Show catt t t my AL IL aa IV AM IL ae M AN ig gwm 0 alan se L e arvice may CHAPTER XIII continued ag seems to me he said a whole lot different from what you were saying just a little while ago 1 I able to believe my own eyes I 1 guess I 1 able to get over the settled up idea that eastern people have nobody but westerners will ever be able to understand our dry land never believe that a country can be and yet have nothing in it but coyotes and jackrabbits jack rabbits and hall half a dozen poor cows to the mile he noticed that she tailed called it our dry land how and so im going to stay st ay with my brand until there one bit of the 94 left after all im my fathers father Is daughter the country is part of me m e bred in 1 I know how you feel he said slowly but it as it if you could really do anything here now ill be able to keep you informed of happening here at least I 1 hardly think val Douglas would take much interest in that left to himself but it that its simply sl i m I 1 cant always run away from everything ive run away from too many things and sometimes after ward ive been sorry he could understand that but it surprised him to find her looking at things in that way he had to respect her for it but it make the setup set up any easier tor for him 1 I suppose there anything I 1 can do he admitted regretfully youve already shown me that when ullen you set out to do a thing do it in spite of all hell and the drouth you rather have me that way 1 I dont know as I 1 could ever bring myself to want you any different than you are he made a cigarette and lit it ind and gloomily studied its smoke he was thinking that it was pretty near too much to ask ct cf a man to go off on a long trail the way things were here and leave this child suddenly he realized that this girl was not any longer a child he had not known that he had always before seen her as a child until now he saw her as something else her face had a color that was like a childs color clear and lovely but its contours no longer suggested a litt little 1 e girl it was a quiet face thoughtful and awake and somehow competent looking and her eyes looking into that distance beyond the walls were looking into the future understandingly even somberly but unafraid he wondered why he had not realized before how changed she was every movement she made every pose she took was different from what he had seen in the girl he had made love to two years before two years ago marian dunn would not have been able to lounge relaxed upon his bunk in pajamas a and rid an indian blanket thinking about the factors of range war and the business affairs of men she would have been nervously conscious then of the tact fact that the man she was with loved her would have worried about what he would do or say this girl did not worry but steadily ily faced the situation in which they found themselves he looked away from her unable any longer to think of murder clues or cow mortgages while she was in his eyes he fixed his gaze upon his thrown down sunbelt and tried to think of what he must do bitterly he was blaming himself that he be could not see through this killing case for he had a persistent hunch that everything necessary for solution was in his hands he blamed only himself that he must now take a long trail to discover what might be obvious here and now to a more brilliant deduction he tried to set his mind to the factors he had discussed with coffee in one more supreme effort to shortcut short cut the case but his mind would not work for him even with his eyes upon a saddle or a gun he could still see nothing but the girl every glint of light in the loose bush of her hair the slim coddings cor dings of a wrist the resting look of a hand that lay palm up upon the blanket it was impossible tor for him not to wonder if things between them might not have been different had he never known her two years before at all but could have started over again now to win her in a new way then it occurred to him that it was a waste of time to be looking at a gun or a saddle blanket trying to think when he might be looking at her perhaps it would be a long hing time before he would see her again perhaps he would never see sec her again at all ail so now he let murder and cows and money slide into the lost shadows and he turned to her and as he did so he found that her eyes were on his face they looked at each other steadily while the moments passed if he had held cpr eyes so long two years apo she wurl have flushed and looked away but she did not look away now her eyes looked lazy but not sleepy they were as darkly blue as a night sky but he found them unreadable at first then after a moment or two he recognized that she was not thinking about murder clues all at once he knew that there was no barrier between them any more at all and had not been any tor for a long time except the barrier put there by his old defeat and he knew now that he had never tailed failed at all but that the years had worked for him in ways he would not have guessed he said slowly 1 I was the one who was a fool he never knew what move he made that brought her into his arms will the barrier gone from between them at last they found themselves in each others arms as naturally as unhurriedly as inevitably as the dry land takes up the rare rains rains and his heart lifted up like the april grass of the dry ranges when the snow look lock melts off and is forgotten as it if it had his hungry mouth found an answering quiver in her lips never been his hungry mouth found an answering quiver in her lips and for a while under the spell of the gentle warmth that he had thought would never be his he no longer worried about what wha might happen to the cow kingdom of horse dunn presently she said two years ago it was my fault but last night in the hills it was yours it if you had only put your hands on me then but you had to stand with a face like granite and eyes like death in the foothills 1 I know that now 1 I dont know how im going to let you go so many anything can happen before were together again but we have this hour now nothing can ever rob us of that each was seeing a person he had never seen before he was still whipcord and braided leather the saddle man who could hold his own in the upheaval of markets and the shifting games of the financiers but all the barbed and dour hardness of him was gone so that in the arms of this girl it was as if he were reborn and in the girl the hidden steel of the will he had not been able to bend seemed melted and the curve of her body within his arm was a surrender without reserve they did not know how long they lay together on the bunk that for the time was not his but theirs in that lonely and deserted house and he learned here that she was neither east nor west but all woman A harsh taut strain that had held them for days seemed to slacken and go out of the night as if guns and cattle were unimportant things and in that hour that was theirs alone one bitterness went out of the world forever it was not a surprise S e but a consummation i when presently he found that she was asleep ile he picked her up and carried her to her own room and put her in her own bed and she smiled faintly in her sleep as he kissed her eyes then he walked out of the house by a different door than the one where coffee sat and stood listening to the still night then while his mind was entirely away from hatred and violence for the first time in a week something in the back of his mind found the answer and all in a moment he saw through the tangle that had roped the 94 he knew suddenly not only who had killed flagg at short creek but why flagg had had more than a hunch that he was riding into death he knew why marian had been fired on and he knew how he could prove inevitably and ably who had killed bob alivs and the taut strain of range war came back into the night turning him cold wheeler walked around the house to where old man coffee still sat As tar far as the naked eye could observe old man coffee had not changed his position he could sit like a rock or an indian hours on an end as if this were his natural way of living out his life wheeler sat down slowly and stiffly on the step beside the old man he ran his hands over his face shook his head like a fighter trying to clear away the effects of a killing right cross coffee did not speak and tor for a little while wheeler also sat silent trying to compute how much he wished to say coffee he said at lasts last 1 I see it I 1 see sec it all coffee took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at wheeler all what 1 I know who fired on marian hell son you had that figured out last time I 1 seen you two hours ago coffee glanced at the stars which he used as a clock two hours and fifteen minutes he be corrected himself 1 I had the wrong reason wheeler said this time I 1 know and knowing that I 1 know now cow why bob flagg had to that he was near his end and I 1 can prove it all old man coffee started to say you sound like you was full of but he hesitated and studied billy wheeler sidelong through the thin dark answer me one thing son he said at last what mat was the thing that showed you the killer trail it was two things coffee wheeler said not one two kind of trivial looking things that I 1 knew and then forgot but as s soon as I 1 saw the meaning of one of them right away I 1 saw the meaning of the other like as if the two clues were tied together by the neck coffee marian know a thing in the world about this but the first firs t thing that come to me was something I 1 remembered that she said you remember after P stop said old man coffee so sharply had the old man co commanded M him that wheeler at first thought coffee was listening to some distant sound the matter ive heard enough then said billy wheeler you know the answer too ive kind of suspected it these many days I 1 know tor for sure until today do you think anyone else knows son im virtually certain that no one in the world knows but you and me you must have come at it differently ferent ly than I 1 did coffee different than you coff coffee ee agreed god knows how you come at it I 1 dont want to know in a minute now im going to sa say y no more but nobody else in the red rock could have found it out except maybe cayuse cayetano and hes dead they sat silent for a little time the next move wheeler presently asked until you spoke coffee said 1 I knew what my next move was going to be my next move was going to be out but now that youve come onto the right trail I 1 guess maybe its kind of up to me to stand by a little while until I 1 see what you do something in old man coffees voice bothered wheeler you mean were not working together then seems like we might not be son im an old man and I 1 long ago learned that sometimes its a good idee to leave sleeping dogs lie you mean have been willing to pull out of this case and leave it unsolved forever old man coffee drew halt a dozen slow puffs on his pipe before he answered the first murder case I 1 worked on he said at last was a long time ago sometimes I 1 think that one first case was the misfortune of my life because it gave me a kind of a reputation in a small way so that ever since then ive been called in on such from time to time over and over again man hunting a pretty job billy nor anything a man would care to turn his hand to more than once it if he could get out of it but ive always worked hard and honestly on my case where I 1 once set my hand and now that im old I 1 figure figur e to keep one right to myself the right to keep my mouth shut if I 1 cant see where clearing up a mystery will serve no proper end take this case here do you think that solving this crime can possibly come under the head of helping any living person or preserving the peace you know better than that you know as well as I 1 do that the minute the answer is is made known the guns will crack out and good boys got nothing to do with either side will be throwing lead into each others guts you think horse dunn will take to the guns of course hell take to the gansl you know him well enough to know that the guns will be talking before ever the thing is proved the proof ought to be easy enough 1 I got no doubt of that I 1 see at least one way of proof and maybe you see more but what im telling you is is this son think what youre doing before you raise this lid dont raise it unless you think rather see what will come of it in place of what we already got the moon was gone and they sat in the chill blackness before dawn but it seemed to wheeler that the 11 night ight was no darker than his mood 1 I thought of all that he said 1 I thought of all that the moment it come to me and first off I 1 thought like you but now lm im not so sure sometimes it seems like theres something unsound at the bottom of any plan that calls for just hiding our heads then ill give you your answer 1 said old man coffee abruptly ill give you the whole thing once and for all in four words think of the girl he took a couple of drags on his pipe forget horse dunn and the cattle and the money and the range forget even the good fighting boys here on the 94 tulare and steve hurley and val douglas fight while they can hold up their guns and gil baker hell be in it it if he has to drag a broken leg into the street but forget all them and think what this here headon head on smash between the 94 and all of the rest of the range is going to mean to the girl eirl wheeler sat silent tor for a long time at last needing to be alone he got up and walked oft off into tle tl e dark leaving old man coffee with the darkness and his pipe he went out and he sat on the corrals and he was thinking about horse dunn and the cow kingdom of the 94 but mostly he was thinking about the girl who had at last taken him into her heart now at the end he could never think about anything any more except in terms of its effect upon her he had an hour to come to his decision there before the first pale reddish light of the dawn showed at the edge of the world and it was the hardest hour of his life because he knew that he held in his hands the future of them all more than once he turned to coffees easier way but as a gray light began to come slowly across the 94 he thought he knew what he must do he went in and rapped on marians door and when she called to him sleepily he went in and stood beside her bed you and I 1 are going to inspiration he told her TO BE CONTINUED |