Jean of the Lazy A Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  CONCERNING LITE AND A FEW FOOTPRINTS

  "Lucky you was with me all day, up to four o'clock, Lite," Jim said."That lets you out slick and clean, seeing the doctor claims he'd beendead six hours when he seen him last night. Crofty--why, Crofty waslaying in there dead when I was talking about him to you! Kinda givesa man the creeps to think of it. Who do you reckon done it, Lite?"

  "How'n hell do _I_ know?" Lite retorted irritably. "I didn't see itdone."

  Jim studied awhile, an ear cocked for the signal that the coroner wasready to begin the inquest. "Say," he leaned over and whispered inLite's ear, "where was Aleck at, all day yesterday?"

  "Riding over in the bend, looking for black-leg signs," said Litepromptly. "Packed a lunch, same as I did."

  The answer seemed to satisfy Jim and to eliminate from his mind anyslight suspicion he may have held, but Lite had a sudden impulse toimprove upon his statement.

  "I saw Aleck ride into the ranch as I was coming home," he said. As hespoke, his face lightened as with a weight lifted from his mind.

  Later, when the coroner questioned him about his movements and themovements of Aleck, Lite repeated the lie as casually as possible. Itmight have carried more weight with the jury if Aleck Douglas himselfhad not testified, just before then, that he had returned about threeo'clock to the ranch and pottered around the corral with the mare andcolt, and unsaddled his horse before going into the house at all. Itwas only when he had discovered Johnny Croft's horse at the haystack,he said, that he began to wonder where the rider could be. He had goneto the house--and found him on the kitchen floor.

  Lite had not heard this statement, for the simple reason that, being aclosely interested person, he had been invited to remain outside whileAleck Douglas testified. He wondered why the jury,--men whom he knewand had known for years, most of them,--looked at one another soqueerly when he declared that he had seen Aleck ride home. The coroneralso had given him a queer look, but he had not made any comment.Aleck, too, had turned his head and stared at Lite in a way which Litepreferred to think he had not understood.

  Beyond that one statement which had produced such a curious effect,Lite did not have anything to say that shed the faintest light upon thematter. He told where he had been, and that he had discovered the bodyjust before Jean arrived, and that he had immediately started with herto town. The coroner did not cross-question him. Counting from fouro'clock, which Jim had already named as the time of their separation,Lite would have had just about time to do the things he testified todoing. The only thing he claimed to have done and could not possiblyhave done, was to see Aleck Douglas riding into the coulee. Aleckhimself had branded that a lie before Lite had ever uttered it.

  The result was just what was to be expected. Aleck Douglas was placedunder arrest, and as a prisoner he rode back to town alongside thesheriff,--an old friend of his, by the way,--to where Jean waitedimpatiently for news.

  It was Lite who told her. "It'll come out all right," he said, in hiscalm way that might hide a good deal of emotion beneath it. "It's justto have something to work from,--don't mean anything in particular.It's a funny way the law has got," he explained, "of arresting the lastman that saw a fellow alive, or the first one that sees him dead."

  Jean studied this explanation dolefully. "They ought to find out thelast one that saw him alive," she said resentfully, "and arrest him,then,--and leave dad out of it. There's no sense in the law, if that'sthe way it works."

  "Well, I didn't make the law," Lite observed, in a tone that made Jeanlook up curiously into his face.

  "Why don't they find out who saw him last?" she repeated. "Somebodydid. Somebody must have gone there with him. Lite, do you know thatArt Osgood came into town with his horse all in a lather of sweat, andtook the afternoon train yesterday? I saw him. I met him square inthe middle of the street, and he didn't even look at me. He was in afrightful hurry, and he looked all upset. If I was the law, I'd leavedad alone and get after Art Osgood. He acted to me," she addedviciously, "exactly as if he were running away!"

  "He wasn't, though. Jim told me Art was going to leave yesterday; thatwas in the forenoon. He's going to Alaska,--been planning it allspring. And Carl said he was with Art till Art left to catch thetrain. Somebody else from town here had seen him take the train, andasked about him. No, it wasn't Art."

  "Well, who was it, then?"

  Never before had Lite failed to tell Jean just what she wanted to know.He failed now, and he went away as though he was glad to put distancebetween them. He did not know what to think. He did not want to think.Certainly he did not want to talk, to Jean especially. For lies nevercame easily to the tongue of Lite Avery. It was all very well to tellJean that he didn't know who it was; he did tell her so, and made hisescape before she could read in his face the fear that he did know. Itwas not so easy to guard his fear from the keen eyes of his fellows,with whom he must mingle and discuss the murder, or else pay thepenalty of having them suspect that he knew a great deal more about itthan he admitted.

  Several men tried to stop him and talk about it, but he put them off.He was due at the ranch, he said, to look after the stock. He didn'tknow a thing about it, anyway.

  Lazy A coulee, when he rode into it, seemed to wear already an air ofdepression, foretaste of what was to come. The trail was filled withhoofprints, and cut deep with the wagon that had borne the dead man totown and to an unwept burial. At the gate he met Carl Douglas, ridingwith his head sunk deep on his chest. Lite would have avoided thatmeeting if he could have done so unobtrusively, but as it was, hepulled up and waited while Carl opened the wire gate and dragged it toone side. From the look of his face, Carl also would have avoided themeeting, if he could have done so. He glanced up as Lite passedthrough.

  "Hell of a verdict," Lite made brief comment when he met Carl's eyes.

  Carl stopped, leaning against his horse with one hand thrown up to thesaddle-horn. He was a small man, not at all like Aleck in size or infeatures. He looked haggard now and white.

  "What do you make of it?" he asked Lite. "Do you believe--?"

  "Of course I don't! Great question for a brother to ask," Literetorted sharply. "It's not in Aleck to do a thing like that."

  "What made you say you saw him ride home? You didn't, did you?"

  "You heard what I said; take it or leave it." Lite scowled down atCarl. "What was there queer about it? Why--"

  "If you'd been inside ten minutes before then," Carl told him bluntly,"you'd have heard Aleck say he came home a full hour or more before yousay you saw him ride in. That's what's queer. What made you do that?It won't help Aleck none."

  "Well, what are you going to do about it?" Lite slouched miserably inthe saddle, and eyed the other without really seeing him at all. "Theycan't prove anything on Aleck," he added with faint hope.

  "I don't see myself how they can." Carl brightened perceptibly. "Hisbeing alone all day is bad; he can't furnish the alibi you can furnish.But they can't prove anything. They'll turn him loose, the grand jurywill; they'll have to. They can't indict him on the evidence. Theyhaven't got any evidence,--not any more than just the fact that he rodein with the news. No need to worry; he'll be turned loose in a fewdays." He picked up the gate, dragged it after him as he went through,and fumbled the wire loop into place over the post. "I wish," he saidwhen he had mounted with the gate between them, "you hadn't been soparticular to say you saw him ride home about the same time you did.That looks bad, Lite."

  "Bad for who?" Lite turned in the saddle aggressively.

  "Looks bad all around. I don't see what made you do that;--not whenyou knew Jim and Aleck had both testified before you did."

  Lite rode slowly down the road to the stable, and cursed the impulsethat had made him blunder so. He had no compunctions for the lie, ifonly it had done any good. It had done harm; he could see now that ithad. But he could not believe that it would make any materialdifference in Aleck'
s case. As the story had been repeated to Lite byhalf a dozen men, who had heard him tell it, Aleck's own testimony hadbeen responsible for the verdict.

  Men had told Lite plainly that Aleck was a fool not to pleadself-defense, even in face of the fact that Johnny Croft had not drawnany weapon. Jim had declared that Aleck could have sworn that Johnnyreached for his gun. Others admitted voluntarily that while it wouldbe a pretty weak defense, it would beat the story Aleck had told.

  Lite turned the mare and colt into a shed for the night. He milked thetwo cows without giving any thought to what he was doing, and carriedthe milk to the kitchen door before he realized that it would bewasted, sitting in pans when the house would be empty. Still, itoccurred to him that he might as well go on with the routine of theplace until they knew to a certainty what the grand jury would do. Sohe went in and put away the milk.

  After that, Lite let other work wait while he cleaned the kitchen andtried to wash out that brown stain on the floor. His face was moody,his eyes dull with trouble. Like a treadmill, his mind went over andover the meager knowledge he had of the tragedy. He could not bringhimself to believe Aleck Douglas guilty of the murder; yet he could notbelieve anything else.

  Johnny Croft, it had been proven at the inquest, rode out from townalone, bent on mischief, if vague, half-drunken threats meant anything.He had told more than one that he was going to the Lazy A, but it wascertain that no one had followed him from town. His threats had beenfor the most part directed against Carl, it is true; but if he hadmeant to quarrel with Carl, he would have gone to the Bar Nothinginstead of the Lazy A. Probably he had meant to see both Carl andAleck, and had come here first, since it was the nearest to town.

  As to enemies, no one had particularly liked Johnny. He was not alikeable sort; he was too "mouthy" according to his associates. He hadquarreled with a good many for slight cause, but since he was sonotoriously blatant and argumentative, no one had taken him seriouslyenough to nurse any grudge that would be likely to breed assassination.It was inconceivable to Lite that any man had trailed Johnny Croft tothe Lazy A and shot him down in the kitchen while he was calmly helpinghimself to Jean's gingerbread. Still, he must take that for granted orelse believe what he steadfastly refused to confess even to himselfthat he believed.

  It was nearly dark when he threw out the last pail of water and stoodlooking down dissatisfied at the result of his labor, while he driedhis hands. The stain was still there, in spite of him, just as thememory of the murder would cling always to the place. He went out andwatered Jean's poppies and sweet peas and pansies, still going over andover the evidence and trying to fill in the gaps.

  He had blundered with his lie that had meant to help. The lie hadproven to every man who heard him utter it that his faith in Aleck'sinnocence was not strong; it had proven that he did not trust thefacts. That hurt Lite, and made it seem more than ever his task toclear up the matter, if he could. If he could not, then he would makeamends in whatever way he might.

  Almost as if he were guarding that gruesome room which was empty nowand silent,--since the clock had not been wound and had run down,--hesat long upon the narrow platform before the kitchen door and smokedand stared straight before him. Once he thought he saw a man movecautiously from the corner of the shed where the youngest calf sleptbeside its mother, He had been thinking so deeply of other things thathe was not sure, but he went down there, his cigarette glowing in thegloom, and stood looking and listening.

  He neither saw nor heard anything, and presently he went back to thehouse; but his abstraction was broken by the fancy, so that he did notsit down again to smoke and think. He had thought until his brain feltheavy and stupid; and the last cigarette he lighted; he threw away, forhe had smoked until his tongue was sore. He went in and went to bed.

  For a long time he lay awake. Finally he dropped into a sleep so heavythat it was nearer to a torpor, and it was the sunlight that awoke him;sunlight that was warm in the room and proved how late the morning was.He swore in his astonishment and got up hastily, a great deal moreoptimistic than when he had lain down, and hurried out to feed thestock before he boiled coffee and fried eggs for himself.

  It was when he went in to cook his belated breakfast that Lite noticedsomething which had no logical explanation. There were footprints onthe kitchen floor that he had scrubbed so diligently. He stood lookingat them, much as he had looked at the stain that would not come out, nomatter how hard he scrubbed. He had not gone in the room after he hadpulled the door shut and gone off to water Jean's dowers. He waspositive upon that point; and even if he had gone in, his tracks wouldscarcely have led straight across the room to the cupboard where thetable dishes were kept.

  The tracks led to the cupboard, and were muddled confusedly there, asthough the maker had stood there for some minutes. Lite could not seeany sense in that. They were very distinct, just as footprints alwaysshow plainly on clean boards. The floor had evidently been moiststill,--Lite had scrubbed man-fashion, with a broom, and had not beenvery particular about drying the floor afterwards. Also he had thrownthe water straight out from the door, and the fellow must have steppedon the moist sand that clung to his boots. In the dark he could notnotice that, or see that he had left tracks on the floor.

  Lite went to the cupboard and looked inside it, wondering what the mancould have wanted there. It was one of those old-fashioned "safes"such as our grandmothers considered indispensable in the furnishing ofa kitchen. It held the table dishes neatly piled: dinner plates at theend of the middle shelf, smaller plates next, then a stack ofsaucers,--the arrangement stereotyped, unvarying since first Lite Averyhad taken dishtowel in hand to dry the dishes for Jean when she was tenand stood upon a footstool so that her elbows would be higher than therim of the dishpan. The cherry-blossom dinner set that had come fromthe mail-order house long ago was chipped now and incomplete, but thefamiliar rows gave Lite an odd sense of the unreality of the tragedythat had so lately taken place in that room.

  Clearly there was nothing there to tempt a thief, and there was nothingdisturbed. Lite straightened up and looked down thoughtfully upon thetop of the cupboard, where Jean had stacked out-of-date newspapers andmagazines, and where Aleck had laid a pair of extra gloves. He pulledout the two small drawers just under the cupboard top and looked withinthem. The first held pipes and sacks of tobacco and books of cigarettepapers; Lite knew well enough the contents of that drawer. Heappraised the supply of tobacco, remembered how much had been there onthe morning of the murder, and decided that none had been taken. Hehelped himself to a fresh ten-cent sack of tobacco and inspected theother drawer.

  Here were merchants' bills, a few letters of no consequence, a coupleof writing tablets, two lead pencils, and a steel pen and a squatbottle of ink. This was called the writing-drawer, and had been sinceLite first came to the ranch. Here Lite believed the confusion wasrecent. Jean had been very domestic since her return from school, andall disorder had been frowned upon. Lately the letters had beenstacked in a corner, whereas now they were scattered. But they were ofno consequence, once they had been read, and there was nothing else tomerit attention from any one.

  Lite looked down at the tracks and saw that they led into another room,which was Aleck's bedroom. He went in there, but he could not find anyreason for a night-prowler's visit. Aleck's desk was always open.There was never anything there which he wanted to hide away. Hisaccount books and his business correspondence, such as it was, layaccessible to the curious. There was nothing intricate or secret aboutthe running of the Lazy A ranch; nothing that should interest any onesave the owner.

  It occurred to Lite that incriminating evidence is sometimes placedsurreptitiously in a suspected man's desk. He had heard of such thingsbeing done. He could not imagine what evidence might be placed here byany one, but he made a thorough search. He did not find anything thatremotely concerned the murder.

  He looked through the living-room, and even opened the door which ledfrom the ki
tchen into Jean's room, which had been built on to the restof the house a few years before. He could not find any excuse forthose footprints.

  He cooked and ate his breakfast absent-mindedly, glancing often down atthe footprints on the floor, and occasionally at the brown stain in thecenter. He decided that he would not say anything about those tracks.He would keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, and see what came of it.