Part 28 (2/2)
She brung complaints before the government, so Taylor ain't magistrate now. The stage stables got moved from Hundred Mile to Spite House. The post-office had to follow. Now he's alone with only a Chinaman. He's blind as a bat, too, and there's no two ways about it--Bolt Taylor's dying.”
”Is there no justice left?”
”Dunno about that. She _uses_ a lot of law.”
I dared not ask about Jesse. To sit still was impossible, to play caged tiger up and down the room would only be ridiculous. Still, Billy's poisonous tobacco excused the opening of a window, so I stood with my back turned, while a November night closed on the river and the misty fields.
How could I leave my baby? How could I possibly break with Covent Garden--where my understudy, a fearsome female, ravened for the part?
The cottage would never let before our river season. ”Madame Scotson has been called abroad on urgent private business.”
”Of course,” the lad was saying, ”when Polly got to be postmistress, she handled Jesse's letters, held the envelopes in the steam of a kettle until they'd open, and gummed them when she was through--if she sent them on. She found out who he dealt with and got them warned not to trust him. There's no letters now.”
”She wouldn't dare!”
”No? You remember he sent you that book you wrote together at the ranch?”
”You know that!”
”I read it at Spite House. She had a heap of fun in the barroom with Jesse's letter. Her cat eyes flamed like mad.”
”There was no letter.”
”She made a paper house of it, and set it alight to show how Jesse burned her home in Abilene. She was drunk, too, that night. But that's nothin'. Glad you didn't hear them yarns she put about the country.
Jesse wasn't never what I'd call popular, but he ain't even spoken to now by any white man. His riders quit, his Chinamen cleared out. Then she bought Brown's ferry, had the cable took away, the scow sent adrift, and Surly Brown packed off. She'd heard that Jesse lived by his rifle, so she's cut him off from his hunting grounds. There's nothing left to hunt east of the Fraser.”
”He's starving?”
”Shouldn't wonder.”
”Billy!”
”Yes'm.”
”How soon can I get a s.h.i.+p?”
”None before Sat.u.r.day.”
”Go on. Tell me the worst.”
”The signs may read coa.r.s.e weather or typhoon. I dunno which yet. She's been locatin' settlers along them old clearings in the black pine and, judging by samples I'd seen, she swept the jails.”
”Why more than one?” I asked, ”why all that expense when one would do?”
”Who'd blackmail Polly afterward? She's no fool. She says straight out in public she'd shoot the man who killed him. But them thugs is planted in hungry land, they see his pastures the best in the district, and you know as well as I do he's a danger to all robbers. Why, even when sportsmen and tourists comes along his old gun gets excited. He hates the sight of strangers, anyway.
”Now, all these years she's goading him to loose out and break the law.
That's why she's got the constable protecting her at Spite House. Once she can get him breaking the law she has all them thugs--so many dollars a head--as witnesses. It ain't murder she wants. She says that when she went to his ranch that time Jesse sent her a message by old Mathson, 'I won't let her off with death.'
”She won't let him off with death. Twice she has put him to shame in public. She'll never rest until she gets him hanged. There's only one thing puzzles me. I see it's his silence, the waiting, which makes Polly wake up and screech at night. But I dunno myself--has Jesse lost his nerve?”
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