Part 18 (1/2)

”There better hadn't be anything drop!” Starr told him dryly. ”You're into something deeper than county work now, ole-timer. This is Federal business, remember. Come on back and stall around some more, and let me go on about my own business. You can get word to me at the Palacia if you want me at the inquest, but don't get friendly. I'm just a stock-buyer that happened along. Keep it that way.”

”I sure will, Mr. Starr. I'll do my part.” The sheriff relapsed into his ruminative manner as he led the way back to the house. One may guess that Starr had given him something worth ruminating about.

In a few minutes, he told Starr curtly that he could go if he wanted to; and he bettered that by muttering to the coroner that he had a notion to hold the fellow, but that he seemed to have a pretty clear alibi, and they could get him later if they wanted him. To which the coroner agreed in neighborly fas.h.i.+on.

Starr was saddling Rabbit for another long ride, and he was scowling thoughtfully while he did it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A PAGE OF WRITING

Wind came with the sun and went shrieking across the high levels, taking with it clouds of sand and bouncing tumbleweeds that rolled and lodged for a minute against some rock or bush and then went whirling on again in a fresh gust. Starr had not ridden two miles before his face began to feel the sting of gravel in the sand clouds. His eyes, already aching with a day's hard usage and a night of no sleep, smarted with the impact of the wind. He fumbled at the band of his big, Texas hat and pulled down a pair of motor goggles and put them on distastefully. Like blinders on a horse they were, but he could not afford to face that wind with unprotected eyes--not when so very much depended upon his eyes and his ears and the keenest, coolest faculties of his mind.

Still worry nagged at him. He wanted to know who was the man that had visited Helen May so soon after he had left, and he wanted to know why a light had shone from her window at one o'clock last night; and whether the automobile had been going to Sunlight Basin, or merely in that direction.

He hurried, for he had no patience with worries that concerned Helen May.

Besides, he meant to beg a breakfast from her, and he was afraid that if he waited too late she might be out with Pat and the goats, and he would have to waste time on the kid (Vic would have resented that term as applied to himself) who might be still laid up with his sprained ankle.

He was not thinking so much this morning about the knowledge he had gained in the night. He had given several quiet hours to thought upon that subject, and he had his course pretty clearly defined in his mind.

He also had Sheriff O'Malley thoroughly coached and prepared to do his part. The matter of Elfigo Apodaca, then, he laid aside for the present, and concerned himself chiefly with what on the surface were trifles, but which, taken together, formed a chain of disquieting incidents. Rabbit felt his master's desire for haste, and loped steadily along the trail, dropping now and then into his smooth fox-trot, that was almost as fast a gait; so it was still early morning when he dropped reins outside and rapped on the closed door.

Helen May opened the door cautiously, it seemed to him; a scant six inches until she saw who he was, when she cried ”Oh!” in a surprised, slightly confused tone, and let him in. Starr noticed two things at the first glance he gave her. The first was the blue crocheted cap which she wore; he did not know that it was called a breakfast-cap and that it was very stylish, for Starr, you must remember, lived apart from any intimate home life that would familiarize him with such fripperies. The cap surprised him, but he liked the look of it even though he kept that liking to himself.

The second thing he noticed was that Helen May was hiding something in her right hand which was dropped to her side. When she had let him in and turned away to offer him a chair, he saw that she had the pearl-handled six-shooter.

She disappeared behind a screen, and came out with her right hand empty, evidently believing he had not seen how she had prepared herself for an emergency. She had only yesterday told him emphatically how harmless she considered the country; and he had been careful to warn her only about rabid coyotes, so that without being alarmed, she would not go unarmed away from home. It seemed queer to Starr that she should act as though she expected rabid coyotes to come a-knocking at her door in broad daylight. Had she, he thought swiftly, been only pretending that she considered the country perfectly safe?

He could not help it; that six-shooter hidden in the folds of her skirt stuck in his mind. It was just a trifle, like her lighted window at one o'clock in the morning; like that strange man who had called on her just after Starr had left her, and with whom she had seemed to be on such friendly terms. He had warned her of coyotes. She was not supposed to know that it was wise to arm herself before she opened her door to a daylight caller. At night, yes. But at seven o'clock in the morning?

Starr did not suspect Helen May of anything, but he had been trained to suspect mysterious trifles. In spite of himself, this trifle nagged at him unpleasantly.

He fancied that Helen May was just a shade fl.u.s.tered in her welcome; just a shade nervous in her movements, in her laughter, in the very tones of her voice.

”You're out early,” she said. ”Vic isn't up yet; I suppose the goats ought to be let out, too. You couldn't have had your breakfast--or have you? One can expect almost anything of a man who just rides out of nowhere at all hours, and disappears into nowhere.”

”I sh.o.r.e wish that was so,” Starr retorted banteringly. ”I wish I had to ride nowhere to-day.”

”Oh, I meant the mystery of the unknown,” she hurried to correct herself.

”You come out of the desert just any old time. And you go off into the desert just as unexpectedly; by the way, did you--”

”Nope. I did not.” She might forget that Vic was in the house, but Starr never forgot things of that sort, and he wilfully forestalled her intention to ask about the shooting. ”I didn't have any supper, either, beyond a sandwich or two that was mostly sand after I'd packed 'em around all day. I just naturally had to turn tramp and come ask for a handout, when I found out at daylight how close I was to breakfast.”

”Why, of course. You know you won't have to beg very hard. I was just going to put on the coffee. So you make yourself at home, and I'll have breakfast in a few minutes. Vic, for gracious sake, get up! Here's company already. And you'll have to let out the goats. Pat can keep them together awhile, but he can't open the gate, and I'm busy.”

Starr heard the prodigious yawn of the awakening Vic, who slept behind a screen in the kitchen, bedrooms being a superfluous luxury in which Johnny Calvert had not indulged himself. Starr followed her to the doorway.

”I'll go let out the goats,” he offered. ”I want to take off the bridle anyway, so Rabbit can feed around a little.” He let himself out into the whooping wind, feeling, for some inexplicable reason, depressed when he had expected to feel only relief.

”Lord! I'm getting to the point where anything that ain't accompanied by a chart and diagrams looks suspicious to me. She's got more hawse sense than I gave her credit for, that's all. She musta seen through my yarnin'