Stewart Edward White - The Killer

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"Deliberate murder and not a chance quarrel," he concluded. "He wasn't
even within hollering distance of that rim-rock. Anybody know anything
about Starr?"

"He's been with us about five weeks," proffered Jed, as foreman. "Said
he came from Texas."

"He was a Texican," corroborated one of the other men. "I rode with him
considerable."

"What enemies did he have?" asked Buck.

But it developed that, as far as these men knew, Jim Starr had had no
enemies. He was a quiet sort of a fellow. He had been to town once or
twice. Of course he might have made an enemy, but it was not likely; he
had always behaved himself. Somebody would have known of any trouble----

"Maybe somebody followed him from Texas."

"More likely the usual local work," Buck interrupted. "This man Starr
ever met up with Old Man Hooper or Hooper's men?"

But here was another impasse. Starr had been over on the Slick Rock ever
since his arrival. I could have thrown some light on the matter,
perhaps, but new thoughts were coming to me and I kept silence.

Shortly Buck Johnson went out. His departure loosened tongues, among
them mine.

"I don't see why you stand for this old _hombre_ if he's as bad as you
say," I broke in. "Why don't some of you brave young warriors just
naturally pot him?"

And that started a new line of discussion that left me even more
thoughtful than before. I knew these men intimately. There was not a
coward among them. They had been tried and hardened and tempered in the
fierceness of the desert. Any one of them would have twisted the tail of
the devil himself; but they were off Old Man Hooper. They did not make
that admission in so many words; far from it. And I valued my hide
enough to refrain from pointing the fact. But that fact remained: they
were off Old Man Hooper. Furthermore, by the time they had finished
recounting in intimate detail some scores of anecdotes dealing with what
happened when Old Man Hooper winked his wildcat eye, I began in spite
of myself to share some of their sentiments. For no matter how flagrant
the killing, nor how certain morally the origin, never had the most
brilliant nor the most painstaking effort been able to connect with the
slayers nor their instigator. He worked in the dark by hidden hands; but
the death from the hands was as certain as the rattlesnake's. Certain of
his victims, by luck or cleverness, seemed to have escaped sometimes as
many as three or four attempts but in the end the old man's Killers got
them.

A Jew drummer who had grossly insulted Hooper in the Lone Star Emporium
had, on learning the enormity of his crime, fled to San Francisco. Three
months later Soda Springs awoke to find pasted by an unknown hand on the
window of the Emporium a newspaper account of that Jew drummer's taking
off. The newspaper could offer no theory and merely recited the fact
that the man suffered from a heavy-calibred bullet. But always the talk
turned back at last to that crowning atrocity, the Boomerang, with its
windrows of little calves, starved for water, lying against the fence.

"Yes," someone unexpectedly answered my first question at last, "someone
could just naturally pot him easy enough. But I got a hunch that he
couldn't get fur enough away to feel safe afterward. The fellow with a
hankering for a good _useful_ kind of suicide could get it right there.
Any candidates? You-all been looking kinda mournful lately, Windy;
s'pose you be the human benefactor and rid the world of this yere
reptile."

"Me?" said Windy with vast surprise, "me mournful? Why, I sing at my
work like a little dicky bird. I'm so plumb cheerful bull frogs ain't
in it. You ain't talking to me!"

But I wanted one more point of information before the conversation
veered.

"Does his daughter ever ride out?" I asked.

"Daughter?" they echoed in surprise.

"Or niece, or whoever she is," I supplemented impatiently.

"There's no woman there; not even a Mex," said one, and "Did you see any
sign of any woman?" keenly from Windy Bill.

But I was not minded to be drawn.

"Somebody told me about a daughter, or niece, or something," I said,
vaguely.

CHAPTER VI

I lay in my bunk and cast things up in my mind. The patch of moonlight
from the window moved slowly across the floor. One of the men was
snoring, but with regularity, so he did not annoy me. The outside
silence was softly musical with all the little voices that at Hooper's
had so disconcertingly lacked. There were crickets--I had forgotten
about them--and frogs, and a hoot owl, and various such matters, beneath
whose influence customarily my consciousness merged into sleep so
sweetly that I never knew when I had lost them. But I was never wider
awake than now, and never had I done more concentrated thinking.

For the moment, and for the moment, only, I was safe. Old Man Hooper
thought he had put me out of the way. How long would he continue to
think so? How long before his men would bring true word of the mistake
that had been made? Perhaps the following day would inform him that Jim
Starr and not myself had been reached by his killer's bullet. Then, I
had no doubt, a second attempt would be made on my life. Therefore,
whatever I was going to do must be done quickly.

I had the choice of war or retreat. Would it do me any good to retreat?
There was the Jew drummer who was killed in San Francisco; and others
whose fates I have not detailed. But why should he particularly desire
my extinction? What had I done or what knowledge did I possess that had
not been equally done and known by any chance visitor to the ranch? I
remembered the notes in my shirt pocket; and, at the risk of awakening
some of my comrades, I lit a candle and studied them. They were
undoubtedly written by the same hand. To whom had the other been
smuggled? and by what means had it come into Old Man Hooper's
possession? The answer hit me so suddenly, and seemed intrinsically so
absurd, that I blew out the candle and lay again on my back to study it.

And the more I studied it, the less absurd it seemed, not by the light
of reason, but by the feeling of pure intuition. I knew it as sanely as
I knew that the moon made that patch of light through the window. The
man to whom that other note had been surreptitiously conveyed by the
sad-eyed, beautiful girl of the iron-barred chamber was dead; and he was
dead because Old Man Hooper had so willed. And the former owners of the
other notes of the "Collection" concerning which the old man had spoken
were dead, too--dead for the same reason and by the same hidden hands.

Why? Because they knew about the girl? Unlikely. Without doubt Hooper
had, as in my case, himself made possible that knowledge. But I
remembered many things; and I knew that my flash of intuition, absurd as
it might seem at first sight, was true. I recalled the swift, darting
onslaughts with the fly whackers, the fierce, vindictive slaughter of
the frogs, his early-morning pursuit of the flock of migrating birds.
Especially came clear to my recollection the words spoken at breakfast:

"Everything inside the walls is mine! Mine! Mine! Understand? I will
not tolerate anything that is not mine; that does not obey my will; that
does not come when I say come; go when I say go; and fall silent when I
say be still!"

My crime, the crime of these men from whose dead hands the girl's
appeals had been taken for the "Collection," was that of curiosity! The
old man would within his own domain reign supreme, in the mental as in
the physical world. The chance cowboy, genuinely desirous only of a
resting place for the night, rode away unscathed; but he whom the old
man convicted of a prying spirit committed a lese-majesty that could not
be forgiven. And I had made many tracks during my night reconnaissance.

And the same flash of insight showed me that I would be followed
wherever I went; and the thing that convinced my intuitions--not my
reason--of this was the recollection of the old man stamping the remains
of the poor little bird into the mud by the willows. I saw again the
insane rage of his face; and I felt cold fingers touching my spine.

On this I went abruptly and unexpectedly to sleep, after the fashion of
youth, and did not stir until Sing, the cook, routed us out before dawn.
We were not to ride the range that day because of Jim Starr, but Sing
was a person of fixed habits. I plunged my head into the face of the
dawn with a new and light-hearted confidence. It was one of those clear,
nile-green sunrises whose lucent depths go back a million miles or so;
and my spirit followed on wings. Gone were at once my fine-spun theories
and my forebodings of the night. Life was clean and clear and simple.
Jim Starr had probably some personal enemy. Old Man Hooper was
undoubtedly a mean old lunatic, and dangerous; very likely he would
attempt to do me harm, as he said, if I bothered him again, but as for
following me to the ends of the earth----

The girl was a different matter. She required thought. So, as I was
hungry and the day sparkling, I postponed her and went in to breakfast.

CHAPTER VII

By the time the coroner's inquest and the funeral in town were over it
was three o'clock of the afternoon. As I only occasionally managed Soda
Springs I felt no inclination to hurry on the return journey. My
intention was to watch the Overland through, to make some small
purchases at the Lone Star Emporium, to hoist one or two at McGrue's,
and to dine sumptuously at the best--and only--hotel. A programme simple
in theme but susceptible to variations.

The latter began early. After posing kiddishly as a rough, woolly,
romantic cowboy before the passengers of the Overland, I found myself
chaperoning a visitor to our midst. By sheer accident the visitor had
singled me out for an inquiry.

"Can you tell me how to get to Hooper's ranch?" he asked.

So I annexed him promptly in hope of developments.

He was certainly no prize package, for he was small, pale, nervous,
shifty, and rat-like; and neither his hands nor his eyes were still for
an instant. Further to set him apart he wore a hard-boiled hat, a
flaming tie, a checked vest, a coat cut too tight for even his emaciated
little figure, and long toothpick shoes of patent leather. A fairer mark
for cowboy humour would be difficult to find; but I had a personal
interest and a determined character so the gang took a look at me and
bided their time.

But immediately I discovered I was going to have my hands full. It
seemed that the little, shifty, rat-faced man had been possessed of a
small handbag which the negro porter had failed to put off the train;
and which was of tremendous importance. At the discovery it was lacking
my new friend went into hysterics. He ran a few feet after the
disappearing train; he called upon high heaven to destroy utterly the
race of negro porters; he threatened terrible reprisals against a
delinquent railroad company; he seized upon a bewildered station agent
over whom he poured his troubles in one gush; and he lifted up his voice
and wept--literally wept! This to the vast enjoyment of my friends.

"What ails the small party?" asked Windy Bill coming up.

"He's lost the family jewels!" "The papers are missing." "Sandy here
(meaning me) won't give him his bottle and it's past feeding time."
"Sandy's took away his stick of candy and won't give it back." "The
little son-of-a-gun's just remembered that he give the nigger porter two
bits," were some of the replies he got.

On the general principle of "never start anything you can't finish," I
managed to quell the disturbance; I got a description of the bag, and
arranged to have it wired for at the next station. On receiving the news
that it could not possibly be returned before the following morning, my
protege showed signs of another outburst. To prevent it I took him
firmly by the arm and led him across to McGrue's. He was shivering as
though from a violent chill.

The multitude trailed interestedly after; but I took my man into one of
McGrue's private rooms and firmly closed the door.

"Put that under your belt," I invited, pouring him a half tumbler of
McGrue's best, "and pull yourself together."

He smelled it.

"It's only whiskey," he observed, mournfully. "That won't help much."

"You don't know this stuff," I encouraged.

He took off the half tumbler without a blink, shook his head, and poured
himself another. In spite of his scepticism I thought his nervousness
became less marked.

"Now," said I, "if you don't mind, why do you descend on a peaceful
community and stir it all up because of the derelictions of an absent
coon? And why do you set such store by your travelling bag? And why do
you weep in the face of high heaven and outraged manhood? And why do you
want to find Hooper's ranch? And why are you and your vaudeville make
up?"

But he proved singularly embarrassed and nervous and uncommunicative,
darting his glance here and there about him, twisting his hands, never
by any chance meeting my eye. I leaned back and surveyed him in
considerable disgust.

"Look here, brother," I pointed out to him. "You don't seem to realize.
A man like you can't get away with himself in this country except behind
footlights--and there ain't any footlights. All I got to do is to throw
open yonder door and withdraw my beneficent protection and you will be
set upon by a pack of ravening wolves with their own ideas of humour,
among whom I especially mention one Windy Bill. I'm about the only thing
that looks like a friend you've got."

He caught at the last sentence only.

"You my friend?" he said, breathlessly, "then tell me: is there a
doctor around here?"

"No," said I, looking at him closely, "not this side of Tucson. Are you
sick?"

"Is there a drug store in town, then?"

"Nary drug store."

He jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair as he did so.

"My God!" he cried in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got to get my
bag! How far is it to the next station where they're going to put it
off? Ain't there some way of getting there? I got to get to my bag."

"It's near to forty miles," I replied, leaning back.

"And there's no drug store here? What kind of a bum tank town is this,
anyhow?"

"They keep a few patent medicines and such over at the Lone Star
Emporium----" I started to tell him. I never had a chance to finish my
sentence. He darted around the table, grabbed me by the arm, and urged
me to my feet.

"Show me!" he panted.

We sailed through the bar room under full head of steam, leaving the
gang staring after us open-mouthed. I could feel we were exciting
considerable public interest. At the Lone Star Emporium the little freak
looked wildly about him until his eyes fell on the bottle shelves. Then
he rushed right in behind the counter and began to paw them over. I
headed off Sol Levi, who was coming front making war medicine.

"_Loco_," says I to him. "If there's any damage, I'll settle."

It looked like there was going to be damage all right, the way he
snatched up one bottle after the other, read the labels, and thrust
them one side. At last he uttered a crow of delight, just like a kid.

"How many you got of these?" he demanded, holding up a bottle of
soothing syrup.

"You only take a tablespoon of that stuff----" began Sol.

"How many you got--how much are they?" interrupted the stranger.

"Six--three dollars a bottle," says Sol, boosting the price.

The little man peeled a twenty off a roll of bills and threw it down.

"Keep the other five bottles for me!" he cried in a shaky voice, and ran
out, with me after him, forgetting his change and to shut the door
behind us.

Back through McGrue's bar we trailed like one of these moving-picture
chases and into the back room.

"Well, here we are home again," said I.

The stranger grabbed a glass and filled it half full of soothing syrup.

"Here, you aren't going to drink that!" I yelled at him. "Didn't you
hear Sol tell you the dose is a spoonful?"

But he didn't pay me any attention. His hand was shaking so he could
hardly connect with his own mouth, and he was panting as though he'd run
a race.

"Well, no accounting for tastes," I said. "Where do you want me to ship
your remains?"

He drank her down, shut his eyes a few minutes, and held still. He had
quit his shaking, and he looked me square in the face.

"What's it _to_ you?" he demanded. "Huh? Ain't you never seen a guy hit
the hop before?"

He stared at me so truculently that I was moved to righteous wrath; and
I answered him back. I told him what I thought of him and his clothes
and his conduct at quite some length. When I had finished he seemed to
have gained a new attitude of aggravating wise superiority.

"That's all right, kid; that's all right," he assured me; "keep your
hair on. I ain't such a bad scout; but you gotta get used to me. Give me
my hop and I'm all right. Now about this Hooper; you say you know him?"

"None better," I rejoined. "But what's that to you? That's a fair
question."

He bored me with his beady rat eyes for several seconds.

"Friend of yours?" he asked, briefly.

Something in the intonations of his voice induced me to frankness.

"I have good cause to think he's trying to kill me," I replied.

He produced a pocketbook, fumbled in it for a moment, and laid before me
a clipping. It was from the Want column of a newspaper, and read as
follows:

A.A.B.--Will deal with you on your terms. H.H.

"A.A.B. that's me--Artie Brower. And H.H.--that's him--Henry Hooper," he
explained. "And that lil' piece of paper means that's he's caved, come
off, war's over. Means I'm rich, that I can have my own ponies if I want
to, 'stead of touting somebody else's old dogs. It means that I got old
H.H.--Henry Hooper--where the hair is short, and he's got to come my
way!"

His eyes were glittering restlessly, and the pupils seemed to be unduly
dilated. The whiskey and opium together--probably an unaccustomed
combination--were too much for his ill-balanced control. Every
indication of his face and his narrow eyes was for secrecy and craft;
yet for the moment he was opening up to me, a stranger, like an oyster.
Even my inexperience could see that much, and I eagerly took advantage
of my chance.

"You are a horseman, then?" I suggested.

"Me a horseman? Say, kid, you didn't get my name. Brower--Artie Brower.
Why, I've ridden more winning races than any other man on the Pacific
Coast. That's how I got onto old H.H. I rode for him. He knows a good
horse all right--the old skunk. Used to have a pretty string."

"He's got at least one good Morgan stallion now," said I. "I've seen him
at Hooper's ranch."

"I know the old crock--trotter," scorned the true riding jockey.
"Probably old Tim Westmore is hanging around, too. He's in love with
that horse."

"Is he in love with Hooper, too?" I asked.

"Just like I am," said the jockey with a leer.

"So you're going to be rich," said I. "How's that?"

He leered at me again, going foxy.

"Don't you wish you knew! But I'll tell you this: old H.H. is going to
give me all I want--just because I ask him to."

I took another tack, affecting incredulity.

"The hell he is! He'll hand you over to Ramon and that will be the last
of a certain jockey."

"No, he won't do no such trick. I've fixed that; and he knows it. If he
kills me, he'll lose _all_ he's got 'stead of only part."

"You're drunk or dreaming," said I. "If you bother him, he'll just plain
have you killed. That's a little way of his."

"And if he does a friend of mine will just go to a certain place and get
certain papers and give 'em to a certain lawyer--and then where's old
H.H.? And he knows it, damn well. And he's going to be good to Artie and
give him what he wants. We'll get along fine. Took him a long time to
come to it; but I didn't take no chances while he was making up his
mind; you can bet on that."

"Blackmail, eh?" I said, with just enough of a sneer to fire him.

"Blackmail nothing!" he shouted. "It ain't blackmail to take away what
don't belong to a man at all!"

"What don't belong to him?"

"Nothing. Not a damn thing except his money. This ranch. The oil wells
in California. The cattle. Not a damn thing. That was the agreement with
his pardner when they split. And I've got the agreement! Now what you
got to say?"

"Say? Why its _loco_! Why doesn't the pardner raise a row?"

"He's dead."

"His heirs then?"

"He hasn't got but one heir--his daughter." My heart skipped a beat in
the amazement of a half idea. "And she knew nothing about the agreement.
Nobody knows but old H.H.--and me." He sat back, visibly gloating over
me. But his mood was passing. His earlier exhilaration had died, and
with it was dying the expansiveness of his confidence. The triumph of
his last speech savoured he slipped again into his normal self. He
looked at me suspiciously, and raised his whiskey to cover his
confusion.

"What's it to yuh, anyway?" he muttered into his glass darkly. His eyes
were again shifting here and there; and his lips were snarled back
malevolently to show his teeth.

At this precise moment the lords of chance willed Windy Bill and others
to intrude on our privacy by opening the door and hurling several
whiskey-flavoured sarcasms at the pair of us. The jockey seemed to
explode after the fashion of an over-inflated ball. He squeaked like a
rat, leaped to his feet, hurled the chair on which he had been sitting
crash against the door from which Windy Bill _et al_ had withdrawn
hastily, and ended by producing a small wicked-looking automatic--then a
new and strange weapon--and rushing out into the main saloon. There he
announced that he was known to the cognoscenti as Art the Blood and was
a city gunman in comparison with which these plain, so-called bad men
were as sucking doves to the untamed eagle. Thence he glanced briefly at
their ancestry as far as known; and ended by rushing forth in the
general direction of McCloud's hotel.

"Suffering giraffes!" gasped Windy Bill after the whirlwind had passed.
"Was that the scared little rabbit that wept all them salt tears over at
the depot? What brand of licker did you feed him, Sandy?"

I silently handed him the bottle.

"Soothing syrup--my God!" said Windy in hushed tones.

CHAPTER VIII

At that epoch I prided myself on being a man of resource; and I
proceeded to prove it in a fashion that even now fills me with
satisfaction. I annexed the remainder of that bottle of soothing syrup;
I went to Sol Levi and easily procured delivery of the other five. Then
I strolled peacefully to supper over at McCloud's hotel. Pathological
knowledge of dope fiends was outside my ken--I could not guess how soon
my man would need another dose of his "hop," but I was positively sure
that another would be needed. Inquiry of McCloud elicited the fact that
the ex-jockey had swallowed a hasty meal and had immediately retired to
Room 4. I found Room 4 unlocked, and Brower lying fully clothed sound
asleep across the bed. I did not disturb him, except that I robbed him
of his pistol. All looked safe for awhile; but just to be certain I took
Room 6, across the narrow hall, and left both doors open. McCloud's
hotel never did much of a room business. By midnight the cowboys would
be on their way for the ranches. Brower and myself were the only
occupants of the second floor.

For two hours I smoked and read. The ex-jockey did not move a muscle.
Then I went to bed and to a sound sleep; but I set my mind like an alarm
clock, so that the slightest move from the other room would have fetched
me broad awake. City-bred people may not know that this can be done by
most outdoor men. I have listened subconsciously to horsebells for so
many nights, for example, that even on stormy nights the cessation of
that faint twinkle will awaken me, while the crash of the elements or
even the fall of a tree would not in the slightest disturb my tired
slumbers. So now, although the songs and stamping and racket of the
revellers below stairs in McCloud's bar did not for one second prevent
my falling into deep and dreamless sleep, Brower's softest tread would
have reached my consciousness.

However, he slept right through the night, and was still dead to the
world when I slipped out at six o'clock to meet the east-bound train.
The bag--a small black Gladstone--was aboard in charge of the
baggageman. I had no great difficulty in getting it from my friend, the
station agent. Had he not seen me herding the locoed stranger? I
secreted the black bag with the five full bottles of soothing syrup,
slipped the half-emptied bottle in my pocket, and returned to the hotel.
There I ate breakfast, and sat down for a comfortable chat with McCloud
while awaiting results.

Got them very promptly. About eight o'clock Brower came downstairs. He
passed through the office, nodding curtly to McCloud and me, and into
the dining room where he drank several cups of coffee. Thence he passed
down the street toward Sol Levi's. He emerged rather hurriedly and
slanted across to the station.

"In about two minutes," I observed to McCloud, "you're going to observe
yon butterfly turn into a stinging lizard. He's going to head in this
direction; and he'll probably aim to climb my hump. Such being the case,
and the affair being private, you'll do me a favour by supervising
something in some remote corner of the premises."

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