Part 44 (1/2)

His baseness was well known to the town, for he was one of those whose tongues reveal their degradation as soon as they are intoxicated. He boasted of his exploits in the city and of the women he had brought to his ranch, and these revelations made him the hero of a certain type of loafer. His cabin was recognized as a center of disorder and was generally avoided by decent people.

As he felt his dominion slipping away, as he saw the big farmers come in down below him and recognized the rule of the Federal government above him, he grew reckless in his roping and branding. He had not been convicted of dishonesty, but it was pretty certain that he was a rustler; in fact, the whole Sh.e.l.lfish community was under suspicion. As the ranger visited these cabins and came upon five or six big, hulking, sullen men, he was glad that he had little business with them. They were in a chronic state of discontent with the world and especially with the Forest Service.

With the almost maniacal persistency of the drunkard, Watson now fixed his mind upon the mysterious woman at the head of the valley. He talked of no one else, and his vile words came to Hanscom's ears. Watson's cronies considered his failure to secure even a word with the woman a great joke and reported that he had found the door locked when he finally followed her home.

Hanscom, indignant yet helpless to interfere, heard with pleasure that the old man had threatened Watson with bodily harm if he came to his door again, that with all his effrontery Watson had not yet been able to set his foot across the threshold, and that he had gone to Denver on business. ”He'll forget that poor woman, maybe,” he said.

Thereafter he thought of her as freed from persecution, although he knew that others of the valley held her in view as legitimate quarry.

His was a fine, serious, though uncultivated nature. A genuine lover of the wilderness, he had reached that time of life when love is cleansed of its devastating selfishness, and his feeling for the lonely woman of the Sh.e.l.lfish held something akin to great poetry.

His own solitary, vigorous employment, his constant warfare with wind and cloud, had made him a little of the seer and something of the poet.

Woman to him was not merely the female of his species; she was a marvelous being, created for the spiritual as well as for the material need of man.

In this spirit he had lived, and, being but a plain, rather shy farmer and prospector, he had come to his thirtieth year with very little love history to his credit or discredit. He was, therefore, peculiarly susceptible to that sweet disease of the imagination which is able to transform the rudest woman into beauty. In this case the very slightness of the material on which his mind dwelt set the wings of his fancy free.

He brooded and dreamed as he rode his trail as well as when he sat beside his rude fireplace at night, listening to the wind in the high firs. In all his thought he was honorable.

II

One day in early autumn, as he was returning to his station, Hanscom met Abe Kitsong just below Watson's cabin, riding furiously down the hill.

Drawing his horse to a stand, the rancher called out:

”Just the man I need!”

”What's the trouble?”

”Ed Watson's killed!”

Hanscom stared incredulously. ”No! Where--when?”

”Last night, I reckon. You see, Ed had promised to ride down to my place this morning and help me to raise a shed, and when he didn't come I got oneasy and went up to see what kept him, and the first thing I saw when I opened the door was him layin' on the floor, shot through and through.” Here his voice grew savage. ”And by that Kauffman woman!”

”Hold on, Abe!” called the ranger, sharply. ”Go slow on that talk. What makes you think that woman--any woman--did it?”

”Well, it jest happened that Ed had spilled some flour along the porch, and in prowling around the window that woman jest naturally walked over it. You can see the print of her shoes where she stopped under the window. You've got to go right up there--you're a gover'ment officer--and stand guard over the body while I ride down the valley and get the coroner and the sheriff.”

”All right. Consider it done,” said Hanscom, and Kitsong continued his frenzied pace down the valley.

The ranger, his blood quickening in spite of himself, spurred his horse into a gallop and was soon in sight of the Sh.e.l.lfish Ranch, where Watson had lived for several years in unkempt, unsavory bachelorhood, for the reason that his wife had long since quit him, and only the roughest cowboys would tolerate the disorder of his bed and board. Privately, Hanscom was not much surprised at the rustler's death (although the manner of it seemed unnecessarily savage), for he was quarrelsome and vindictive.

The valley had not yet emerged from the violent era, and every man in the hills went armed. The canons round about were still safe harbors for ”lonesome men,” and the herders of opposition sheep and cattle outfits were in bitter compet.i.tion for free gra.s.s. Watson had many enemies, and yet it was hard to think that any one of them would shoot him at night through an open window, for such a deed was contrary to all the established rules of the border.

Upon drawing rein at the porch the ranger first examined the footsteps in the flour and under the window, and was forced to acknowledge that all signs pointed to a woman a.s.sailant. The marks indicated small, pointed, high-heeled shoes, and it was plain that the prowler had spent some time peering in through the gla.s.s.

For fear that the wind might spring up and destroy the evidence, Hanscom measured the prints carefully, putting down the precise size and shape in his note-book. He studied the position of the dead man, who lay as he had fallen from his chair, and made note of the fact that a half-emptied bottle of liquor stood on the table. The condition of the room, though disgusting, was not very different from its customary disorder.

Oppressed by the horror of the scene, the ranger withdrew a little way, lit his pipe, and sat down to meditate on the crime.

”I can't believe a woman did it,” he said. And yet he realized that under certain conditions women can be more savage than men. ”If Watson had been shot on a woman's premises it wouldn't seem so much like slaughter. But to kill a man at night in his own cabin is tolerably fierce.”