Part 41 (2/2)

”He's lied to you, if he said I done it----,” he gasped, relapsing into the vernacular of an earlier day. ”It was Hawk. He stabbed him in the back. I never touched him. I never had a thing to do with the killin'. I swear it----”

Peter's lips set in a thin line.

”So Hawk Kennedy killed Ben Cameron!” he said.

”He did. I swear to G.o.d----”

”And then _you_ cleared out with all the water, leaving Hawk to die.

_That_ was murder--cold-blooded murder----”

”My G.o.d, don't, Nichols!” the old man moaned. ”If you only knew----”

”Well, then--tell me the truth.”

Their glances met. Peter's was compelling. He had, when he chose, an air of command. And there was something else in Peter's look, inflexible as it was, that gave McGuire courage, an unalterable honesty which had been so far tried and not found wanting.

”You know--already,” he stammered.

”Tell me your story,” said Peter bluntly.

There was a long moment of hesitation, and then,

”Get me a drink, Nichols. I'll trust you. I've never told it to a living man. I'll tell--I'll tell it all. It may not be as bad as you think.”

He drank the liquor at a gulp and set the gla.s.s down on the table beside him.

”This--this thing has been hanging over me for fifteen years, Nichols--fifteen years. It's weighted me down, made an old man of me before my time. Maybe it will help me to tell somebody. It's made me hard--silent, busy with my own affairs, bitter against every man who could hold his head up. I knew it was going to come some day. I knew it.

You can't pull anything like that and get away with it forever. I'd made the money for my kids--I never had any fun spending it in my life. I'm a lonely man, Nichols. I always was. No happiness except when I came back to my daughters--to Peggy and my poor Marjorie....”

McGuire was silent for a moment and Peter, not taking his gaze from his face, patiently waited. McGuire glanced at him just once and then went on, slipping back from time to time into the speech of a bygone day.

”I never knew what his first name was. He was always just 'Hawk' to us boys on the range. Hawk Kennedy was a bad lot. I knew it up there in the San Luis valley but I wasn't no angel from Heaven myself. And he had a way with him. We got on all right together. But when the gold mine up at the Gap petered out he quit me--got beaten up in a fight about a woman.

I didn't see him for some years, when he showed up in Pueblo, where I was workin' in a smelter. He was all for goin' South into the copper country. He had some money--busted a faro bank he said, and talked big about the fortune he was goin' to make. Ah, he could talk, when he had something on his mind.... I had some money saved up too and so I quit my job and went with him down to Bisbee, Arizona. I wish to G.o.d I never had. I'd gotten pretty well straightened out up in Pueblo, sendin' money East to the wife and all----. But I wanted to be rich. I was forty-five and I had to hurry. But I could do it yet. Maybe this was my chance.

That's the way I thought. That's why I happened to listen to Hawk Kennedy and his tales of the copper country.

”Well, we got an outfit in Bisbee and set out along the Mexican border.

We had a tip that let us out into the desert. It was just a tip, that's all. But it was worth following up. It was about this man Ben Cameron.

He'd come into town all alone, get supplies and then go out again next day. He let slip something over the drink one night. That was the tip we were followin' up. We struck his trail all right--askin' questions of greasers and Indians. We knew he'd found somethin' good or he wouldn't have been so quiet about it.

”I swear to G.o.d, I had no idea of harmin' him. I wanted to find what Ben Cameron had found, stake out near him and get what I could. Maybe Hawk Kennedy had a different idea even then. I don't know. He never said what he was thinkin' about.

”We found Ben Cameron. Perched up in a hill of rocks, he was, livin' in the hole he'd dug where he'd staked his claim. But we knew he hadn't taken out any papers. He never thought anybody'd find him out there in that h.e.l.l-hole. It was h.e.l.l all right. Even now whenever I think of what h.e.l.l must be I think of what that gulch looked like. Just rocks and alkali dust and heat.

”It all comes back to me. Every little thing that was said and done--every word. Ben Cameron saw us first--and when we came up, he was sittin' on a rock, his rifle acrost his knees, a hairy man, thin, burnt-out, black as a greaser. Hawk Kennedy pa.s.sed the time of day, but Ben Cameron only cursed at him and waved us off. 'Get the h.e.l.l out of here,' he says--ugly. But we only laughed at him--for didn't we both see the kind of an egg Ben Cameron was settin' on?

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