Charles Alden Seltzer - Square Deal Sanderson

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"But we don't want to play hog. If you'll admit before a notary that
you are not Will Bransford we'll hand you back the four thousand Dale
took from you, give you ten thousand in addition and safe conduct out
of the county. That strike you?"

Sanderson did not answer.

Silverthorn's face reddened. "You're a damned fool!" he sneered,
venomously. "We'll keep you in jail here for a thousand years, if
necessary. We'll do worse!

"Look here!" he suddenly said. But Sanderson did not turn.
Silverthorn rattled a paper.

"Here's a withdrawal slip on the Okar bank, calling for three thousand
two hundred dollars, signed by Will Bransford. Barney Owen drew the
money last night and blew it in gambling and drinking. He says he's
been signing Bransford's name--forging it--at your orders. The
signature he put on this paper is a dead ringer for the one on the
registry blank you gave Dale.

"Dale saw Owen sign that. That's why he knew you are not Will
Bransford. Understand? Maison will swear you signed the withdrawal
slip and got the money. We'll prove that you are not Bransford, and
you'll go to the Las Vegas pen for twenty years! Now, let's talk
business!"

Sanderson turned. There was a mirthless grin on his face. He spoke
loudly, calling the jailer.

When the latter appeared in the corridor beside Silverthorn, Sanderson
addressed him without looking at the other:

"You ain't on your job a heap, are you? There's a locoed coyote
barkin' at me through the door, there. Run him out, will you--he's
disturbin' me plenty."

He turned from the door, stretched himself on the cot, and with his
face to the wall listened while Silverthorn cursed.

CHAPTER XV

DALE PAYS A VISIT

Shortly after midnight Sanderson was sound asleep on the cot in the
cell when a strange, scraping noise awakened him. He lay still for a
long time, listening, until he discovered that the sound came from the
window. Then he sat up stealthily and looked around to see, framed in
the starlit gloom of the night, the face of Barney Owen, staring in
through the window at him.

The sight of Owen enraged Sanderson, but his curiosity drove him to the
window.

The little man was hanging to the iron bars; his neck muscles were
straining, his face was red and his eyes bright.

"Don't talk, now!" he warned. "The boss of the dump is awake and he'll
hear. He's in his room; there's nobody else around. I wanted to tell
you that I'm going to knock him silly and get you out of this!"

"Why?" mocked Sanderson, lowly.

Owen's face grew redder. "Oh, I know I've got something coming, but
I'm going to get you out all the same. I've got our horses and guns.
Be ready!"

He slipped down. Sanderson could hear his feet thud faintly on the
sand outside.

Sanderson got into his clothes and stood at the cell door, waiting.
For a long time he heard no sound, but presently he caught the clank of
a door, followed by a swift step, and Owen stood in the corridor before
the cell door, a bunch of keys in his hand.

There was no word spoken. Owen unlocked the door, Sanderson slipped
out, Owen passed him the six-shooter he had lost in the barroom of the
Okar Hotel, and the two slipped noiselessly down the corridor.

A minute later they were mounting the horses that Owen had brought, and
shortly afterward they were moving like shadows away from the outskirts
of Okar.

Not until they were well out in the big basin did either of them speak.
And then Sanderson said, shortly:

"Silverthorn was tellin' me you gassed everything. Are you feelin'
better over it?"

Owen's head bent over his horse's mane; his chin was on his chest when
he answered:

"Come and kill me."

"Hell!" exploded Sanderson, disgustedly. "If there was anything comin'
to you killin' would be too good for you. You ain't done anything to
me, you sufferin' fool--not a thing! What you've done you've done to
Mary Bransford. When you see Dale an' Silverthorn grabbin' the Double
A, an' Mary Bransford ridin' away, homeless--you'll have feelin's of
remorse, mebbe--if you've got any man in you at all!"

Owen writhed and groaned.

"It was the whisky--the cursed whisky!" he whispered. "I can't let it
alone--I love it! And once I get a taste of it, I'm gone---I'm a
stark, staring lunatic!"

"I'd swear to that," grimly agreed Sanderson.

"I didn't mean to say a word to anybody," wailed the little man. "Do
you think I'd do anything to harm Mary Bransford--after what she did
for me? But I did--I must have done it. Dale said I did, Silverthorn
said I did, and you say I did. But I don't remember. Silverthorn said
I signed a receipt for some money from the Okar bank--three thousand,
odd. I don't remember. Oh, but I'm--"

"Calling yourself names won't get you back to where you was before you
made a fool of yourself," Sanderson told him, pityingly. "An' me
tellin' you what I think of you won't relieve my feelin's a whole lot,
for there ain't words enough layin' around loose.

"What I want to know is this: did you go clean loco, or do you remember
anything that happened to you? Do you know who got the money you drew
from the bank?"

"Dale," answered Owen. "He had that, for I remember him counting it in
the back room of the hotel. There was more, too; I heard him telling
Silverthorn there was about seven thousand in all. Silverthorn wanted
him to put it all back in the bank, but Dale said there was just enough
for him to meet his pay-roll--that he owed his men a lot of back pay.
He took it with him."

"My four thousand," said Sanderson, shortly.

"Yours?" Owen paled.

"Dale lifted my money belt," Sanderson returned. "I was wondering what
he did with it. So that's what."

He relapsed into a grim silence, and Owen did not speak again.

They rode several miles in that fashion--Owen keeping his horse
slightly behind Sanderson's, his gaze on the other's face, his own
white with remorse and anxiety.

At last he heard Sanderson laugh, and the sound of it made him grit his
teeth in impotent agony.

"Sanderson," he said, gulping, "I'm sorry."

"Sure," returned the other. "If I hadn't wised up to that quite a
spell ago, you'd be back on the trail, waitin' for some coyote to come
along an' get his supper."

They rode in silence for a long time. They came to the gentle slope of
the basin and began to climb it.

A dozen times Owen rode close to Sanderson, his lips trembling over
unuttered words, but each time he dropped back without speaking. His
eyes, fixed worshipfully on the back of the big, silent man ahead of
him, were glowing with anxiety and wonder.

In the ghostly darkness of the time before the gray forerunner of the
dawn appears on the horizon they came in sight of the Double A
ranchhouse.

Sanderson was still leading. The ranchhouse burst upon his vision as
his horse topped a rise that had obscured his view of the ranchhouse,
and he saw it, clearly outlined.

Riding down the slope of the rise he smiled. For there was a light in
one of the ranchhouse windows. Mary had left it burn on his account,
he divined.

He halted and allowed Owen to come near him.

"Mary ain't to hear about this deal tonight," he told the little man.
"Not a peep--understand?"

Without waiting for an answer he rode onward.

Thinking that, perhaps, in spite of the burning lamp Mary might be
sleeping, Sanderson cautiously dismounted at the corral gates, and,
leaving Owen to put his own horse away, he walked toward the house,
stealthily, for he did not wish to awaken the girl.

Halfway across the ranchhouse yard, Sanderson saw a shadow cross the
light in the window. Again he grinned, thinking Mary had not gone to
bed after all.

But, going forward more unconcernedly, Sanderson's smile faded and was
succeeded by a savage frown. For in the shadow formed by the little
"L" at the junction of the house and porch, he saw a horse saddled and
bridled.

Suddenly alert, and yielding to the savage rage that gripped him,
Sanderson stole softly forward and looked closely at the animal. He
recognized it instantly as Dale's, and in the instant, his face pale,
his eyes blazing with passion, he was on the porch, peering through one
of the darkened windows.

Inside he saw Dale and Mary Bransford. They were in the sitting-room.
Dale was sitting in a big chair, smoking a cigar, one arm carelessly
thrown over the back of the chair, his legs crossed, his attitude that
of the master.

Standing perhaps a dozen feet from him was Mary Bransford.

The girl's eyes were wide with fright and astonishment, disbelief,
incredulity--and several other emotions that Sanderson could not
analyze. He did not try. One look at her sufficed to tell him that
Dale was baiting her, tantalizing her, mocking her, and Sanderson's
hatred for the man grew in intensity until it threatened to overwhelm
him.

There was in his mind an impulse to burst into the house and kill Dale
where he sat. It was the primitive lust to destroy an unprincipled
rival that had seized Sanderson, for he saw in Dale's eyes the bold
passion of the woman hunter.

However, Sanderson conquered the impulse. He fought it with the
marvelous self-control and implacable determination that had made him
feared and respected wherever men knew him, and in the end the faint,
stiff grin on his face indicated that whatever he did would be done
with deliberation.

This was an instance where the eavesdropper had some justification for
his work, and Sanderson listened.

He heard Dale laugh--the sound of it made Sanderson's lips twitch
queerly. He saw Mary cringe from Dale and press her hands over her
breast. Dale's voice carried clearly to Sanderson.

"Ha, ha!" he said. "So _that_ hurts, eh? Well, here's more of the
same kind. We got Barney Owen drunk last sight, and he admitted that
he'd signed all of Sanderson's papers--the papers that were supposed to
have been signed by your brother. Why didn't Sanderson sign them?
Why? Because Sanderson couldn't do it.

"Owen, who knew your brother in Arizona, signed them, because he knew
how to imitate your brother's writing. Get that! Owen signed a bank
receipt for the money old Bransford had in the bank. Owen got it and
gave it to me. He was so drunk he didn't know what he was doing, but
he could imitate your brother's writing, all right."

"You've got the money?" gasped the girl.

Again Dale laughed, mockingly. "Yep," he said, "I've got it. Three
thousand two hundred. And I've got four thousand that belongs to that
four-flusher, Square Deal. Seven thousand." He laughed again.

"Where is Sanderson?" questioned the girl.

"In jail, over in Okar." Dale paused long enough to enjoy the girl's
distress. Then he continued: "Owen is in jail, too, by this time.
Silverthorn and Maison are not taking any chances on letting him go
around loose."

"Sanderson in jail!" gasped Mary. She seemed to droop; she staggered
to a chair and sank into it, still looking at Dale, despair in her eyes.

Dale got up and walked to a point directly in front of her, looking
down at her, triumphantly.

"That's what," he said. "In jail. Moreover, that's where they'll stay
until this thing is settled. We mean to have the Double A. The sooner
you realize that, the easier it will be for you.

"I'm offering you a way out of it--an easy way. That guy, Sanderson,
ain't on the level. He's been working you, making a monkey of
you--fooling you. He wants the Double A for himself. He's been
hanging around here, passing himself off as your brother, aiming to get
on the good side of you--getting you to love him good and hard. Then
mebbe he'd tell you, thinking that you'd forgive him. But mebbe that
wasn't his game at all. Mebbe he'd figured to grab the ranch and turn
you out.

"Now, I'm offering you a whole lot. Mebbe you've thought I was sweet
on that Nyland girl. Get that out of your mind. I was only fooling
with her--like any man fools with a girl. I want her ranch--that's
all. But I don't care a damn about the Double A, I want you. I've had
my eye on you right along. Mebbe it won't be marriage right away,
but----"

"Alva Dale!"

The girl was on her feet, her eyes blazing.

Dale did not retreat from her; he stood smiling at her, his face
wreathed in a huge grin. He was enjoying the girl.

Sanderson slipped along the wall of the house and opened the door. It
creaked loudly on its hinges with the movement, causing both Dale and
the girl to turn and face it.

Mary Bransford stood rigid as she saw Sanderson standing in the
doorway, a flush sweeping swiftly over her face. There was relief in
her eyes.

Astonishment and stark, naked fear were in Dale's eyes. He shrank back
a step, and looked swiftly at Sanderson's right hand, and when he saw
that it held a six-shooter he raised both his own hands, shoulder-high,
the palms toward Sanderson.

"So you know it means shootin', eh?" said Sanderson grimly as he
stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him, slamming it
shut with his left hand.

"Well, shootin' goes." There was the cold calm of decision in his
manner; his eyes were ablaze with the accumulated hate and rage that
had been aroused over what he had heard. The grin that he showed to
Dale drew his lips into two straight, stiff lines.

"I reckon you think you've earned your red shirt, Dale," he said, "for
tellin' tales out of school. Well, you'll get it. There's just one
thing will save your miserable hide. You got that seven thousand on
you?"

Dale hesitated, then nodded.

Sanderson spoke to Mary Bransford without removing his gaze from Dale:

"Get pen, ink, an' paper."

The girl moved quickly into another room, returning almost instantly
with the articles requested.

"Sit down an' write what I tell you to," directed Sanderson.

Dale dropped into a chair beside a center-table, took up the pen,
poised it over the paper, and looked at Sanderson.

"I am hereby returning to Deal Sanderson the seven thousand two hundred
dollars I stole from, him," directed Sanderson. "I am doing this of my
own accord--no one is forcin' me," went on Sanderson. "I want to add
that I hereby swear that the charge of drawin' a gun on Silverthorn was
a frame-up, me an' Silverthorn an' Maison bein' the guilty parties,"
finished Sanderson.

"Now," he added, when Dale had written as directed, "sign it."

Dale signed and stood up, his face aflame with rage.

"I'll take the money--now," said Sanderson.

Dale produced it from various pockets, laying it on the table. He said
nothing. Mary Bransford stood a little distance away, watching
silently.

"Count it, Miss Bransford," said Sanderson when Dale had disgorged the
money.

The two men stood silent as the girl fingered the bills. At last she
looked at Sanderson and nodded.

The latter grinned. "Everything's regular, now," he said. He looked
at Mary. "Do you want him killed, ma'am? He'd be a lot better off
dead. You'd be better off, too. This kind of a skunk is always
around, botherin' women--when there ain't no men around."

Mary shook her head with a decisive negative.

"Then he won't die, right now," said Sanderson. "He'll pull his
freight away from the Double A, though, ma 'am. An' he'll never come
back."

He was talking to Dale through the girl, and Dale watched him, scowling.

"If he does come back, you'll tell me, won't you, ma'am? An' then
there'll never be an Alva Dale to bother you again--or to go around
robbin' honest men, an' tryin' to get them mixed up with the law."

And now he turned from the girl and spoke to Dale:

"You go right back to Okar an' tell Maison an' Silverthorn what has
happened here tonight. Show them how the fear of God has got into your
heart an' made you yearn to practice the principles of a square deal.
Tell them that they'd better get to goin' straight, too, for if they
don't there's a guy which was named after a square deal that is goin'
to snuff them off this hemisphere middlin' rapid. That's all. You'd
better hit the breeze right back to Okar an' spread the good news."

He stood, a grim smile on his face, watching Dale as the latter walked
to the door. When Dale stepped out on the porch Sanderson followed
him, still regarding the movements of the other coldly and alertly.

Mary heard them--their steps on the boards of the porch; she heard the
saddle leather creak as Dale climbed on his horse; she heard the sound
of the hoofbeats as the horse clattered out of the ranchhouse yard.

And then for several minutes she stood near the little table in the
room, listening vainly for some sound that would tell her of the
presence of Sanderson on the porch. None came.

At last, when she began to feel certain that he had gone to the
bunkhouse, she heard a step on the porch and saw Sanderson standing in
the doorway.

He grinned at her, meeting her gaze fairly.

"Dale told you a heap of truth, ma'am," he said. "I feel more like a
man tonight than I've felt for a good many days--an' nights."

"Then it was true--as Dale said--that you are not my brother?" said the
girl. She was trying to make her voice sound severe, but only
succeeded in making it quaver.

"I ain't your brother."

"And you came here to try to take the ranch away from me--to steal it?"

He flushed. "You've got four thousand of my money there, ma'am.
You're to keep it. Mebbe that will help to show what my intentions
were. About the rest--your brother an' all--I'll have to tell you.
It's a thing you ought to know, an' I don't know what's been keepin' me
from tellin' you all along.

"Mebbe it was because I was scared you'd take it hard. But since these
sneaks have got to waggin' their tongues it'll have to be told. If you
sit down by the table there, I'll tell you why I done what I did."

She took a chair beside the table and faced him, and, standing before
her, speaking very gently, but frankly, he related what had occurred to
him in the desert. She took it calmly, though there were times when
her eyes glowed with a light that told of deep emotion. But she soon
became resigned to the death of her brother and was able to listen to
Sanderson's story of his motive in deceiving her.

When he related his emotion during their first meeting--when he had
told Dale that he was her brother, after yielding to the appeal in her
eyes--she smiled.

"There was some excuse for it, after all," she declared.

"An' you ain't blamin' me--so much?" he asked.

"No," she said. She blushed as she thought of the times she had kissed
him. He was thinking of her kisses, too, and as their eyes met, each
knew what the other was thinking about. Sanderson smiled at her and
her eyes dropped.

"It wasn't a square deal for me to take them, then, ma'am," he told
her. "But I'm goin' to stay around here an' fight Dale an' his friends
to a finish. That is, if you want me to stay. I'd like a straight
answer. I ain't hangin' around where I ain't wanted."

Her eyes glowed as she looked at him.

"You'll have to stay, now," she said. "Will is dead, and you will have
to stay here and brazen it out. They'd take the Double A from me
surely, if you were to desert me. You will have to stay and insist
that you are my brother!"

"That's a contract," he agreed. "But"--he looked at her, a flush on
his face--"goin' back to them kisses. It wasn't a square deal. But
I'm hopin' that a day will come----"

She got up, her face very red. "It is nearly morning," she interrupted.

"Yes," he smiled; "things are only beginnin'."

"You are impudent--and imprudent," she said, looking straight at him.

"An' hopeful," he answered, meeting her eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, stretched out on his bed, Sanderson saw the dawn
breaking in the east. It reminded him of the morning he had seen the
two riders above him on the edge of the arroyo. As on that other
morning, he lay and watched the coming of the dawn. And when later he
heard Mary moving about in the kitchen he got up, not having slept a
wink, and went out to her.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked.

"How could I," he asked, "with a new day dawnin' for me?"

CHAPTER XVI

THE HAND OF THE ENEMY

When in the bunkhouse the next morning Sanderson informed Barney Owen
of what had occurred during the night, the latter looked fixedly at
Sanderson.

"So she didn't take it hard," he said.

"Was you expectin' her to? For a brother that she hadn't seen in a
dozen years--an' which she knows in her secret heart wasn't any good?"
retorted Sanderson. "Shootin' your face off in Okar--or anywhere
else--don't go any more," added Sanderson. "She's pretendin',
publicly, that I'm her brother."

"I'm through talking," declared Owen.

"Or livin'. It's one or the other," warned Sanderson.

Sanderson took the seven thousand dollars that Mary gave him, rode to
Lazette--a town fifty miles eastward from the basin---and deposited the
money in a bank there. Then he rode eastward still farther and in
another town discovered a young engineer with a grievance against his
employers.

The result of this discovery was that on the following morning the
young engineer and Sanderson journeyed westward to the basin, arriving
at the Double A late in the afternoon of the next day.

On the edge of the plateau after the engineer and, Sanderson had spent
three or four days prowling through the basin and the gorge, the
engineer spoke convincingly:

"It's the easiest thing in the world! A big flume to the point I
showed you, a big main ditch and several laterals will do the trick.
I'm with you to the finish!"

Sanderson smiled at the engineer's glowing enthusiasm and told him of
the opposition he would meet in developing the project.

"There'll be a heap of schemin', an' mebbe shootin', Williams,"
Sanderson told him. "Puttin' through this deal won't be any
pussy-kitten affair."

"So much the better," laughed the engineer; "I'm fed up on soft snaps
and longing for action."

The engineer was thirty; big, square-shouldered, lithe, and capable.
He had a strong face and a level, steady eye.

"If you mean business, let's get acquainted," he said. "My front name
is Kent."

"Well, Kent, let's get busy," smiled Sanderson. "You go to work on
your estimates, order your material, hire your men. I'll see how bad
the people in the basin want the water they've been expectin'."

Kent Williams took up his quarters in the bunkhouse and immediately
began work, though before he could do much he rode to Okar, telegraphed
to Dry Bottom, the town which had been the scene of his previous
activity, and awaited the arrival of several capable-looking young men.

In company with the latter he returned to the Double A, and for many
days thereafter he and his men ran the transit and drove stakes in the
basin and along the gorge.

Sanderson spent much of his time talking with the cattlemen in the
basin. They were all eager to have water brought to their ranches, for
it would save them the long trip to the river, which was inaccessible
in many places, and they welcomed the new project.

0ne of the men--a newcomer to the basin--voiced the general sentiment.

"We want water, an' we don't give a damn who brings it here. First
come, first served!"

The big problem to Sanderson, however, was the question of money. He
was aware that a vast sum would be required. Nearly all the money he
possessed would be sunk in the preliminary work, and he knew that if
the work was to go on he must borrow money.

He couldn't get money in Okar, he knew that.

He rode to Lazette and talked with a banker there. The latter was
interested, but unwilling to lend.

"The Okar Basin," he said. "Yes, I've heard about it. Great prospects
there. But I've been told that Silverthorn and Maison are going to put
it through, and until I hear from them, I shouldn't like to interfere."

"That gang won't touch the Double A water!" declared Sanderson. "I'll
see the basin scorched to a cinder before I'll let them in on the deal!"

The banker smiled. "You are entitled to the water, of course; and I
admire your grit. But those men are powerful. I have to depend on
them a great deal. So you can see that I couldn't do anything without
first consulting them."

Sanderson left Lazette in disgust. It was not until after he had tried
in Dry Bottom and Las Vegas that he realized how subtle and
far-reaching was the power and influence of the financial rulers of
Okar.

"We should like to let you have the money," the Las Vegas banker told
him. "But, unfortunately, a loan to you would conflict with our
interests in Okar. We know the big men in Okar have been considering
the water question in the basin, and we should not like to antagonize
them."

The trip consumed two weeks, and Sanderson returned to the Double A to
discover that during his absence very little work had been done.

"It looks like we're up against it," Williams informed him when pressed
for an explanation. "We can't get a pound of material. I went
personally to Okar and was told by Silverthorn that the railroad would
accept no material consigned to the Double A ranch."

"Pretty raw," was Sanderson's only comment.

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