Clarence, you are killing--simply killing!"

  Teeters did not deny it. He had not yet recovered from the fear that hemight be. But he had accomplished what he had intended--he had furnishedMrs. Taylor with the "one good laugh a day" which she declared herhealth and temperament demanded.

  After a pensive silence Teeters looked up wistfully:

  "I wonder if you and Miss Maggie would sing somethin'. I git a reg'larcravin' to hear good music."

  Mrs. Taylor laid down her work with a pleased expression.

  "Certainly, Clarence. Is there anything in particular?"

  "If it ain't too much trouble, I'd like, 'Oh, Think of the Home OverThere.'"

  "I'm delighted that your mind sometimes turns in that direction. I'vesometimes feared, Clarence, that you were not religious."

  Mr. Teeters looked pained at the suggestion.

  "I don't talk about religion much," he replied earnestly, "but there'ssomethin' come up the last few days that set me thinkin' prettyserious."

  Mrs. Taylor looked her curiosity.

  "It's a turrible thing," Teeters wagged his head solemnly, "to see afeller layin' on his death-bed denyin' they's a Hereafter."

  "Why, how dreadful! Who is it?"

  "A sheepherder. He says they ain't no hell--nor nothin'."

  "The po-oo-or soul! Is there any way I could talk to him?"

  "I was hopin' you'd say that, but I didn't like to ask you, seein' ashe's a sheepherder."

  "They're human beings, Clarence," reproved Mrs. Taylor.

  "I've heerd that questioned," declared Teeters, "but anyhow, a personwith a heart in him no bigger than a bullet would have to be sorry tosee this feller goin' to his everlasting punishment without repentin'.He's done murder."

  "Murder!"

  "I'll tell you about it to-morrow on the way over."

  "Where is he?"

  "At Kate Prentice's--at headquarters."

  Mrs. Taylor stiffened.

  "I shouldn't care to go there, Clarence." Seeing that his face clouded,she added: "Of course, if your heart is set upon it--the woman wouldn'tconstrue it as a 'call' and return it, would she?"

  "I hardly think so," replied Teeters dryly.

  * * * * *

  As a result of this conversation, the following morning Kate saw Teetersdriving up Bitter Creek with a second person on the seat beside him. Shehad just come down from Burnt Basin and was not in too good a humor.Bowers, who was staying with Mullendore, came out of the wagon when heheard her and asked:

  "How was it lookin'?"

  "The spring was trampled to a bog," she said in an exasperated voice,"and the range is covered with bare spots where that dry-farmer hassalted his cattle. I'll throw two bands of sheep in there, and when Itake 'em off there won't be roots enough left to grow grass for fiveyears. If it's fight he wants, I'll give him all he's looking for." Herbrow cleared as she added:

  "Teeters is coming up the road and bringing some one with him." Shenodded towards the wagon, "How is he?"

  "I doubt if he lasts the day out."

  Kate frowned when she recognized Mrs. Taylor. They passed occasionallyon the road to Prouty, but always without speaking. Kate never hadforgiven the affront at the Prouty House, while Mrs. Taylor preservedher uncompromising attitude towards "rough characters."

  Mrs. Taylor looked like a grenadier in a long snuff-brown coat andjaunty sailor hat as she descended from the buckboard without using thestep. The benign cow-like complacency of her face always had irritatedKate, and now, as she advanced with the air of a great lady slumming,Kate felt herself tingling.

  "How do you do, my dear?" She extended a large hand with a brown cottonglove upon it.

  Kate's hand remained at her side, as she said coldly:

  "How do you do, Mrs. Taylor?"

  Mrs. Taylor's manner said that it was the gracious act of an unsulliedwoman extending a hand to a fallen sister when she laid her brown cottonpaw upon Kate's arm and quavered pityingly:

  "You po-oo-or soul!"

  "You stupid woman!" Kate's eyes at the moment looked like steel pointsemitting sparks.

  Mrs. Taylor drew herself up haughtily and was about to retort, butthought better of it. Instead, she declared with noble magnanimity:

  "I am not angery. I have not been angery in thirty years. You are veryrude, but I can rise above it and forgive you, because I realize you'vehad no raising."

  "I hope," said Kate hotly, "that you realize also that you are not hereby my invitation."

  Mrs. Taylor looked as if she was not only about to forget that she was asaint but a lady, while Teeters had a sensation of being rent by felineclaws.

  It seemed like a direct intervention of Providence when Bowers hung outof the door of the wagon and called excitedly:

  "I believe he's goin'!"

  The exigencies of the moment, and curiosity, combined to make Mrs.Taylor overlook temporarily that she had been insulted, and she hastenedwith Teeters to the dying man's side.

  Emaciated, yellow, Mullendore was lying with closed eyes when theyentered.

  "Say, feller--" said Teeters, hoping to rouse him.

  Only Mullendore's faint breathing told them that he was living.

  Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his damp forehead and withdrew itquickly.

  "The po-oo-or soul! I'll sing something."

  "It might help to git _ong rapport_ with the sperrits," agreed Teeters.

  As Mrs. Taylor droned a familiar camp-meeting hymn, Mullendore openedhis eyes and looked at her dully:

  "Who are you?" he whispered.

  Mrs. Taylor
quavered, "I've come to bring the Truth to you."

  Mullendore looked at her, uncomprehending.

  Teeters thrust himself in the sick man's line of vision and elucidated:

  "Feller, I'm sorry to tell you you ain't goin' to 'make thegrade'--they's no possible show fur you--an' Mis' Taylor here, who's apersonal friend, you might say, of all the leadin' sperrits in theSperrit World, has come to kind of prepare you--"

  Mullendore's lips moved with an effort:

  "There ain't nothin' after this."

  "Oh, my!" Teeters ejaculated in a shocked voice. "Don't say heathenthings like that! If you'd seen half of what I've saw you couldn'tnowise doubt."

  "There ain't no hell--there ain't no comin' back." The voice wasstronger, and querulous.

  Teeters wagged his head in horrified reproach.

  "Mis' Taylor, do you think the sperrits are goin' to take holt?"

  Turning to the lady who hoped to be his mother-in-law, Teeters's eyesstarted in his head. He was familiar with weird gyrations of the kitchentable, and messages received through the medium of the ouija board, buthe never had seen the mysterious force which Mrs. Taylor referred to asher "control" evidence itself in any such fashion as this.

  With her lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine handslying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor's chest was rising and falling inconvulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, andher wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Hereyes were open and staring fixedly straight ahead. Mrs. Taylor was in atrance.

  Teeters had long since given over trying to explain what he did notunderstand, but in a vague way he regarded Mrs. Taylor as an unconsciousfakir, whose spiritual communications bore the earmarks of somethingshe had learned in a quite ordinary way.

  There was, however, nothing of charlatanry in her present state. Teeterswas convinced of that. She caught and held the gaze of Mullendore's dulleyes. Suddenly she stiffened out like a corpse galvanized into life byan electric charge, then again sank back, and said thickly betweenlabored breaths:

  "It is turgid--dark--all is confusion--spirits are assembling--they arespirits of unrest--there is no peace--no happiness. There is horror inevery distorted face--they have met--violent deaths--they want totalk--they clamor to be heard--they--"

  "It's a lie!" Mullendore's whisper was shrill, aspirate. "There ain't noother world! There ain't no comin' back!"

  "Clouds roll up--" she went on, "clouds of red smoke--they shut thespirits out--new ones come--dim at first--but I can't see--yet. Wait!"

  The woman's stare seemed to carry her through and beyond the wagoncover into the invisible world she peopled with the dead. Her body wasrigid; her face had the ossified gray look of stone; the labored jerksin which she spoke racked her body with the effort that it cost.

  "Now--they're coming! The smoke rolls back a bit--I see--quiteplain--Oh! Oh!" A look of horror froze on her gray face, and her voicerose to a shriek. "He says he's Mormon Joe! He cries--Confess! Confess!"

  To Mullendore with his inflamed brain and nerves jangling like a networkof loose wire, she seemed like a direct emissary from the place oftorment, which was as real to him as the wagon in which he lay.

  The half-breed had tried to convince himself by saying over and overmechanically: "There ain't no hell--there ain't no comin' back--thereain't nothin' after this,"--but the denial was only of the lips--atavismwas stronger than his will. He believed, as much as he believed that onthe morrow the sun would rise, in a real and definite hell, filled withthe shrieking spirits of the damned. In these final hours it hadrequired all his weakened will to hide his fears and keep his tonguebetween his teeth. Now, like a man clinging by his finger tips to somesmall crevice in a cliff, he suddenly gave up. As he relaxed his grip hewhispered with the last faint remnant of his strength:

  "I own up--I set the gun--I--I--"

  Teeters slipped an arm about his shoulders and raised him up.

  "Where did you git it, Mullendore?"

  His answer was a breath.

  "Toomey."

  "One thing more--Where does Kate Prentice's father live? Hisaddress--quick!" Teeters shook the wasted shoulders in his haste.

  The muddy blue-gray iris was divided in half by the closing upper lids.Beneath the glaze there seemed a last malicious spark. Then his tongueclicked as it dropped to the back of his mouth, and Mullendore wasdead.