CHAPTER XII—Continued 15 “You still think the killer's horse was here in the 94 layout after the killing, like old Rock seemed to think?" Old Man Coffee's answer was a grunt; it might have meant one thing or the other. ‘‘You're stalled, son. You got no lead.” “Sure we've got a lead.” “And where is that?” “Just a minute ago we were talk- ing about the peculiar way Bob Flagg kind of eased into the Red Rock, coming in through the back way, bumming it in a cattle crate. From what we know Bob Flagg had fore-knowledge that somebody was going to make a try for him. Now, how did Bob Flagg come by that fore-knowledge?”’ Old Man Coffee did not re- ply. Out by the corrals a hound moaned in its chest; the dog called old Rock awoke by Coffee's feet, raised its head to listen, then blew out a long breath and went back to sleep again. “Coffee—I'm thinking now that when we find out how Bob Flagg come by that fore-knowledge, we'll have caught our man.” With an impatient movement Old Man Coffee knocked out his pipe again. “You want to know what I think? I think, ‘Oh, hell!’ You bet- ter go on to bed.” Obviously Old Man Coffee was tired of arguing. Wheeler had been trying to lead the old man out, and it had got him nowhere. He rose Seems like you might need ’" right. some sleep, too “Slept all the way from Pahrana- gat, on the top of my mule. I'll get plenty rest sitting right here with my pipe.” He added irascibly, “Or I will if the everlasting talky- talk dries up.” “Looks like it might slack off some,” Wheeler grinned. He went in, fumbled his way through the dark house to his room, flung his gun belt on the floor, and lighted his lamp. CHAPTER XIII It was very late when Wheeler left Old Man Coffee. Without check- ing the hour, he knew that morning could not be far off; and he had supposed that Marian was asleep. She had ridden a long way, not to count that long climb of theirs through the dark. In her own way she outlasted the leathery strength of men and horses — and came through clear-eyed and light-footed, apparently untouched. But she seemed so fragilely made that he al- ways underestimated the young strength of her vitality. So, he was thinking of her asleep, as he now sat down on the edge of his bunk and rolled a ciga- rette. His long-boned frame rested relaxed, but he did not look tired. All his life had been spent in the saddle, simply for the reason that the dry country has few roads—few places for roads to go—and the horse is the only means of cross country trans- portation across mountain ranges and sand dunes and the vast gulch- cut plains. Ten thousand miles in the saddle had hardened him until he was made of braided leather, and no less enduring than the runty, unkillable range ponies. A few more miles on the horse trails and a few nights short of sleep could not tire him now. His leanly-muscled face was as awake as ever, and his gray eyes, made to look lighter than they were by his wind-burned and weather-leathered skin, were as clear as they had been when he ar- rived at the 94. He let his ciga- rette trail from a corner of his mouth, rested his chin on one hand; and, squinting through the thin up- ward-moving line of smoke, consid- ered his next moves. He must travel—-that was certain. What could be done here was done— the finding of Bob Flagg and Lon Magoon. He must trace Bob Flagg back to his sources, back through Flagstaff, perhaps to the sold-out Arizona ranch itself, seeking the truth, for he was certain that Flagg had shown more than a premoni- tion of his death. And he must find time to run down the 94 debts, seeking ways to avert its bankruptcy, at least for a time. He was wondering how far he dared go against Dunn’s order that no penny of Wheeler money should ever be chanced in the 94. Dunn would be game to split the works wide open, if he didn’t like the way salvation had been obtained. It was up to Wheeler to find ways to get around that, taking care that the girl would never guess any obliga- tion to him. That last was what Dunn feared most. But though his niind was laying out routes and plans far outside of the Red Rock country, he was some- how not surprised as Marian now came and joined him here. To think about any phase of this killing case, or of the imminent ruin of Horse Dunn's cow kingdom, was to think about her. After all, the 94 was her brand, and her future was inter- laced with its future. So now as he looked up at the sound of her light quick step it seemed a natural, somehow expected thing to see her standing there in his door. “This is a lonely night,’ she said. ‘Nothing anywhere in this night in- tends to sleep.” “1 guess that's so. But it's near morning now.” Without high heels and with her hair light and loose about her shoul- ders she should have looked small- er, but she did not. He thought he had never seen her so slimly tall, so gravely steady. Perhaps that was partly the ef- fect of what she wore. Because he had never seen her dressed as she was now, he had a sudden sense of how little he knew her, after all; just as he did not know what she wore when she slept, how could he know what went on in her mind when she was alone—or ever? She was wearing pajamas, but their black silk was cut like a Rus- sian smock, with a high collar of soft black silk about her throat, and close cuffs at her wrists, so that standing against the dark she was all a part of the dark, except for the bright ivory of her face and hands and the looge shimmer of her hair. About this costume, which was strange to him, there was a bar- baric dignity, as if it were not some- thing to sleep in at all, but the cere- monial dress of some forgotten priestess. It was strange to see this vision here, standing beside a spare saddle that had been flung on the floor under a tangle of bridles on a wooden peg. Everything around her was cow country, but she—she was something else, something love- ly from beyond the hills—a daugh- ter of two worlds. She came and sat beside him on the bunk. “Did you find out any- thing more from Old Man Coffee? I thought you'd get more out of him if I left you alone.” “Not very much. Old Man Cof- fee's been a disappointment to me in a way. Sometimes I think he doesn’t know anything about it.” “1 wonder.” “Marian, what are you going to do?" “What is there for me to do? One of two things—stay here or go to Inspiration to be near Horse. Of course, he ought to be out of there in a few days.” “I wouldn't count on that, Marian. him--not even the beginnings of a case. They know that. But what they want to do—and can dois to tie up the 94 finances by making the case look as ugly as possible. They'll point out that Dunn was the main one who would be expecting Flagg there; and probably make Flagg's share of the money the mo- tive. Of course that's ridiculous. But for their purpose, all they need to do is to raise the question and then cause a delay in clearing it up.” Her eyes were on distance be- yond the walls — smoky eyes, drowsy, even misty on the surface; but behind them was that continu- ing deep glow of slumbering fire, the smouldering light of a great re- serve vitality. “I'd go east now, if 1 were you,” he told her. “We'll fight this thing out, and save out of it what we can --you can count on that. But—this isn't a good place for you any more. There won't be anyone here, except a couple of cow hands to keep an eye on things. And it would drive Horse crazy to have you in that hornets’ nest in Inspiration.” “But you?" “I'll be gone. I have to back- track Bob Flagg a little further. I'll have to go to Flagstaff; then maybe down-country. God knows how long I'll be gone. It looks like a dim, crooked trail.” She considered this. “When are I'll send you leaving?” “Now--before daylight. a note to Horse. I don’t even dare see him in Inspiration, for fear they'll hold me there on some trumped-up charge.” They were silent again. Through the window came to them a cool, fragrantly clean breeze from the uplands, with a fall tang in it that promised frosts before long. He sud- denly thought she might be cold. There was a clean Navajo blanket on his bed, and he put this about her shoulders. She smiled faintly, but did not look at him or move. She said, “It will be queer and lonely here, with you gone.” “But you'll be lea too.” 8he shook her head, eyes far away. “I'm through with hovering on the outskirts of my own life.” For a moment he wondered what provision he could make for her safety here. He no longer doubted that what she determined to do she would do, and could not be dis- suaded from. He thought of con- signing her safety to Old Man Cof- fee, or to the cowboys now search- ing the hills for her; but he was deeply concerned. “Sometimes 1 think,” Marian said, ‘that the answer to every- thing is to be found right here here at the 94—and no place else.” He nodded moodily. “A man ought to be able to figure it out, if he was smart.” “There isn't anything more you could follow up, here? When time is so important—""' “There's one lone, slim possibili- ty,” he said. “In heaven's name, what is it?” “There's one thing in this case that I can't swallow. It stands out above everything else—one unbe- lievable thing that couldn't possibly happen. I'm thinking of those two shots that have been thrown at— you." She was silent, and after a mo- ment or two he went on. ‘‘Some- how those shots at you are mixed up with these other shootings; it would be too big a coincidence if the shots at you and the killing of the men were separate, yet hap- pening at the same time." “I can see that, all right.” “But the shots at you eliminate nearly every suspect we have. Take Val Douglas. He hasn't proved very dependable, Marian. He's been caught in lies as to where he was. Even just now, when he was sent to Pahranagat to check up Bob Flagg, it seems from what Coffee says that he didn't even go near there. Some- times I've suspected Val. Even if he didn’t kill Flagg to rob him, still he might have killed him by mis- take, thinking it was somebody else. But one thing is certainly plain— Val Douglas would never fire on you." “No,” Marian said, never do that.” “Or take Link Bender—a hard, bitter, violent man. Once he was boss of all this range, until Horse Dunn took hold. Link Bender might go to any length to put down the 94. But he controls this kid sheriff, and through the sheriff he's bearing down on the 94 through this killing; and he's getting away with it. His whole way of attack is orderly and thought out. He wouldn't try any such crazy thing as shooting a girl." “It's pretty hard to see in what way 1 could stand between Link Bender and his plans.” “The same thing applies to Pinto Halliday; he's a shifty crook, but he isn't crazy. Sam Caldwell is an- other that it doesn’t fit in with.” “The thing just won't fit togeth- er, will it?" “Marian, it's in my mind that I know who killed Bob Flagg.” “Billy! If you know that" “There's one man in that Inspira- tion crowd that is too savage bitter to wait for Link Bender's plan to pan out. That man is Rufe Deane. Rufe Deane blames Horse for the death of his son, years ago.” “Yes,” Marian said, *'I've thought of him." ““Rufe Deane tried to raise a mob in Inspiration to see that the 94 people never got away from there. If he had started in time, there'd have been a lynching before mid- night. He threw down his deputy’s badge because he thought the sher- iff was going too easy with Horse. And when you testified for me at the hearing—Rufe Deane was look- ing at you like a wolf waiting. Mar- ian, I believe Rufe Deane is one man that's crazy enough and bitter enough to try to kill you-—to get “Val could back at Horse for the death of young Deane.” prove that-—'’ “That’s just the trouble. Suppose I'm right—Rufe Deane did it. We're no better off than we were in the be- | In Step With Santa Claus | Liv12 why. The other thing is to prove it and get a conviction. I may be in my mind.” When he looked at her it was look down the sights of a gun at Marian Dunn; thought that the use of violence out- feating its own purposes in the end. destroy the killer as he would de- “T'll never be able to believe in out to hurt you,” he said. somebody has tried. What natural- ly comes to mind is that some- has gone out of his head. But— hard as it is to believe, there is one other possibility we have to take account of-—that without knowing it you've heard something, or seen something, which would give away the Short Creek killer—if you re- what it was.” She said, “I've thought of that.” “Marian, if you can remember seeing anything—a rider in the dis- tance—some horse coming home at a strange time—one of the guns missing from its rack here in the house—even an empty shell that you thought nothing of—that one thing might give us the answer!" “I've racked my brain over and over; but I can't think of any- thing, Billy.” “Not even a chance word, over- heard somewhere—"" She shook her head. “Billy, 1 just can't remember anything that would answer the purpose at all.” She pressed her palms against her eyes for a moment; then lifted her head sharply, shaking out her loose hair. “It's no use. This isn't the first time I've tried to remember; I've been trying hard for two days.” “1 thought it would most likely be hopeless,” he admitted. “T'll have to go to Flagstafl.” “] know. I've seen that coming. I'm ready to stay here alone; with- out you or my uncie, I mean.” “Marian, if I could get you to pull out of here, until this is over" “This is my outfit, Billy. It shouldn't be my outfit; it should be my mother’s, or Horse Dunn's. But nothing can make Horse see that. And I see now that if you're going to run cattle on a big scale out in this country, you sometimes have to be willing to fight for your range.” He stared at her, marveling. The girl who was talking to him now was not the girl he had known two years ago; she was not even the girl he had known at the beginning of the week. It was as if some false outer cloaking of ideas and habits, put upon her by her mother's sea- board world, had suddenly fallen away, leaving her revealed as what she was—a daughter of the dry land. Under the pressure of the dark days and unquiet nights since the killing of Bob Flagg she had come nearer to him, becoming one of his own people. (TO BE CONTINUED) Almaden, Little Since the Fifteenth century a little town in central Spain, Almaden, in Arabic simply “The Mine,” has sup- plied most of the world with mer- cury, the metal which is liquid at ordinary temperatures and which dissolves other metals. It is needed in obtaining gold and silver from their ores, in scientific and manu- facturing processes and in phar- macy. California and Oregon, Texas and Nevada are intermittent producers of mercury. New Almaden, Calif., mines half of what is produced in the United States, these mines hav- ing been established about seventy- five years. Southern Austria and Italy also have some mercury ores but the Spanish rock is far richer, containing about 13 per cent com- pared with barely 1 per cent, says the Milwaukee Journal. The chief ore of mercury is mer- curic sulfide, commonly called cin- nabar and originally the source of the pigment called the vermilion. This the women of ancient Rome used for rouge. The Roman town, Sisapo, was in the neighborhood of Almaden. E. E. Kisch, a writer for Gegen- Angriff, the Paris weekly of the Ger- man exiles, visited Almaden some time ago and reported that mer- cupational alarming inroads on the workers, who, even in youth, were mostly pale, lean, toothless and lacking in energy. At one time it was custom to give exemption from itary service to those who serve two years as miners in maden. “To Spain, Almaden is far more than a gold mine,” he wrote, ‘for it has always been the world's source of mercury. Abderrahman Town in Central Spain III, the caliph of Cordoba, had the famous moonlight fountain made for his favorite wife, the moonlight be- ing mercury. The knights of the Middle ages got rid of vermin with the aid of mercury. The ‘gold mak- ers’ of the Middle ages used mer- cury for their tricks. Physicians in those days prescribed mercury for any digestive trouble. For centuries thermometers and barometers have been made with the aid of mercury. Rabbit skins are prepared with mercury before they are turned into felt hats. Many cury. “The Christian kings of the houses Bourbon, who had fewer riches, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, West Gothic and Arab predecessors, could pay their creditors only with mer- cury.” Beginning of Purse Races It has been customary to credit country, because it was established that there were turf contests in that "EEPING up with the Joneses | is easy—it's keeping up with | Santa Claus that has Sew-Your- | Own in stitches currently. We got a peek at his wares, though, and frankly we copied some of his art- | istry. (You can see for yourself there's a ‘"Christmasy look’ about today's trio of fashions.) 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