William MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff\'s Son

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THE SHERIFF'S SON

by

WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

Author of
The Yukon Trail, Wyoming, etc.

Illustrated by Harold Cue

[Frontispiece: When Meldrum came in answer to her summons, he met the
shock of his life.]

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1917 and 1918, by Frank A. Munsey Company
Copyright, 1918, by William Macleod Raine
All Rights Reserved
Published April 1918

TO

ROBERT H. DAVIS

WHO WITH HIS USUAL GENEROSITY TO WRITERS

MADE THE AUTHOR A PRESENT

OF THE GERM IDEA

OF THIS PLOT

Contents

Foreword
I. Dingwell Gives Three Cheers.
II. Dave Caches a Gunnysack
III. The Old-Timer Sits into a Big Game
IV. Royal Beaudry Hears a Call
V. The Hill Girl
VI. "Cherokee Street"
VII. Jess Tighe Spins a Web
VIII. Beulah Asks Questions
IX. The Man on the Bed
X. Dave Takes a Ride
XI. Tighe Weaves his Web Tighter
XII. Stark Fear
XIII. Beulah Interferes
XIV. Personally Escorted
XV. The Bad Man
XVI. Roy is Invited to Take a Drink
XVII. Roy Improves the Shining Hours
XVIII. Rutherford Answers Questions
XIX. Beaudry Blows a Smoke Wreath
XX. At the Lazy Double D
XXI. Roy Rides his Paint Hoss
XXII. Miss Rutherford Speaks her Mind
XXIII. In the Pit
XXIV. The Bad Man Decides not to Shoot
XXV. Two and a Camp-Fire
XXVI. The Sins of the Fathers
XXVII. The Quicksands
XXVIII. Pat Ryan Evens an Old Score
XXIX. A New Leaf

The Sheriff's Son

Foreword

Through the mesquite a horse moved deviously, following the crooked
trail of least resistance. A man was in the saddle and in front of him
a little boy nodding with sleep. The arm of the rider cradled the
youngster against the lurches of the pony's gait.

The owner of the arm looked down at the tired little bundle it was
supporting. A wistful tenderness was in the leathery face. To the
rest of the world he was a man of iron. To this wee bit of humanity he
was a nurse, a playmate, a slave.

"We're 'most to the creek now, son. Onc't we get there, we'll throw
off and camp. You can eat a snack and tumble right off to bye-low
land," he promised.

The five-year-old smiled faintly and snuggled closer. His long lashes
drooped again to the soft cheeks. With the innocent selfishness of a
child he accepted the love that sheltered him from all troubles.

A valley opened below the mesa, the trail falling abruptly almost from
the hoofs of the horse. Beaudry drew up and looked down. From rim to
rim the meadow was perhaps half a mile across. Seen from above, the
bed of it was like an emerald lake through which wound a ribbon of
silver. This ribbon was Big Creek. To the right it emerged from a
draw in the foothills where green reaches of forest rose tier after
tier toward the purple mountains. Far up among these peaks Big Creek
had its source in Lost Lake, which lay at the foot of a glacier near
the top of the world.

The saw-toothed range lifted its crest into a sky of violet haze. Half
an hour since the sun had set in a blaze of splendor behind a crotch of
the hills, but dusk had softened the vivid tints of orange and crimson
and scarlet to a faint pink glow. Already the mountain silhouette had
lost its sharp edge and the outlines were blurring. Soon night would
sift down over the roof of the continent.

The eyes of the man searched warily the valley below. They rested
closely on the willows by the ford, the cottonwood grove to the left,
and the big rocks beyond the creek. From its case beneath his leg he
took the sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot. It rested on the
pommel of the saddle while his long and careful scrutiny swept the
panorama. The spot was an ideal one for an ambush.

His unease communicated itself to the boy, who began to whimper softly.
Beaudry, distressed, tried to comfort him.

"Now, don't you, son--don't you. Dad ain't going to let anything hurt
you-all."

Presently he touched the flank of his roan with a spur and the animal
began to pick its way down the steep trail among the loose rubble. Not
for an instant did the rider relax his vigilance as he descended. At
the ford he examined the ground carefully to make sure that nobody had
crossed since the shower of the afternoon. Swinging to the saddle
again, he put his horse to the water and splashed through to the
opposite shore. Once more he dismounted and studied the approach to
the creek. No tracks had written their story on the sand in the past
few hours. Yet with every sense alert he led the way to the cottonwood
grove where he intended to camp. Not till he had made a tour of the
big rocks and a clump of prickly pears adjoining was his mind easy.

He came back to find the boy crying. "What's the matter, big son?" he
called cheerily. "Nothing a-tall to be afraid of. This nice
camping-ground fits us like a coat of paint. You-all take forty winks
while dad fixes up some supper."

He spread his slicker and rolled his coat for a pillow, fitting it
snugly to the child's head. While he lit a fire he beguiled the time
with animated talk. One might have guessed that he was trying to make
the little fellow forget the alarm that had been stirred in his mind.

"Sing the li'l' ole hawss," commanded the boy, reducing his sobs.

Beaudry followed orders in a tuneless voice that hopped gayly up and
down. He had invented words and music years ago as a lullaby and the
song was in frequent demand.

"Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow,
Amblin' along by the ole haymow,
Li'l' ole hawss took a bite an' a chew,
'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow, too."

Seventeen stanzas detailed the adventures of this amazing horse and
predatory cow. Somewhere near the middle of the epic little Royal
Beaudry usually dropped asleep. The rhythmic tale always comforted
him. These nameless animals were very real friends of his. They had
been companions of his tenderest years. He loved them with a devotion
from which no fairy tale could wean him.

Before he had quite surrendered to the lullaby, his father aroused him
to share the bacon and the flapjacks he had cooked.

"Come and get it, big son," Beaudry called with an imitation of manly
roughness.

The boy ate drowsily before the fire, nodding between bites.

Presently the father wrapped the lad up snugly in his blankets and
prompted him while he said his prayers. No woman's hands could have
been tenderer than the calloused ones of this frontiersman. The boy
was his life. For the girl-bride of John Beaudry had died to give this
son birth.

Beaudry sat by the dying fire and smoked. The hills had faded to
black, shadowy outlines beneath a night of a million stars. During the
day the mountains were companions, heaven was the home of warm friendly
sunshine that poured down lance-straight upon the traveler. But now
the black, jagged peaks were guards that shut him into a vast prison of
loneliness. He was alone with God, an atom of no consequence. Many a
time, when he had looked up into the sky vault from the saddle that was
his pillow, he had known that sense of insignificance.

To-night the thoughts of John Beaudry were somber. He looked over his
past with a strange feeling that he had lived his life and come to the
end of it. He was not yet forty, a well-set, bow-legged man of medium
height, in perfect health, sound as to every organ. From an old war
wound he had got while raiding with Morgan he limped a little. Two
more recent bullet scars marked his body. But none of these interfered
with his activity. He was in the virile prime of life; yet a bell rang
in his heart the warning that he was soon to die. That was why he was
taking his little son out of the country to safety.

He took all the precautions that one could, but he knew that in the end
these would fail him. The Rutherfords would get him. Of that he had
no doubt. They would probably have killed him, anyhow, but he had made
his sentence sure when he had shot Anse Rutherford and wounded Eli
Schaick ten days ago. That it had been done by him in self-defense
made no difference.

Out of the Civil War John Beaudry had come looking only for peace. He
had moved West and been flung into the wild, turbulent life of the
frontier. In the Big Creek country there was no peace for strong men
in the seventies. It was a time and place for rustlers and
horse-thieves to flourish at the expense of honest settlers. They
elected their friends to office and laughed at the law.

But the tide of civilization laps forward. A cattlemen's association
had been formed. Beaudry, active as an organizer, had been chosen its
first president. With all his energy he had fought the rustlers. When
the time came to make a stand the association nominated Beaudry for
sheriff and elected him. He had prosecuted the thieves remorselessly
in spite of threats and shots in the dark. Two of them had been put by
him behind bars. Others were awaiting trial. The climax had come when
he met Anse Rutherford and his companion at Battle Butte, had defeated
them both single-handed, and had left one dead on the field and the
other badly wounded.

Men said that John Beaudry was one of the great sheriffs of the West.
Perhaps he was, but he would have to pay the price that such a
reputation exacts. The Rutherford gang had sworn his death and he knew
they would keep the oath.

The man sat with one hand resting on the slim body of the sleeping boy.
His heart was troubled. What was to become of little Royal without
either father or mother? After the manner of men who live much alone
in the open he spoke his thoughts aloud.

"Son, one of these here days they're sure a-goin' to get yore dad.
Maybe he'll ride out of town and after a while the hawss will come
galloping back with an empty saddle. A man can be mighty unpopular and
die of old age, but not if he keeps bustin' up the plans of rampageous
two-gun men, not if he shoots them up when they're full of the devil
and bad whiskey. It ain't on the cyards for me to beat them to the
draw every time, let alone that they'll see to it all the breaks are
with them. No, sir. I reckon one of these days you're goin' to be an
orphan, little son."

He stooped over the child and wrapped the blankets closer. The muscles
of his tanned face twitched. Long he held the warm, slender body of
the boy as close to him as he dared for fear of wakening him.

The man lay tense and rigid, his set face staring up into the starry
night. It was his hour of trial. A rising tide was sweeping him away.
He had to clutch at every straw to hold his footing. But something in
the man--his lifetime habit of facing the duty that he saw--held him
steady.

"You got to stand the gaff, Jack Beaudry. Can't run away from your
job, can you? Got to go through, haven't you? Well, then!"

Peace came at last to the tormented man. He fell asleep. Hours later
he opened his eyes upon a world bathed in light. It was such a brave
warm world that the fears which had gripped him in the chill night
seemed sinister dreams. In this clear, limpid atmosphere only a sick
soul could believe in a blind alley from which there was no escape.

But facts are facts. He might hope for escape, but even now he could
not delude himself with the thought that he might win through without a
fight.

While they ate breakfast he told the boy about the mother whom he had
never seen. John Beaudry had always intended to tell Royal the story
of his love for the slender, sweet-lipped girl whose grace and beauty
had flooded his soul. But the reticence of shyness had sealed his
lips. He had cared for her with a reverence too deep for words.

She was the daughter of well-to-do people visiting in the West. The
young cattleman and she had fallen in love almost at sight and had
remained lovers till the day of her death. After one year of happiness
tragedy had stalked their lives. Beaudry, even then the object of the
rustlers' rage, had been intercepted on the way from Battle Butte to
his ranch. His wife, riding to meet him, heard shots and galloped
forward. From the mesa she looked down into a draw and saw her husband
fighting for his life. He was at bay in a bed of boulders, so well
covered by the big rocks that the rustlers could not easily get at him.
His enemies, scattered fanshape across the entrance to the arroyo, were
gradually edging nearer. In a panic of fear she rode wildly to the
nearest ranch, gasped out her appeal for help, and collapsed in a
woeful little huddle. His friends arrived in time to save Beaudry,
damaged only to the extent of a flesh wound in the shoulder, but the
next week the young wife gave premature birth to her child and died
four days later.

In mental and physical equipment the baby was heir to the fears which
had beset the last days of the mother. He was a frail little fellow
and he whimpered at trifles. But the clutch of the tiny pink fingers
held John Beaudry more firmly than a grip of steel. With unflagging
patience he fended bogies from the youngster.

But the day was at hand when he could do this no longer. That was why
he was telling Royal about the mother he had never known. From his
neck he drew a light gold chain, at the end of which was a small square
folding case. In it was a daguerreotype of a golden-haired, smiling
girl who looked out at her son with an effect of shy eagerness.

"Give Roy pretty lady," demanded the boy.

Beaudry shook his head slowly. "I reckon that's 'most the only thing
you can ask your dad for that he won't give you." He continued
unsteadily, looking at the picture in the palm of his hand. "Lady-Bird
I called her, son. She used to fill the house with music right out of
her heart. . . . Fine as silk and true as gold. Don't you ever forget
that your mother was a thoroughbred." His voice broke. "But I hadn't
ought to have let her stay out here. She belonged where folks are good
and kind, where they love books and music. Yet she wouldn't leave me
because . . . because . . . Maybe you'll know why she wouldn't some
day, little son."

He drew a long, ragged breath and slipped the case back under his shirt.

Quickly Beaudry rose and began to bustle about with suspicious
cheerfulness. He whistled while he packed and saddled. In the fresh
cool morning air they rode across the valley and climbed to the mesa
beyond. The sun mounted higher and the heat shimmered on the trail in
front of them. The surface of the earth was cracked in dry, sun-baked
tiles curving upward at the edges. Cat's-claw clutched at the legs of
the travelers. Occasionally a swift darted from rock to rock. The
faint, low voices of the desert were inaudible when the horse moved.
The riders came out of the silence and moved into the silence.

It was noon when Beaudry drew into the suburbs of Battle Butte. He
took an inconspicuous way by alleys and side streets to the corral.
His enemies might or might not be in town. He wanted to take no
chances. All he asked was to postpone the crisis until Royal was safe
aboard a train. Crossing San Miguel Street, the riders came face to
face with a man Beaudry knew to be a spy of the Rutherfords. He was a
sleek, sly little man named Chet Fox.

"Evening sheriff. Looks some like we-all might have rain," Fox said,
rasping his unshaven chin with the palm of a hand.

"Looks like," agreed Beaudry with a curt nod and rode on.

Fox disappeared around a corner, hurried forward for half a block, and
turned in at the Silver Dollar Saloon. A broad-shouldered, hawk-nosed
man of thirty was talking to three of his friends. Toward this group
Fox hurried. In a low voice he spoke six words that condemned John
Beaudry to death.

"Beaudry just now rode into town."

Hal Rutherford forgot the story he was telling. He gave crisp, short
orders. The men about him left by the back door of the saloon and
scattered.

Meanwhile the sheriff rode into the Elephant Corral and unsaddled his
horse. He led the animal to the trough in the yard and pumped water
for it. His son trotted back beside him to the stable and played with
a puppy while the roan was being fed.

Jake Sharp, owner of the corral, stood in the doorway and chatted with
the sheriff for a minute. Was it true that a new schoolhouse was going
to be built on Bonito? And had the sheriff heard whether McCarty was
to be boss of Big Creek roundup?

Beaudry answered his questions and turned away. Royal clung to one
hand as they walked. The other held the muley gun.

It was no sound that warned the sheriff. The approach of his enemies
had been noiseless. But the sixth sense that comes to some fighting
men made him look up quickly. Five riders were moving down the street
toward the stable, Hal Rutherford in the lead. The alert glance of the
imperiled man swept the pasture back of the corral. The glint of the
sun heliographed danger from the rifle barrels of two men just topping
the brow of the hill. Two more were stealing up through a draw to the
right. A bullet whistled past the head of the officer.

The father spoke quietly to his little boy. "Run, son, to the stable."

The little chap began to sob. Bullets were already kicking up the dust
behind them. Roy clung in terror to the leg of his father.

Beaudry caught up the child and made a dash for the stable. He reached
it, just as Sharp and his horse-wrangler were disappearing into the
loft. There was no time to climb the ladder with Royal. John flung
open the top of the feed-bin, dropped the boy inside, and slammed down
the lid.

The story of the fight that followed is still an epic in the Southwest.
There was no question of fair play. The enemies of the sheriff
intended to murder him.

The men in his rear were already clambering over the corral fence. One
of them had a scarlet handkerchief around his neck. Beaudry fired from
his hip and the vivid kerchief lurched forward into the dust. Almost
at the same moment a sharp sting in the fleshy part of his leg told the
officer that he was wounded.

From front and rear the attackers surged into the stable. The sheriff
emptied the second barrel of buckshot into the huddle and retreated
into an empty horse-stall. The smoke of many guns filled the air so
that the heads thrust at him seemed oddly detached from bodies. A
red-hot flame burned its way through his chest. He knew he was
mortally wounded.

Hal Rutherford plunged at him, screaming an oath. "We've got him,
boys."

Beaudry stumbled back against the manger, the arms of his foe clinging
to him like ropes of steel. Twice he brought down the butt of his
sawed-off gun on the black head of Rutherford. The grip of the big
hillman grew lax, and as the man collapsed, his fingers slid slackly
down the thighs of the officer.

John dropped the empty weapon and dragged out a Colt's forty-four. He
fired low and fast, not stopping to take aim. Another flame seared its
way through his body. The time left him now could be counted in
seconds.

But it was not in the man to give up. The old rebel yell of Morgan's
raiders quavered from his throat. They rushed him. With no room even
for six-gun work he turned his revolver into a club. His arm rose and
fell in the melee as the drive of the rustlers swept him to and fro.

So savage was the defense of their victim against the hillmen's
onslaught that he beat them off. A sudden panic seized them, and those
that could still travel fled in terror.

They left behind them four dead and two badly wounded. One would be a
cripple to the day of his death. Of those who escaped there was not
one that did not carry scars for months as a memento of the battle.

The sheriff was lying in the stall when Sharp found him. From out of
the feed-bin the owner of the corral brought his boy to the father
whose life was ebbing. The child was trembling like an aspen leaf.

"Picture," gasped Beaudry, his hand moving feebly toward the chain.

A bullet had struck the edge of the daguerreo-type case.

"She . . . tried . . . to save me . . . again," murmured the dying man
with a faint smile.

He looked at the face of his sweetheart. It smiled an eager invitation
to him. A strange radiance lit his eyes.

Then his head fell back. He had gone to join his Lady-Bird.

Chapter I

Dingwell Gives Three Cheers

Dave Dingwell had been in the saddle almost since daylight had wakened
him to the magic sunshine of a world washed cool and miraculously clean
by the soft breath of the hills. Steadily he had jogged across the
desert toward the range. Afternoon had brought him to the foothills,
where a fine rain blotted out the peaks and softened the sharp outlines
of the landscape to a gentle blur of green loveliness.

The rider untied his slicker from the rear of the saddle and slipped
into it. He had lived too long in sun-and-wind-parched New Mexico to
resent a shower. Yet he realized that it might seriously affect the
success of what he had undertaken.

If there had been any one to observe this solitary traveler, he would
have said that the man gave no heed to the beauty of the day. Since he
had broken camp his impassive gaze had been fixed for the most part on
the ground in front of him. Occasionally he swung his long leg across
the rump of the horse and dismounted to stoop down for a closer
examination of the hoofprints he was following. They were not recent
tracks. He happened to know that they were about three days old.
Plain as a printed book was the story they told him.

The horses that had made these tracks had been ridden by men in a
desperate hurry. They had walked little and galloped much. Not once
had they fallen into the easy Spanish jog-trot used so much in the
casual travel of the South-west. The spur of some compelling motive
had driven this party at top speed.

Since Dingwell knew the reason for such haste he rode warily. His
alert caution suggested the panther. The eye of the man pounced surely
upon every bit of cactus or greasewood behind which a possible foe
might be hidden. His lean, sun-tanned face was an open letter of
recommendation as to his ability to take care of himself in a world
that had often glared at him wolfishly. A man in a temper to pick a
quarrel would have looked twice at Dave Dingwell before choosing him as
the object of it--and then would have passed on to a less competent
citizen.

The trail grew stiffer. It circled into a draw down which tumbled a
jocund little stream. Trout, it might be safely guessed, lurked here
in the riffles and behind the big stones. An ideal camping-ground
this, but the rider rejected it apparently without consideration. He
passed into the canon beyond, and so by a long uphill climb came to the
higher reaches of the hills.

He rode patiently, without any hurry, without any hesitation. Here
again a reader of character might have found something significant in
the steadiness of the man. Once on the trail, it would not be easy to
shake him off.

By the count of years Dingwell might be in the early forties. Many
little wrinkles radiated fanlike from the corners of his eyes. But
whatever his age time had not tamed him. In the cock of those same
steel-blue eyes was something jaunty, something almost debonair, that
carried one back to a youth of care-free rioting in a land of sunshine.
Not that Mr. Dingwell was given to futile dissipations. He had the
reputation of a responsible ranchman. But it is not to be denied that
little devils of mischief at times danced in those orbs.

Into the hills the trail wound across gulches and along the shoulders
of elephant humps. It brought him into a country of stunted pines and
red sandstone, and so to the summit of a ridge which formed part of the
rim of a saucer-shaped basin. He looked down into an open park hedged
in on the far side by mountains. Scrubby pines straggled up the slopes
from arroyos that cleft the hills. By divers unknown paths these led
into the range beyond.

A clump of quaking aspens was the chief landmark in the bed of the
park. Though this was the immediate destination of Mr. Dingwell, since
the hoofprints he was following plunged straight down toward the grove,
yet he took certain precautions before venturing nearer. He made sure
that the 45-70 Winchester that lay across the saddle was in working
order. Also he kept along the rim of the saucer-shaped park till he
came to a break where a creek tumbled down in a white foam through a
ravine.

"It's a heap better to be safe than to be sorry," he explained to
himself cheerfully. "They call this Lonesome Park, and maybe so it
deserves its name to-day. But you never can tell, Dave. We'll make
haste slowly if you don't mind."

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