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

night, as per orders, and Owen spilled his knowledge of you all over the town. It's pretty well known, now, that you are Deal Sanderson, from down Tombstone way.

"I don't know what your game was, but I think it's pretty well queered by now. I suppose you had some idea of impersonating Bransford, hoping to get a slice of the property. I don't blame you for trying. It was up to us to see that you didn't get away with it.

"But we don't want to play hog. If you'll admit before a notary that you are not Will Bransford we'll hand you back the four thousand Dale took from you, give you ten thousand in addition and safe conduct out of the county. That strike you?"

Sanderson did not answer.

Silverthorn's face reddened. "You're a damned fool!" he sneered, venomously. "We'll keep you in jail here for a thousand years, if necessary. We'll do worse!

"Look here!" he suddenly said. But Sanderson did not turn. Silverthorn rattled a paper.

"Here's a withdrawal slip on the Okar bank, calling for three thousand two hundred dollars, signed by Will Bransford. Barney Owen drew the money last night and blew it in gambling and drinking. He says he's been signing Bransford's name—forging it—at your orders. The signature he put on this paper is a dead ringer for the one on the registry blank you gave Dale.

"Dale saw Owen sign that. That's why he knew you are not Will Bransford. Understand? Maison will swear you signed the withdrawal slip and got the money. We'll prove that you are not Bransford, and you'll go to the Las Vegas pen for twenty years! Now, let's talk business!"

Sanderson turned. There was a mirthless grin on his face. He spoke loudly, calling the jailer.

When the latter appeared in the corridor beside Silverthorn, Sanderson addressed him without looking at the other:

"You ain't on your job a heap, are you? There's a locoed coyote barkin' at me through the door, there. Run him out, will you—he's disturbin' me plenty."

He turned from the door, stretched himself on the cot, and with his face to the wall listened while Silverthorn cursed.

CHAPTER XV DALE PAYS A VISIT

Shortly after midnight Sanderson was sound asleep on the cot in the cell when a strange, scraping noise awakened him. He lay still for a long time, listening, until he discovered that the sound came from the window. Then he sat up stealthily and looked around to see, framed in the starlit gloom of the night, the face of Barney Owen, staring in through the window at him.

The sight of Owen enraged Sanderson, but his curiosity drove him to the window.

The little man was hanging to the iron bars; his neck muscles were straining, his face was red and his eyes bright.

"Don't talk, now!" he warned. "The boss of the dump is awake and he'll hear. He's in his room; there's nobody else around. I wanted to tell you that I'm going to knock him silly and get you out of this!"

"Why?" mocked Sanderson, lowly.

Owen's face grew redder. "Oh, I know I've got something coming, but I'm going to get you out all the same. I've got our horses and guns. Be ready!"

He slipped down. Sanderson could hear his feet thud faintly on the sand outside.

Sanderson got into his clothes and stood at the cell door, waiting. For a long time he heard no sound, but presently he caught the clank of a door, followed by a swift step, and Owen stood in the corridor before the cell door, a bunch of keys in his hand.

There was no word spoken. Owen unlocked the door, Sanderson slipped out, Owen passed him the six-shooter he had lost in the barroom of the Okar Hotel, and the two slipped noiselessly down the corridor.

A minute later they were mounting the horses that Owen had brought, and shortly afterward they were moving like shadows away from the outskirts of Okar.

Not until they were well out in the big basin did either of them speak. And then Sanderson said, shortly:

"Silverthorn was tellin' me you gassed everything. Are you feelin' better over it?"

Owen's head bent over his horse's mane; his chin was on his chest when he answered:

"Come and kill me."

"Hell!" exploded Sanderson, disgustedly. "If there was anything comin' to you killin' would be too good for you. You ain't done anything to me, you sufferin' fool—not a thing! What you've done you've done to Mary Bransford. When you see Dale an' Silverthorn grabbin' the Double A, an' Mary Bransford ridin' away, homeless—you'll have feelin's of remorse, mebbe—if you've got any man in you at all!"

Owen writhed and groaned.

"It was the whisky—the cursed whisky!" he whispered. "I can't let it alone—I love it! And once I get a taste of it, I'm gone—-I'm a stark, staring lunatic!"

"I'd swear to that," grimly agreed Sanderson.

"I didn't mean to say a word to anybody," wailed the little man. "Do you think I'd do anything to harm Mary Bransford—after what she did for me? But I did—I must have done it. Dale said I did, Silverthorn said I did, and you say I did. But I don't remember. Silverthorn said I signed a receipt for some money from the Okar bank—three thousand, odd. I don't remember. Oh, but I'm—"

"Calling yourself names won't get you back to where you was before you made a fool of yourself," Sanderson told him, pityingly. "An' me tellin' you what I think of you won't relieve my feelin's a whole lot, for there ain't words enough layin' around loose.

"What I want to know is this: did you go clean loco, or do you remember anything that happened to you? Do you know who got the money you drew from the bank?"

"Dale," answered Owen. "He had that, for I remember him counting it in the back room of the hotel. There was more, too; I heard him telling Silverthorn there was about seven thousand in all. Silverthorn wanted him to put it all back in the bank, but Dale said there was just enough for him to meet his pay-roll—that he owed his men a lot of back pay. He took it with him."

"My four thousand," said Sanderson, shortly.

"Yours?" Owen paled.

"Dale lifted my money belt," Sanderson returned. "I was wondering what he did with it. So that's what."

He relapsed into a grim silence, and Owen did not speak again.

They rode several miles in that fashion—Owen keeping his horse slightly behind Sanderson's, his gaze on the other's face, his own white with remorse and anxiety.

At last he heard Sanderson laugh, and the sound of it made him grit his teeth in impotent agony.

"Sanderson," he said, gulping, "I'm sorry."

"Sure," returned the other. "If I hadn't wised up to that quite a spell ago, you'd be back on the trail, waitin' for some coyote to come along an' get his supper."

They rode in silence for a long time. They came to the gentle slope of the basin and began to climb it.

A dozen times Owen rode close to Sanderson, his lips trembling over unuttered words, but each time he dropped back without speaking. His eyes, fixed worshipfully on the back of the big, silent man ahead of him, were glowing with anxiety and wonder.

In the ghostly darkness of the time before the gray forerunner of the dawn appears on the horizon they came in sight of the Double A ranchhouse.

Sanderson was still leading. The ranchhouse burst upon his vision as his horse topped a rise that had obscured his view of the ranchhouse, and he saw it, clearly outlined.

Riding down the slope of the rise he smiled. For there was a light in one of the ranchhouse windows. Mary had left it burn on his account, he divined.

He halted and allowed Owen to come near him.

"Mary ain't to hear about this deal tonight," he told the little man. "Not a peep—understand?"

Without waiting for an answer he rode onward.

Thinking that, perhaps, in spite of the burning lamp Mary might be sleeping, Sanderson cautiously dismounted at the corral gates, and, leaving Owen to put his own horse away, he walked toward the house, stealthily, for he did not wish to awaken the girl.

Halfway across the ranchhouse yard, Sanderson saw a shadow cross the light in the window. Again he grinned, thinking Mary had not gone to bed after all.

But, going forward more unconcernedly, Sanderson's smile faded and was succeeded by a savage frown. For in the shadow formed by the little "L" at the junction of the house and porch, he saw a horse saddled and bridled.

Suddenly alert, and yielding to the savage rage that gripped him, Sanderson stole softly forward and looked closely at the animal. He recognized it instantly as Dale's, and in the instant, his face pale, his eyes blazing with passion, he was on the porch, peering through one of the darkened windows.

Inside he saw Dale and Mary Bransford. They were in the sitting-room. Dale was sitting in a big chair, smoking a cigar, one arm carelessly thrown over the back of the chair, his legs crossed, his attitude that of the master.

Standing perhaps a dozen feet from him was Mary Bransford.

The girl's eyes were wide with fright and astonishment, disbelief, incredulity—and several other emotions that Sanderson could not analyze. He did not try. One look at her sufficed to tell him that Dale was baiting her, tantalizing her, mocking her, and Sanderson's hatred for the man grew in intensity until it threatened to overwhelm him.

There was in his mind an impulse to burst into the house and kill Dale where he sat. It was the primitive lust to destroy an unprincipled rival that had seized Sanderson, for he saw in Dale's eyes the bold passion of the woman hunter.

However, Sanderson conquered the impulse. He fought it with the marvelous self-control and implacable determination that had made him feared and respected wherever men knew him, and in the end the faint, stiff grin on his face indicated that whatever he did would be done with deliberation.

This was an instance where the eavesdropper had some justification for his work, and Sanderson listened.

He heard Dale laugh—the sound of it made Sanderson's lips twitch queerly. He saw Mary cringe from Dale and press her hands over her breast. Dale's voice carried clearly to Sanderson.

"Ha, ha!" he said. "So that hurts, eh? Well, here's more of the same kind. We got Barney Owen drunk last sight, and he admitted that he'd signed all of Sanderson's papers—the papers that were supposed to have been signed by your brother. Why didn't Sanderson sign them? Why? Because Sanderson couldn't do it.

"Owen, who knew your brother in Arizona, signed them, because he knew how to imitate your brother's writing. Get that! Owen signed a bank receipt for the money old Bransford had in the bank. Owen got it and gave it to me. He was so drunk he didn't know what he was doing, but he could imitate your brother's writing, all right."

"You've got the money?" gasped the girl.

Again Dale laughed, mockingly. "Yep," he said, "I've got it. Three thousand two hundred. And I've got four thousand that belongs to that four-flusher, Square Deal. Seven thousand." He laughed again.

"Where is Sanderson?" questioned the girl.

"In jail, over in Okar." Dale paused long enough to enjoy the girl's distress. Then he continued: "Owen is in jail, too, by this time. Silverthorn and Maison are not taking any chances on letting him go around loose."

"Sanderson in jail!" gasped Mary. She seemed to droop; she staggered to a chair and sank into it, still looking at Dale, despair in her eyes.

Dale got up and walked to a point directly in front of her, looking down at her, triumphantly.

"That's what," he said. "In jail. Moreover, that's where they'll stay until this thing is settled. We mean to have the Double A. The sooner you realize that, the easier it will be for you.

"I'm offering you a way out of it—an easy way. That guy, Sanderson, ain't on the