Square Deal Sanderson - Charles Alden Seltzer (guided reading books txt) 📗

grinned sneeringly.

Sanderson's lips twitched with contempt. His own smile matched Dale's in the quality of its hostility.

Sanderson was about to pass on when someone struck him heavily between the shoulders. He staggered and lurched against the rough board front of the building going almost to his knees.

When he could steady himself he wheeled, his hand at his hip. Standing near him, grinning maliciously, was the man with whom he had collided.

In the man's right hand was a pistol.

"Bump into me, will you—you locoed shorthorn!" sneered the man as Sanderson turned. He cursed profanely, incoherently. But he did not shoot.

The weapon in his hand began to sag curiously, the fingers holding it slowly slipping from the stock. And the man's face—thin and seamed—became chalklike beneath the tan upon it. His eyes, furtive and wolfish, bulged with astonishment and recognition, and his mouth opened vacuously.

"Deal Sanderson!" he said, weakly. "Good Lord! I didn't git a good look at yon! I'm in the wrong pew, Deal, an' I sure don't want none of your game!"

"Dal Colton," said Sanderson. His voice was cold and even as he watched the other sheathe his gun. "Didn't know me, eh? But you was figurin' on pluggin' me."

He walked close to the man and stuck his face close to the other, his lips in a straight line. He knew Colton to be one of the most conscienceless "killers" in the section of the country near Tombstone.

"Who was you lookin' for, then?" demanded Sanderson.

"Not you—that's a cinch!" grinned the other, fidgeting nervously under Sanderson's gaze. He whispered to Sanderson, for in the latter's eyes he saw signs of a cold resolve to sift the matter to the bottom:

"Look here, Square; I sure don't want none of your game. Things has been goin' sorta offish for me for a while, an' so when I meets a guy a while ago who tells me to 'git' a guy named Will Bransford—pointin' you out to me when your back was turned—I takes him up. I wasn't figurin'——"

"Who told you to get Bransford?" demanded Sanderson.

"A guy named Dale," whispered Colton.

Sanderson turned swiftly. He saw Dale still standing in the doorway. Dale was grinning coldly, and Sanderson knew he suspected what had been whispered by Colton. But before Sanderson could move, Dale's voice was raised loudly and authoritatively:

"Arrest that man—quick!"

A man behind Sanderson lunged forward, twisting Sanderson around with the impetus of the movement. Off his balance, Sanderson saw three or four other men dive toward Colton. He saw Colton reach for the weapon he had previously sheathed; saw the weapon knocked from his hand.

Four men seized Colton, and he struggled helplessly in their grasp as he was dragged away, his face working malignantly as he looked back at Dale.

"Double-crossed!" he yelled; "you damned, grinnin' coyote!"

A crowd had gathered; Sanderson shouldered his way toward Dale and faced him. Sanderson's face was white with rage, but his voice was cold and steady as he stood before Dale.

"So that's the way you work, is it, Dale? I'll give you what you was goin' to pay Colton, if you'll pull your gun right now!"

Dale's smile was maddeningly insolent.

"Bah!" he said, "I'm an officer of the law. There are a dozen of my men right behind you! Pull your gun! I'd like nothing better than to have an excuse to perforate you! Sanderson, eh?" he laughed. "Well, I've heard of you. Square Deal, eh? And here you are, masqueradin' as Will Bransford! That's goin' to be quite an interestin' situation at the Double A when things get to goin', eh?"

He laughed again, raucously, and turned his back to Sanderson, disappearing into the store.

Sanderson glanced behind him. Several men were watching him, their faces set and determined. Sanderson grinned at them and continued his interrupted walk down the street.

But something had been added to his hatred of Alva Dale—the knowledge that Dale would not scruple to murder him on any pretext. Sanderson's grin grew wider as he walked, for he knew of several men who had harbored such evil intentions against him, and they——

But Dale was a stronger antagonist, and he had power and authority behind him. Still, his spirit undaunted, Sanderson's grin grew wider, though perhaps more grim. It was entirely worth while, now, the deceiving of the woman he had hoped to protect; it wasn't her fight, but his. And he would make the fight a good one.

CHAPTER XIII A PLOT THAT WORKED

Sanderson left the board walk and cut through a yard to the railroad. He followed the rails until he reached the station. To his question the station agent informed him that Dave Silverthorn might be found in his office on the second floor of the building.

Sanderson went up. A sign on a glass door bore Silverthorn's name. Sanderson entered without knocking.

Silverthorn was seated at a desk in a far corner of the room. He looked up as Sanderson opened the door, and said shortly:

"Well—what is it?"

Sanderson crossed the room and halted beside the desk. For an instant neither man spoke. Sanderson saw a man of medium height with a rather well-rounded stomach, sloping shoulders, and a sleek, well-fed appearance. His cheeks were full and florid, his lips large and loose; his eyes cold, calculating, and hard.

Silverthorn saw a lean-faced, broad-shouldered young man with a strong chin, a firm mouth, and an eye that fixed him with a steady, unwavering interest.

By the gleam in Sanderson's eyes Silverthorn divined that he was in the presence of a strong, opposing force, and he drew a slow, deep breath.

"Well?" he said, again.

"You're Dave Silverthorn?"

The other nodded. "What can I do for you?" he questioned.

"You can listen while I talk," said Sanderson.

"I'm Will Bransford, of the Double A. I have heard from several sources that you an' Alva Dale are after the title to the Double A. You want the water-rights. You can't have them. An' the title to the Double A stays with me. Understand that? I am goin' to hold on to the property.

"I've heard you can juggle the law—that's your business. But you can't juggle the law enough to horn in on the Double A. If you do, I'm comin' for you with a law of my own!" He tapped his gun bolster significantly.

"That's all," he concluded. "Are you sure you understand?"

"Perfectly," answered Silverthorn. He was smiling mirthlessly, his face blotched and bloated with mingled fear and rage. "But I'll have you understand this: I am not afraid of your threats. You can't bully me. The S. and M. Railroad has dealt with your kind on more than one occasion. There is an opportunity here to develop a large section of land, and my company means to do it. We mean to be fair, however. We'll buy your title to the Double A. How much do you want for it?"

Sanderson grinned. "The Double A is not for sale. I wouldn't sell it to you for a million! You cheap crooks think that all you have to do is to take anything you want. I just stopped in to tell you that I'm wise to your game, an' that the kind of law I represent ain't cluttered up with angles an' technical processes. She runs straight to a square deal all around. That's all, Mr. Silverthorn."

He turned and went out, closing the door behind him.

He had not intended to have his talk with Tom Maison, Okar's banker, until the following morning. But upon returning to Okar's street he saw Maison ahead of him on the sidewalk. He followed the banker, saw him enter the front door of the bank building, and a few minutes later he was sitting opposite Maison at a table in the banker's private room.

Maison was short and pudgy, short of breath, with a pasty complexion.

"Will Bransford, eh?" he said, looking sharply at Sanderson over the table. "H'm. You don't look much like your father."

"Nor I don't act like him, either," smiled Sanderson. "For instance," he went on at the banker's quick look, "dad was slow; he wasn't alive to his opportunities. How long has it been since the railroad came to Okar?"

"Five years."

"Then dad was five years slower than he ought to have been. He ought to have seen what water would do to the basin. He didn't—left that for me."

"Meaning what?" asked Maison, as Sanderson paused.

"Meanin' that I want to turn the Double A water into the basin. That's what I came here to see you for. I want to mortgage the Double A to the limit; I want to build a dam, irrigation canals, locks, an' everything that goes with it. It will take a heap of money."

Maison reflected. "And you want me to supply it," he said. "Yes, that project will require a large sum. H'm! It is—er—do you purpose to try to handle the project yourself, Mr. Bransford?"

"Me an' Mary Bransford. I'll hire an engineer."

Maison's cheeks reddened a trifle. He seemed to lose interest slightly.

"Don't you think it is rather too big a thing for one man to handle—aided by a woman?" He smiled blandly at Sanderson. "I have thought of the water situation in the basin. It is my opinion that it might be worked out successfully.

"Why not organize a company—say a company composed of influential and powerful men like Silverthorn and Dale and—er—myself. We could issue stock, you know. Each would take a certain number of shares—paying you for them, of course, and leaving you in possession of a large block of it—say—forty per cent. We could organize, elect officers——"

"An' freeze me out," smiled Sanderson.

Maison sat erect and gazed haughtily at his visitor.

"No one has ever questioned my honesty," he declared.

Sanderson smiled at him. "Nor I don't. But I want to play her a lone hand."

"I am afraid I wouldn't be interested in that sort of project," said Maison.

The thought that Maison would be interested—not publicly, but privately—made Sanderson grin. The grin angered Maison; he arose smiling coldly.

"I am sorry to have taken your time, Mr. Bransford," he said, dismissing his visitor.

Sanderson did not give up. "My father left some money in your bank," he said; "I'll take it."

"Certainly," said the banker. He got a withdrawal blank and laid it before Sanderson.

"The amount is three thousand two hundred," he said. "Just fill that out and sign your name and yon can have the money."

Sanderson did not sign; he sat, looking at the blank, suddenly afflicted with the knowledge that once more the troublesome "Bransford" signature had placed him in a dilemma.

Undoubtedly Maison, Silverthorn, and Dale were confederates in this matter, and Dale's insistence that he sign the register claim was a mere subterfuge to obtain a copy of the Bransford signature in order to make trouble for him. It occurred to Sanderson that the men suspected him, and he grinned coldly as he raised his eyes to Maison.

Maison was watching him, keenly; and his flush when he saw Sanderson looking at him convinced the latter that his suspicions were not without foundation.

If Sanderson could have known that he had hardly left the hotel when a man whispered to Maison; and that Maison had said to the man: "All right, I'll go down and wait for him," Sanderson could not have more accurately interpreted Maison's flush.

Sanderson's grin grew grim. "It's a frame-up," he told himself. His grin grew saturnine. He got up, folded the withdrawal blank and stuck it in a pocket.

"I'm leavin' the money here tonight," he said. "For a man that ain't been to town in a long while, there'd be too many temptations yankin' at me."

He went out, leaving Maison to watch him from a window, a flush of chagrin on his face.

Sanderson walked down the street toward the hotel. He would have Owen sign the withdrawal blank before morning—that would defeat Maison's plan to gain evidence of the impersonation.

Sanderson had not been gone from Silverthorn's office more than five minutes when Dale entered. Silverthorn was sitting at his desk scowling, his face pale with big, heavy lines in it showing the