Chapter VIII

Early though the hour was, the Stag Horn was crowded. Excitement had run high in Sundown, and men clustered here where the current chain of events had seemed to have its inception; here, if anywhere, they could get the latest low-down on what it was all about.

Florinda, extravagantly attired, white-bosomed and sparkling with her “family jewels,” strutted like a peacock. With Steve Bordereau away, with Murdo away too, she was more the tinsel queen than ever before. She disported herself as though it was she, Florinda de Valdez y Verdugo, who owned the place.

She saw Jim Torrance, travel-stained and somewhat hollow-eyed, come in with a furtive and apprehensive Sam Pepper at his heels, and stiffened.

Torrance’s eyes were hunting her down. When they found her he came to her as straight as a string.

“Señorita!” he said to her in Spanish, and his tired eyes mocked her. “You are lovelier than a little white dove with pink feet; you are lovelier than a little dove sitting in the hollow of a man’s hand. I am going to buy you some wine, and you are going to sit with me for three minutes and smile at me--and answer a question!”

Her teeth were like pearls, her loveliest and most genuine gems. Though she looked uncertain and frightened and ready to run, she smiled. She said, “_Si_, Señor Jeem Torrance,” and made her skirt billow above her slim ankles as she led in haste the way to a secluded corner table.

Sam Pepper, goggling wide-eyed in all directions, followed the two like a little dog with its tail tucked in. He had been upstairs in these rooms just once before in all his days; that was when Bordereau had opened for his first night, and Sam’s insatiable curiosity got him admitted at a cost in dollars which he had never confessed to Mrs. Sam.

The three sat down. Florinda looked at Sam Pepper as at a bug. The waiter brought wine. When Torrance began to speak, Sam Pepper ceased goggling all over the room and distended his ears instead.

“Florinda,” said Torrance, “we have met before, you and I.”

She nodded.

“In Nacional,” she whispered.

“So you remember?”

Her eyes became mysterious, unfathomable. She said almost inaudibly, “I am not going to forget; not ever, Señor.”

“Bordereau was there that night?”

“Yes.”

“A man was killed that night?”

“Yes! You know--”

“Who killed him?”

“But I do not know, Señor! It was-- I thought it was--”

“I did not kill that man. Did Bordereau?”

“I thought--I thought you killed him! Bordereau? But I do not know, Señor! Not anything.”

He stared at her a long while, trying to make out whether she lied. By this time there were hot spots of color in Sam Pepper’s tanned cheeks. Abruptly Torrance switched to other matters.

“With Steve Bordereau dead,” he said, “who takes over here? Who’s the big gun now at the Stag Horn?”

“Murdo. He and Steve were somehow partners.”

“Are you and Murdo good friends?”

Her velvet-black eyes unsheathed themselves in a flash.

“He is a pig. I hate him.” Only she said, “He is a peeg.”

“Did you see Doc Taylor come in the night after Bordereau was shot?”

“Yes. I followed into the room. Steve was not dead yet. Then Murdo t’row me out.”

“And Doc Taylor?”

“I do not know, Señor. He was there when I go. Two-t’ree hour after that a man comes running, telling everybody his little boy baby is sick; he is crazy to find the doctor quick. He come back two, t’ree time. He come again today; he say he cannot find the doctor. I do not know, Señor.”

Torrance slid some money across the table. “You can go now,” he said.

She rose slowly with a queer, native dignity. The money she ignored absolutely, as though she had not seen it. Her eyes were a little brighter, her face hotter with color.

“I am your friend, if you will have it that way, Señor,” she said, in a soft voice which trembled just a trifle and which was very earnest. Then she hurried away, almost running.

Sam Pepper, looking about to explode with all that pent-up curiosity seething within him, began babbling questions, but Torrance promptly shut him up, saying:

“Not now, Sam. You’ve got to wait, if it kills you. Right away I want you to help me. Remember that I’m a stranger here and that you ought to know everybody. We’ve got us a job of work to do tonight, and it might come in handy if we had a few other fellows, say four or five, to lend a hand. Men that are on the up-and-up and that we can trust. How about it?”

Sam Pepper’s eyes started roving again. Then he shook his head.

“Not upstairs, Torrance. Downstairs in the bar I’d be sure to find some boys like that, that I know and that a man can tie to.”

“Step down and round ’em up,” said Torrance. “Make it lively. Friends of the Cannon girl if you can find them. I’ll be with you in no time.”

Sam slid out of his chair and hurried out of the room. When Torrance went downstairs a few minutes later he had reason to congratulate himself on the choice of his ally. Pepper had already gathered half a dozen dependable looking men. Five of them, especially sought out by Pepper, were young stock men, and neighbors of the Cannons; the sixth, older and slightly bald, yet a man ready for anything, had not been invited but had horned in--and that man was Lying Bill Yarbo. Pepper looked at him accusingly; as for Jim Torrance, he was glad to have Yarbo of their number. At a nod from him they followed him outside.

“I’m playing a wild hunch tonight, boys,” he told them. “I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. First get this: If I’m wrong we’re apt to have a fight on our hands, and if I’m right we’ll be turning up to the light a pretty dirty trick that’s been played and that’s still in play.”

One of the young fellows, lean and lanky Dave Drennen who had once worked for King Cannon and who now was running a small spread of his own, spoke up quietly.

“Somehow what you’ve got in mind is to help out Sally Cannon? You’re a friend of hers and you know what’s gone with her?”

“It’s to help out the Cannon girl, and to help me out, too. Yes, I know where she is. So does Pepper.”

“Sure I do,” said Pepper. “Right now she--”

“Keep it under your hat a little longer,” commanded Torrance. “Now if you boys will wander along with me we’ll get busy. Likewise I’ll tell you what I’m banking on.”

He led the way and the others came along, walking swiftly down the sidewalk toward a hardware store which he had noted on his first day in Sundown. It was too early for a store to be closed and there were a couple of articles he wanted. But the little group of men hadn’t gone over a block when Sam Pepper, who seemed to have eyes in the back of his head and whose ears were always registering sounds to which others gave no attention, came to a sudden halt.

“Say!” he exclaimed. “There’s Clark Murdo! And there’s someone with him! Say, he’s got the girl! That’s Sally Dawn he’s yanking along after him!”

Three or four riders had drawn up in front of the Stag Horn; that was what Sam Pepper had heard first of all. They had dismounted; Clark Murdo had called out sharply, issuing some swift command. Then he and those with him passed into the Stag Horn.

“So,” thought Torrance, “Murdo followed us after all, found the girl and has brought her here.” He said aloud: “We’ll go back, boys, but let Murdo show his hand first. Funny he has brought her back to Sundown; with so many folks around, he can’t raise a finger against her. He--”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” snapped Sam Pepper. “He will hand her over to Rufe Biggs; Rufe’s town marshal, as crooked and mean as a snake and a skunk--and belongs body and soul to Bordereau. Or did. With Bordereau dead, I guess he’s in Murdo’s pocket. He could jail her, couldn’t he? After that, him and Murdo could do as they damned well pleased.”

“Just the same, take it slow,” muttered Torrance. “I’ve got something up my sleeve and we’re going to know right soon whether it’s an ace or a low card.”

When they came back into the Stag Horn they saw that Pepper had things partly right if not entirely. There was Rufe Biggs, town marshal, tall and yellow-haired and pale-eyed, towering over Sally Dawn, who looked very small and helpless and weary. There was Murdo, doing a lot of talking; there was hot fury in his eyes, to be explained perhaps by a fresh gash on his cheek from which blood was still dribbling. He kept dabbing at it with his bandana.

“She’s yours, Rufe,” he said. “I caught her hiding out up at Sam Pepper’s place. You ought to arrest him, too. You ought to go grab that damn wife of his; she threw a butcher knife at me. Anyhow here’s this Cannon girl that murdered my pardner. Me, I say, woman or no woman, let the law take its course.”

No one laughed at the thought of Sam Pepper’s wife attacking Murdo with a butcher knife; that could be explained solely by the fact that nearly every man here was a follower of the team of Bordereau and Murdo. They would laugh later, when Murdo wasn’t there.

Rufe Biggs, stepping closer to the girl, was just lifting his hand to put it on her shoulder, just opening his mouth to announce her arrest, when Jim Torrance’s voice, sounding flat and toneless, made itself heard through the brief silence.

“Me, I’m a stranger here, but there are some things even a stranger might like to know about. One is, why did Murdo have to see to it that Steve Bordereau got buried in such a hurry?”

Sally Dawn, hearing him, whirled about, all eagerness and expectancy. Murdo’s black brows came down in a heavy frown.

“What the hell business is this of yours anyhow?” he demanded.

“Another thing,” said Torrance in the same expressionless tone, “who killed Bordereau? This girl here? Well, how many times did she shoot him?”

“This ain’t any trial court, brother,” said Rufe Biggs.

“Of course it was the Cannon girl that killed him, and you know it,” snapped Murdo. “She shot him twice, close up; once in the body, the second shot in the head. She--”

Sally Dawn’s gasp was drowned by Torrance’s reply to Murdo.

“You’re a damned liar, Murdo,” he said. “She shot him just once.”

Murdo’s hand went as quick as a flash to his low-slung gun. But Jim Torrance’s two hands were already on his two guns, and there was a cold, deadly look in his low-lidded eyes which acted as a deterrent. Murdo shrugged.

“There’s one more thing that a man might like to know about,” Torrance went on after a little pause. “Where’s Doc Taylor? Nobody seems to have seen him since he went up to take care of Bordereau.”

A queer look came into Murdo’s eyes at that; the color ran up into his swarthy cheeks, subsiding slowly.

“What the hell are you driving at anyhow?” he said thickly.

Torrance didn’t answer him. Instead he said to Sally Dawn Cannon: “You’ll be all right now; the marshal will hold you where you’ll be safe for maybe an hour. Then we’ll come back and see you home or wherever you want to go.” He turned and went back to the door. “Come along, boys,” he said, as the eyes of his new allies followed him. “We’ll know damned quick what it’s all about.”

This time Sam Pepper was the last to follow. He hung back long enough to ask of the girl, “Is Molly all right, Sally?”

“They were brutes to her. They left her tied up, so she couldn’t come along with us. Yes, she’s all right, Sam--and she was wonderful!”

Sam Pepper then was sadly torn two ways. He wanted to rush back and free his wife and hear all details of what had happened; he wanted with all his heart to find out what Jim Torrance had up his sleeve, whether ace or deuce. In the end, hurrying after the men who were already hurrying after Torrance, he found a half-grown, gawky and open-mouthed youth whom he dispatched to set Mrs. Pepper free. Then at a run he came up with Jim Torrance.

“Where we going now, Torrance?” he asked. “What we going to do?”

“We want a couple of picks and shovels,” said Torrance. “We’re going out to the graveyard.”

Sam Pepper’s mouth came open for an exclamation and remained open with never a sound being made.

Together with the tools which Torrance had mentioned, they picked up a couple of lanterns. In the graveyard, companionably close to the edge of town, they shone the light of their lanterns on a freshly painted headboard. It advised that Here Lay Steve Bordereau, Gambler, Friend and Gentleman.

“Let’s dig,” said Torrance. “We might be interrupted, and there’d be sure to be some around here who’d say this sort of thing was against the law. Let’s get busy.”

Lying Bill Yarbo began swearing in his rich deep voice and was the first to wield a pick. Sam Pepper shivered delightfully from head to foot and was of no earthly use. A contagion of excitement spread over the others. In no time at all they brought the coffin up and pried the lid off.

Torrance, stooping to look closely, said only:

“This isn’t Steve Bordereau. Who is it?”

A yell burst from Sam Pepper.

“It’s Doc Taylor! Doc Taylor, by the powers! What’s he doing dead here? Who done him in? And where’s Steve Bordereau? And what’n hell’s blazes does it all mean?”

“Let’s pick up the box and carry it back to the Stag Horn, boys,” said Torrance.