Stewart Edward White - The Killer
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Stewart Edward White >> The Killer
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20 [TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: In many older texts, the character combination "oe"
was tied together with a ligature. Such instances are represented in
this ASCII text by enclosing them in brackets. Hence in words
such as Oedipus, for example, when the 'O' and the 'e' are connected with a
ligature, they will be shown as [Oe]dipus. In addition, the text contains
a ranch brand consisting of the characters J and H connected (no space
between). This brand is shown in the text as [JH].]
[Illustration: He had been shot through the body and was dead. His
rifle lay across a rock trained carefully on the trail.]
THE KILLER
BY
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
AUTHOR OF
THE BLAZED TRAIL,
THE RIVERMAN,
ARIZONA NIGHTS, ETC.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
COPYRIGHT 1919, 1920, BY THE RED BOOK CORPORATION
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE KILLER 3
THE ROAD AGENT 135
THE TIDE 157
CLIMBING FOR GOATS 189
MOISTURE, A TRACE 211
THE RANCH 229
THE KILLER
CHAPTER I
I want to state right at the start that I am writing this story twenty
years after it happened solely because my wife and Senor Buck Johnson
insist on it. Myself, I don't think it a good yarn. It hasn't any love
story in it; and there isn't any plot. Things just happened, one thing
after the other. There ought to be a yarn in it somehow, and I suppose
if a fellow wanted to lie a little he could make a tail-twister out of
it. Anyway, here goes; and if you don't like it, you know you can quit
at any stage of the game.
It happened when I was a kid and didn't know any better than to do such
things. They dared me to go up to Hooper's ranch and stay all night; and
as I had no information on either the ranch or its owner, I saddled up
and went. It was only twelve miles from our Box Springs ranch--a nice
easy ride. I should explain that heretofore I had ridden the Gila end of
our range, which is so far away that only vague rumours of Hooper had
ever reached me at all. He was reputed a tough old devil with horrid
habits; but that meant little to me. The tougher and horrider they came,
the better they suited me--so I thought. Just to make everything
entirely clear I will add that this was in the year of 1897 and the Soda
Springs valley in Arizona.
By these two facts you old timers will gather the setting of my tale.
Indian days over; "nester" days with frame houses and vegetable patches
not yet here. Still a few guns packed for business purposes; Mexican
border handy; no railroad in to Tombstone yet; cattle rustlers lingering
in the Galiuros; train hold-ups and homicide yet prevalent but frowned
upon; favourite tipple whiskey toddy with sugar; but the old fortified
ranches all gone; longhorns crowded out by shorthorn blaze-head
Herefords or near-Herefords; some indignation against Alfred Henry
Lewis's _Wolfville_ as a base libel; and, also but, no gasoline wagons
or pumps, no white collars, no tourists pervading the desert, and the
Injins still wearing blankets and overalls at their reservations instead
of bead work on the railway platforms when the Overland goes through. In
other words, we were wild and wooly, but sincerely didn't know it.
While I was saddling up to go take my dare, old Jed Parker came and
leaned himself up against the snubbing post of the corral. He watched me
for a while, and I kept quiet, knowing well enough that he had something
to say.
"Know Hooper?" he asked.
"I've seen him driving by," said I.
I had: a little humped, insignificant figure with close-cropped white
hair beneath a huge hat. He drove all hunched up. His buckboard was a
rattletrap, old, insulting challenge to every little stone in the road;
but there was nothing the matter with the horses or their harness. We
never held much with grooming in Arizona, but these beasts shone like
bronze. Good sizeable horses, clean built--well, I better not get
started talking horse! They're the reason I had never really sized up
the old man the few times I'd passed him.
"Well, he's a tough bird," said Jed.
"Looks like a harmless old cuss--but mean," says I.
"About this trip," said Jed, after I'd saddled and coiled my
rope--"don't, and say you did."
I didn't answer this, but led my horse to the gate.
"Well, don't say as how I didn't tell you all about it," said Jed, going
back to the bunk house.
Miserable old coot! I suppose he thought he _had_ told me all about it!
Jed was always too loquacious!
But I hadn't racked along more than two miles before a man cantered up
who was perfectly able to express himself. He was one of our outfit and
was known as Windy Bill. Nuff said!
"Hear you're goin' up to stay the night at Hooper's," said he. "Know
Hooper?"
"No, I don't," said I, "are you another of these Sunbirds with glad
news?"
"Know about Hooper's boomerang?"
"Boomerang!" I replied, "what's that?"
"That's what they call it. You know how of course we all let each
other's strays water at our troughs in this country, and send 'em back
to their own range at round up."
"Brother, you interest me," said I, "and would you mind informing me
further how you tell the dear little cows apart?"
"Well, old Hooper don't, that's all," went on Windy, without paying me
any attention. "He built him a chute leading to the water corrals, and
half way down the chute he built a gate that would swing across it and
open a hole into a dry corral. And he had a high platform with a handle
that ran the gate. When any cattle but those of his own brands came
along, he had a man swing the gate and they landed up into the dry
corral. By and by he let them out on the range again."
"Without water?"
"Sure! And of course back they came into the chute. And so on. Till they
died, or we came along and drove them back home."
"Windy," said I, "you're stuffing me full of tacks."
"I've seen little calves lyin' in heaps against the fence like drifts of
tumbleweed," said Windy, soberly; and then added, without apparent
passion, "The old----!"
Looking at Windy's face, I knew these words for truth.
"He's a bad _hombre_," resumed Windy Bill after a moment. "He never does
no actual killing himself, but he's got a bad lot of oilers[A] there,
especially an old one named Andreas and another one called Ramon, and
all he has to do is to lift one eye at a man he don't like and that man
is as good as dead--one time or another."
This was going it pretty strong, and I grinned at Windy Bill.
"All right," said Windy, "I'm just telling you."
"Well, what's the matter with you fellows down here?" I challenged. "How
is it he's lasted so long? Why hasn't someone shot him? Are you all
afraid of him or his Mexicans?"
"No, it ain't that, exactly. I don't know. He drives by all alone, and
he don't pack no gun ever, and he's sort of runty--and--I do'no _why_ he
ain't been shot, but he ain't. And if I was you, I'd stick home."
Windy amused but did not greatly persuade me. By this time I was fairly
conversant with the cowboy's sense of humour. Nothing would have tickled
them more than to bluff me out of a harmless excursion by means of
scareful tales. Shortly Windy Bill turned off to examine a distant bunch
of cattle; and so I rode on alone.
It was coming on toward evening. Against the eastern mountains were
floating tinted mists; and the canons were a deep purple. The cattle
were moving slowly so that here and there a nimbus of dust caught and
reflected the late sunlight into gamboge yellows and mauves. The magic
time was near when the fierce, implacable day-genius of the desert would
fall asleep and the soft, gentle, beautiful star-eyed night-genius of
the desert would arise and move softly. My pony racked along in the
desert. The mass that represented Hooper's ranch drew imperceptibly
nearer. I made out the green of trees and the white of walls and
building.
CHAPTER II
Hooper's ranch proved to be entirely enclosed by a wall of adobe ten
feet high and whitewashed. To the outside it presented a blank face.
Only corrals and an alfalfa patch were not included. A wide, high
gateway, that could be closed by massive doors, let into a stable yard,
and seemed to be the only entrance. The buildings within were all
immaculate also: evidently Old Man Hooper loved whitewash. Cottonwood
trees showed their green heads; and to the right I saw the sloped
shingled roof of a larger building. Not a living creature was in sight.
I shook myself, saying that the undoubted sinister feeling of utter
silence and lifelessness was compounded of my expectations and the time
of day. But that did not satisfy me. My aroused mind, casting about,
soon struck it: I was missing the swarms of blackbirds, linnets, purple
finches, and doves that made our own ranch trees vocal. Here were no
birds. Laughing at this simple explanation of my eerie feeling, I passed
under the gate and entered the courtyard.
It, too, seemed empty. A stable occupied all one side; the other three
were formed by bunk houses and necessary out-buildings. Here, too, dwelt
absolute solitude and absolute silence. It was uncanny, as though one
walked in a vacuum. Everything was neat and shut up and whitewashed and
apparently dead. There were no sounds or signs of occupancy. I was as
much alone as though I had been in the middle of an ocean. My mind, by
now abnormally sensitive and alert, leaped on this idea. For the same
reason, it insisted--lack of life: there were no birds here, not even
_flies_! Of course, said I, gone to bed in the cool of evening: why
should there be? I laughed aloud and hushed suddenly; and then nearly
jumped out of my skin. The thin blue curl of smoke had caught my eye;
and I became aware of the figure of a man seated on the ground, in the
shadow, leaning against the building. The curl of smoke was from his
cigarette. He was wrapped in a _serape_ which blended well with the cool
colour of shadow. My eyes were dazzled with the whitewash--natural
enough--yet the impression of solitude had been so complete. It was
uncanny, as though he had materialized out of the shadow itself. Silly
idea! I ranged my eye along the row of houses, and I saw three other
figures I had missed before, all broodingly immobile, all merged in
shadow, all watching me, all with the insubstantial air of having as I
looked taken body from thin air.
This was too foolish! I dismounted, dropped my horse's reins over his
head, and sauntered to the nearest figure. He was lost in the dusk of
the building and of his Mexican hat. I saw only the gleam of eyes.
"Where will I find Mr. Hooper?" I asked.
The figure waved a long, slim hand toward a wicket gate in one side of
the enclosure. He said no word, nor made another motion; and the other
figures sat as though graved from stone.
After a moment's hesitation I pushed open the wicket gate, and so found
myself in a smaller intimate courtyard of most surprising character. Its
centre was green grass, and about its border grew tall, bright flowers.
A wide verandah ran about three sides. I could see that in the numerous
windows hung white lace curtains. Mind you, this was in Arizona of the
'nineties!
I knocked at the nearest door, and after an interval it opened and I
stood face to face with Old Man Hooper himself.
He proved to be as small as I had thought, not taller than my own
shoulder, with a bent little figure dressed in wrinkled and baggy store
clothes of a snuff brown. His bullet head had been cropped so that his
hair stood up like a short-bristled white brush. His rather round face
was brown and lined. His hands, which grasped the doorposts
uncompromisingly to bar the way, were lean and veined and old. But all
that I found in my recollections afterward to be utterly unimportant.
His eyes were his predominant, his formidable, his compelling
characteristic. They were round, the pupils very small, the irises large
and of a light flecked blue. From the pupils radiated fine lines. The
blank, cold, inscrutable stare of them bored me through to the back of
the neck. I suppose the man winked occasionally, but I never got that
impression. I've noticed that owls have this same intent, unwinking
stare--and wildcats.
"Mr. Hooper," said I, "can you keep me over night?"
It was a usual request in the old cattle country. He continued to stare
at me for some moments.
"Where are you from?" he asked at length. His voice was soft and low;
rather purring.
I mentioned our headquarters on the Gila: it did not seem worth while
to say anything about Box Springs only a dozen miles away. He stared at
me for some time more.
"Come in," he said, abruptly; and stood aside.
This was a disconcerting surprise. All I had expected was permission to
stop, and a direction as to how to find the bunk house. Then a more or
less dull evening, and a return the following day to collect on my
"dare." I stepped into the dimness of the hallway; and immediately after
into a room beyond.
Again I must remind you that this was the Arizona of the 'nineties. All
the ranch houses with which I was acquainted, and I knew about all of
them, were very crudely done. They comprised generally a half dozen
rooms with adobe walls and rough board floors, with only such
furnishings as deal tables, benches, homemade chairs, perhaps a battered
old washstand or so, and bunks filled with straw. We had no such things
as tablecloths and sheets, of course. Everything was on a like scale of
simple utility.
All right, get that in your mind. The interior into which I now stepped,
with my clanking spurs, my rattling _chaps_, the dust of my
sweat-stained garments, was a low-ceilinged, dim abode with faint, musty
aromas. Carpets covered the floors; an old-fashioned hat rack flanked
the door on one side, a tall clock on the other. I saw in passing framed
steel engravings. The room beyond contained easy chairs, a sofa
upholstered with hair cloth, an upright piano, a marble fireplace with a
mantel, in a corner a triangular what-not filled with objects. It, too,
was dim and curtained and faintly aromatic as had been the house of an
old maiden aunt of my childhood, who used to give me cookies on the
Sabbath. I felt now too large, and too noisy, and altogether mis-dressed
and blundering and dirty. The little old man moved without a sound, and
the grandfather's clock outside ticked deliberately in a hollow silence.
I sat down, rather gingerly, in the chair he indicated for me.
"I shall be very glad to offer you hospitality for the night," he said,
as though there had been no interim. "I feel honoured at the
opportunity."
I murmured my thanks, and a suggestion that I should look after my
horse.
"Your horse, sir, has been attended to, and your _cantinas_[B] are
undoubtedly by now in your room, where, I am sure, you are anxious to
repair."
He gave no signal, nor uttered any command, but at his last words a
grave, elderly Mexican appeared noiselessly at my elbow. As a matter of
fact, he came through an unnoticed door at the back, but he might as
well have materialized from the thin air for the start that he gave me.
Hooper instantly arose.
"I trust, sir, you will find all to your liking. If anything is lacking,
I trust you will at once indicate the fact. We shall dine in a half
hour----"
He seized a small implement consisting of a bit of wire screen attached
to the end of a short stick, darted across the room with the most
extraordinary agility, thwacked a lone house fly, and returned.
"--and you will undoubtedly be ready for it," he finished his speech,
calmly, as though he had not moved from his tracks.
I murmured my acknowledgments. My last impression as I left the room was
of the baleful, dead, challenging stare of the man's wildcat eyes.
The Mexican glided before me. We emerged into the court, walked along
the verandah, and entered a bedroom. My guide slipped by me and
disappeared before I had the chance of a word with him. He may have been
dumb for all I know. I sat down and tried to take stock.
CHAPTER III
The room was small, but it was papered, it was rugged, its floor was
painted and waxed, its window--opening into the court, by the way--was
hung with chintz and net curtains, its bed was garnished with sheets and
counterpane, its chairs were upholstered and in perfect repair and
polish. It was not Arizona, emphatically not, but rather the sweet and
garnished and lavendered respectability of a Connecticut village. My
dirty old _cantinas_ lay stacked against the washstand. At sight of them
I had to grin. Of course I travelled cowboy fashion. They contained a
toothbrush, a comb, and a change of underwear. The latter item was
sheer, rank pride of caste.
It was all most incongruous and strange. But the strangest part, of
course, was the fact that I found myself where I was at that moment. Why
was I thus received? Why was I, an ordinary and rather dirty cowpuncher,
not sent as usual to the men's bunk house? It could not be possible that
Old Man Hooper extended this sort of hospitality to every chance
wayfarer. Arizona is a democratic country, Lord knows: none more so! But
owners are not likely to invite in strange cowboys unless they
themselves mess with their own men. I gave it up, and tried
unsuccessfully to shrug it off my mind, and sought distraction in
looking about me. There was not much to see. The one door and one
window opened into the court. The other side was blank except that near
the ceiling ran a curious, long, narrow opening closed by a transom-like
sash. I had never seen anything quite like it, but concluded that it
must be a sort of loop hole for musketry in the old days. Probably they
had some kind of scaffold to stand on.
I pulled off my shirt and took a good wash: shook the dust out of my
clothes as well as I could; removed my spurs and _chaps_; knotted my
silk handkerchief necktie fashion; slicked down my wet hair, and tried
to imagine myself decently turned out for company. I took off my gun
belt also; but after some hesitation thrust the revolver inside the
waistband of my drawers. Had no reason; simply the border instinct to
stick to one's weapon.
Then I sat down to wait. The friendly little noises of my own movements
left me. I give you my word, never before nor since have I experienced
such stillness. In vain I told myself that with adobe walls two feet
thick, a windless evening, and an hour after sunset, stillness was to be
expected. That did not satisfy. Silence is made up of a thousand little
noises so accustomed that they pass over the consciousness. Somehow
these little noises seemed to lack. I sat in an aural vacuum. This
analysis has come to me since. At that time I only knew that most
uneasily I missed something, and that my ears ached from vain listening.
At the end of the half hour I returned to the parlour. Old Man Hooper
was there waiting. A hanging lamp had been lighted. Out of the shadows
cast from it a slender figure rose and came forward.
"My daughter, Mr.----" he paused.
"Sanborn," I supplied.
"My dear, Mr. Sanborn has most kindly dropped in to relieve the tedium
of our evening with his company--his distinguished company." He
pronounced the words suavely, without a trace of sarcastic emphasis, yet
somehow I felt my face flush. And all the time he was staring at me
blankly with his wide, unblinking, wildcat eyes.
The girl was very pale, with black hair and wide eyes under a fair, wide
brow. She was simply dressed in some sort of white stuff. I thought she
drooped a little. She did not look at me, nor speak to me; only bowed
slightly.
We went at once into a dining room at the end of the little dark hall.
It was lighted by a suspended lamp that threw the illumination straight
down on a table perfect in its appointments of napery, silver, and
glass. I felt very awkward and dusty in my cowboy rig; and rather too
large. The same Mexican served us, deftly. We had delightful food, well
cooked. I do not remember what it was. My attention was divided between
the old man and his daughter. He talked, urbanely, of a wide range of
topics, displaying a cosmopolitan taste, employing a choice of words and
phrases that was astonishing. The girl, who turned out to be very pretty
in a dark, pale, sad way, never raised her eyes from her plate.
It was the cool of the evening, and a light breeze from the open window
swung the curtains. From the blackness outside a single frog began to
chirp. My host's flow of words eddied, ceased. He raised his head
uneasily; then, without apology, slipped from his chair and glided from
the room. The Mexican remained, standing bolt upright in the dimness.
For the first time the girl spoke. Her voice was low and sweet, but
either I or my aroused imagination detected a strained under quality.
"Ramon," she said in Spanish, "I am chilly. Close the window."
The servant turned his back to obey. With a movement rapid as a snake's
dart the girl's hand came from beneath the table, reached across, and
thrust into mine a small, folded paper. The next instant she was back in
her place, staring down as before in apparent apathy. So amazed was I
that I recovered barely soon enough to conceal the paper before Ramon
turned back from his errand.
The next five minutes were to me hours of strained and bewildered
waiting. I addressed one or two remarks to my companion, but received
always monosyllabic answers. Twice I caught the flash of lanterns beyond
the darkened window; and a subdued, confused murmur as though several
people were walking about stealthily. Except for this the night had
again fallen deathly still. Even the cheerful frog had hushed.
At the end of a period my host returned, and without apology or
explanation resumed his seat and took up his remarks where he had left
them.
The girl disappeared somewhere between the table and the sitting room.
Old Man Hooper offered me a cigar, and sat down deliberately to
entertain me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was also amusing
himself, as though I were being played with and covertly sneered at.
Hooper's politeness and suavity concealed, and well concealed, a bitter
irony. His manner was detached and a little precise. Every few moments
he burst into a flurry of activity with the fly whacker, darting here
and there as his eyes fell upon one of the insects; but returning always
calmly to his discourse with an air of never having moved from his
chair. He talked to me of Praxiteles, among other things. What should an
Arizona cowboy know of Praxiteles? and why should any one talk to him of
that worthy Greek save as a subtle and hidden expression of contempt?
That was my feeling. My senses and mental apperceptions were by now a
little on the raw.
That, possibly, is why I noticed the very first chirp of another frog
outside. It continued, and I found myself watching my host covertly.
Sure enough, after a few repetitions I saw subtle signs of uneasiness,
of divided attention; and soon, again without apology or explanation, he
glided from the room. And at the same instant the old Mexican servitor
came and pretended to fuss with the lamps.
My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, but I could guess no means of
satisfying it. Like the bedroom, this parlour gave out only on the
interior court. The flash of lanterns against the ceiling above reached
me. All I could do was to wander about looking at the objects in the
cabinet and the pictures on the walls. There was, I remember, a set of
carved ivory chessmen and an engraving of the legal trial of some
English worthy of the seventeenth century. But my hearing was alert, and
I thought to hear footsteps outside. At any rate, the chirp of the frog
came to an abrupt end.
Shortly my host returned and took up his monologue. It amounted to
that. He seemed to delight in choosing unusual subjects and then backing
me into a corner with an array of well-considered phrases that allowed
me no opening for reply nor even comment. In one of my desperate
attempts to gain even a momentary initiative I asked him, apropos of the
piano, whether his daughter played.
"Do you like music?" he added, and without waiting for a reply seated
himself at the instrument.
He played to me for half an hour. I do not know much about music; but I
know he played well and that he played good things. Also that, for the
first time, he came out of himself, abandoned himself to feeling. His
close-cropped head swayed from side to side; his staring, wildcat eyes
half closed----
He slammed shut the piano and arose, more drily precise than ever.
"I imagine all that is rather beyond your apperceptions," he remarked,
"and that you are ready for your bed. Here is a short document I would
have you take to your room for perusal. Good-night."
He tendered me a small, folded paper which I thrust into the breast
pocket of my shirt along with the note handed me earlier in the evening
by the girl. Thus dismissed I was only too delighted to repair to my
bedroom.
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