The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack Read online

  The girl was working over the stove, from which, floating to the doorway where Sanderson stood, came various delicious odors.

  Mary was arrayed in a neat-fitting house dress of some soft print material, with a huge apron over it. Her sleeves were rolled slightly above the elbows; her face was flushed, and when she turned and saw Sanderson her eyes grew very bright.

  “Oh,” she said; “you are up! I was just thinking of calling you!” She ran to him, threw her arms around him, and, in spite of his efforts to evade her, she kissed him first on one cheek and then on the other.

  Noting his reluctance she stepped back and looked reprovingly at him.

  “You seem so distant, Will. And I am so glad to see you!”

  “I ain’t used to bein’ kissed, I expect.”

  “But—by your sister!”

  He reddened. “I ain’t seen you for a long time, you know. Give me time, an’ mebbe I’ll get used to it.”

  “I hope so,” she smiled. “I should feel lost if I could not kiss my brother. You have washed, too!” she added, noting his glowing face and his freshly combed hair.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mary!” she corrected.

  “Mary,” grinned Sanderson.

  Mary turned to the stove. “You go out and find a chair on the porch,” she directed, over her shoulder. “I’ll have supper ready in a jiffy. It’s too hot for you in here.”

  Sanderson obeyed. From the deeply crimson hue of his face it was apparent that the heat of the kitchen had affected him. That, at least, must have been the reason Mary had ordered him away. His face felt hot.

  He found a chair on the porch, and he sank into it, feeling like a criminal. There was a certain humor in the situation. Sanderson felt it, but could not appreciate it, and he sat, hunched forward, staring glumly into the dusk that had settled over the basin.

  He had been sitting on the porch for some minutes when he became aware of a figure near him, and he turned slowly to see the little, anemic man standing not far away.

  “Cooling off?” suggested the little man.

  Sanderson straightened. “How in hell do you know I’m hot?” he demanded gruffly.

  The little man grinned. “There’s signs. Your face looks like you’d had it in an oven. Now, don’t lose your temper; I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  The little man’s voice was placative; his manner gravely ingratiating. Yet Sanderson divined that the other was inwardly laughing at him. Why? Sanderson did not know. He was aware that he must seem awkward in the rôle of brother, and he suspected that the little man had noticed it; possibly the little man was one of those keen-witted and humorously inclined persons who find amusement in the incongruous.

  There was certainly humor in the man’s face, in the glint of his eyes, and in the curve of his lips. His face was seamed and wrinkled; his ears were big and prominent, the tips bending outward under the brim of a felt hat that was too large for him; his mouth was large, and Sanderson’s impression of it was that it could not be closed far enough to conceal all the teeth, but that the lips were continually trying to stretch far enough to accomplish the feat.

  Sanderson was certain it was that continual effort of the muscles of the lips that gave to his mouth its humorous expression.

  The man was not over five feet and two or three inches tall, and crowning his slender body was a head that was entirely out of proportion to the rest of him. He was not repulsive-looking, however, and a glance at his eyes convinced Sanderson that anything Providence had taken from his body had been added, by way of compensation, to his intellect.

  Sanderson found it hard to resent the man’s seeming impertinence. He grinned reluctantly at him.

  “Did I tell you you’d hurt my feelin’s?” he inquired. “What oven do you think I had my head in?”

  “I didn’t say,” grinned the little man. “There’s places that are hotter than an oven. And if a man has never been a wolf with women, it might be expected that he’d feel sort of warm to be kissed and fussed over by a sister he’s not seen for a good many years. He’d seem like a stranger to her—almost.”

  Sanderson’s eyes glowed with a new interest in the little man.

  “How did you know I wasn’t a wolf with women?”

  “Shucks,” said the other; “you’re bashful, and you don’t run to vanity. Any fool could see that.”

  “I ain’t been introduced to you—regular,” said Sanderson, “but you seem to be a heap long on common sense, an’ I’d be glad to know you. What did you say your name was?”

  “Barney Owen.”

  “What you doin’ at the Double A? You ought be herd-ridin’ scholars in a district schoolhouse.”

  “Missed my calling,” grinned the other. “I got to know too much to teach school, but didn’t know enough to let John Barleycorn alone. I’m a drifter, sort of. Been roaming around the north country. Struck the basin about three weeks ago. Miss Bransford was needing men—her father—yours, too, of course—having passed out rather sudden. I was wanting work mighty had, and Miss Bransford took me on because I was big enough to do the work of half a dozen men.”

  His face grew grave. Sanderson understood. Miss Bransford had hired Owen out of pity. Sanderson did not answer.

  The little man’s face worked strangely, and his eyes glowed.

  “If you hadn’t come when you did, I would have earned my keep, and Alva Dale would be where he wouldn’t bother Miss Bransford any more,” he said.

  Sanderson straightened. “You’d have shot him, you mean?”

  Owen did not speak, merely nodding his head.

  Sanderson smiled. “Then I’m sort of sorry come when I did. But do you think shootin’ Dale would have ended it?”

  “No; Dale has friends.” Owen leaned toward Sanderson, his face working with passion. “I hate Dale,” he said hoarsely. “I hate him worse than I hate any snake that I ever saw. I hadn’t been here two days when he sneered at me and called me a freak. I’ll kill him—some day. Your coming has merely delayed the time. But before he dies I want to see him beaten at this game he’s tryin’ to work on Miss Bransford. And I’ll kill any man that tries to give Miss Bransford the worst of it.

  “You’ve got a fight on your hands. I know Dale and his gang, and they’ll make things mighty interesting for you and Miss Bransford. But I’ll help you, if you say the word. I’m not much for looks—as you can see—but I can sling a gun with any man I’ve ever met.

  “I’d have tried to fight Dale alone—for Miss Bransford’s sake—but I realize that things are against me. I haven’t the size, and I haven’t the nerve to take the initiative. Besides, I drink. I get riotously drunk. I can’t help it. I can’t depend on myself. But I can help you, and I will.”

  The man’s earnestness was genuine, and though Sanderson had little confidence in the other’s ability to take a large part in what was to come, he respected the spirit that had prompted the offer. So he reached out and took the man’s hand.

  “Any man that feels as strongly as you do can do a heap—at anything,” he said. “We’ll call it a deal. But you’re under my orders.”

  “Yes,” returned Owen, gripping the hand held out to him.

  “Will!” came Mary’s voice from the kitchen, “supper is ready!”

  Owen laughed lowly, dropped Sanderson’s hand, and slipped away into the growing darkness.

  Sanderson got up and faced the kitchen door, hesitating, reluctant again to face the girl and to continue the deception. Necessity drove him to the door, however, and when he reached it, he saw Mary standing near the center of the kitchen, waiting for him.

  “I don’t believe you are hungry at all!” she declared, looking keenly at him. “And do you know, I think you blush more easily than any man I ever saw. But don’t let that bother you,” she added, laughing; “blushes become you. Will,” she went on, tenderly pressing his arm as she led him through a door into the dining-room, “you are awfully good-looking!”

  �
��You’ll have me gettin’ a swelled head if you go to talkin’ like that,” he said, without looking at her.

  “Oh, no; you couldn’t be vain if you tried. None of the Bransfords were ever vain—or conceited. But they all have had good appetites,” she told him, shaking a finger at him. “And if you don’t eat heartily I shall believe your long absence from home has taken some of the Bransford out of you!”

  She pulled a chair out for aim, and took another at the table opposite him.

  Sanderson ate; there was no way out of it, though he felt awkward and uncomfortable. He kept wondering what she would say to him if she knew the truth. It seemed to him that had the girl looked closely at him she might have seen the guilt in his eyes.

  But apparently she was not thinking of doubting him—it was that knowledge which made Sanderson realize how contemptible was the part he was playing. She had accepted him on trust, without question, with the implicit and matter-of-fact faith of a child.

  He listened in silence while she told him many things about the Bransfords—incidents that had occurred during his supposed absence, intimate little happenings that he had no right to hear. And he sat, silently eating, unable to interrupt, feeling more guilty and despicable all the time.

  But he broke in after a time, gruffly:

  “What’s the trouble between Dale and the Nylands?”

  Instantly she stiffened. “I forgot to tell you about that. Ben Nyland is a nester. He has a quarter-section of land on the northwestern edge of the basin. But he hasn’t proved on it. The land adjoins Dale’s. Dale wants it—he has always wanted it. And he means to have it. He also wants Peggy Nyland.

  “Dale is a beast! You heard Peggy tell how he has hounded her. It is true; she has told me about it more than once. Dale hasn’t told, of course; but it is my opinion that Dale put the Double A cattle into Ben’s corral so that he could hang Ben. With Ben out of the way he could take the Nyland property—and Peggy, too.”

  “Why did he use Double A cattle?”

  Mary paled. “Don’t you see the hideous humor of that? He knows Peggy Nyland and I are friends. Dale is ruthless and subtle. Can’t you understand how a man of that type would enjoy seeing me send my friend’s brother to his death—and the brother innocent?”

  “Why didn’t you tell Dale the cattle did not belong to you?”

  Mary smiled faintly. “I couldn’t. To do so would have involved Ben Nyland in more trouble. Dale would have got one of his friends to claim them. And then I could have done nothing—having disclaimed the ownership of the stock. And I—I couldn’t lie. And, besides, I kept hoping that something would happen. I had a premonition that something would happen. And something did happen—you came!”

  “Yes,” said Sanderson inanely, “I came.”

  He drew a large red handkerchief from a pocket and mopped some huge beads of sweat from his face and forehead. When the handkerchief came out a sheet of paper, folded and crumpled, fluttered toward the floor, describing an eccentric circle and landing within a foot of Mary’s feet.

  The girl saw that Sanderson had not noticed the loss of the paper, and she stooped and recovered it. She held it in a hand while Sanderson continued to wipe the perspiration from his face, and noting that he was busily engaged she smoothed the paper on the table in front of her and peered mischievously at it. And then, her curiosity conquering her, she read, for the writing on the paper was strangely familiar.

  Sanderson having restored the handkerchief to its pocket, noticed Mary’s start, and saw her look at him, her eyes wide and perplexed.

  “Why, Will, where did you get this?” she inquired, sitting very erect.

  “Mebbe if you’d tell me what it is I could help you out,” he grinned.

  “Why, it’s a letter father wrote to a man in Tombstone, Arizona. See here! Father’s name is signed to it! I saw father write it. Why, I rode over to Dry Bottom and mailed it! This man had written to father a long time before, asking for a job. I have his letter somewhere. It was the oddest letter! It was positively a gem of formality. I can remember every word of it, for I must have read it a dozen times. It ran:

  “DEAR SIR:

  “The undersigned has been at the location noted below for a term of years and desires to make a change. If you have an opening for a good all-around man, the undersigned would be willing to work for you. If you would want a recommendation, you can address Amos Burroughs, of the Pig-Pen Ranch, near Tombstone, where the undersigned is employed.

  “Yours truly,

  “DEAL SANDERSON.”

  Mary leaned forward in her chair and looked at Sanderson with eager, questioning eyes. Sanderson stared vacantly back at her.

  She held the letter up to him. “This is father’s answer, telling the man to come on. How on earth did you get hold of it?”

  Sanderson had slumped down in his chair. He saw discovery and disgrace in prospect. In the total stoppage of his thoughts no way of escape or evasion suggested itself. At the outset he was to be exposed as a miserable impostor.

  He groaned, grinned vacuously at Mary, and again produced the handkerchief, wiping away drops of perspiration that were twice as big as those he had previously mopped off.

  Mary continued to stare at him, repeating the question: “How did you get it?”

  Sanderson’s composure began to return; his grin grew wider and more intelligent, and at the sixth repetition of Mary’s question he answered, boldly:

  “I wasn’t goin’ to tell you about that. You see, ma’am—”

  “Mary!”

  “You see, Mary, I was goin’ to fool Brans—dad. I wrote, askin’ him for the job, an’ I was intendin’ to come on, to surprise him. But before I told him who I was, I was goin’ to feel him out, an’ find out what he thought of me. Then I got your letter, tellin’ me he was dead, an’ so there wasn’t any more use of tryin’ to fool him.”

  “But that name, ‘Sanderson?’ That isn’t your name, Will!”

  “It was,” he grinned. “When I left home I didn’t want anybody to be runnin’ into me an’ recognizin’ me, so I changed it to Sanderson. Deal Sanderson.”

  The girl’s expression changed to delight; she sat erect and clapped her hands.

  “Oh,” she said, “I wish father was here to listen to this! He thought all along that you were going to turn out bad. If he only knew! Will, you don’t mean to tell me that you are the Sanderson that we all know of here—that nearly everybody in the country has heard about; the man who is called ‘Square Deal’ Sanderson by all his friends—and even by his enemies—because of his determination to do right—and to make everyone else do right too!”

  Again Sanderson resorted to the handkerchief.

  “I don’t reckon they’ve talked about me that strong,” he said.

  “But they have! Oh, I’m so happy, Will. Why, when Dale hears about it he’ll be positively venomous—and scared. I don’t think he will bother the Double A again—after he hears of it!”

  But Sanderson merely smirked mirthlessly; he saw no reason for being joyful over the lie he had told. He was getting deeper and deeper into the mire of deceit and prevarication, and there seemed to be no escape.

  And now, when he had committed himself, he realized that he might have evaded it all, this last lie at least, by telling Mary that he had picked the note up on the desert, or anywhere, for that matter, and she would have been forced to believe him.

  He kept her away from him, fending off her caresses with a pretense of slight indisposition until suddenly panic-stricken over insistence, he told her he was going to bed, bolted into the room, locked the door behind him, and sat long in the darkness and the heat, filling the room with a profane appreciation of himself as a double-dyed fool who could not even lie intelligently.

  CHAPTER VII

  KISSES—A MAN REFUSES THEM

  There was a kerosene lamp in Sanderson’s room, and when, after an hour of gloomy silence in the dark, he got up and lit the lamp, he felt decidedly better. He
was undressing, preparing to get into bed, when he was assailed with a thought that brought the perspiration out on him again.

  This time it was a cold sweat, and it came with the realization that discovery was again imminent, for if, as Mary had said, she had kept Sanderson’s letter to her father, there were in existence two letters—his own and Will Bransford’s—inevitably in different handwriting, both of which he had claimed to have written.

  Sanderson groaned. The more he lied the deeper he became entangled. He pulled on his trousers, and stood shoeless, gazing desperately around the room.

  He simply must destroy that letter, or Mary, comparing it with the letter her brother had written would discover the deception.

  It was the first time in Sanderson’s life that had ever attempted to deceive anybody, and he was in the grip of a cringing dread.

  For the first time since he occupied the room he inspected it, noting its furnishings. His heart thumped wildly with hope while he looked.

  It was a woman’s room—Mary’s, of course. For there were decorations here and there—a delicate piece of crochet work on a dresser; a sewing basket on a stand; a pincushion, a pair of shears; some gaily ornamented pictures on the walls, and—peering behind the dresser—he saw a pair of lady’s riding-boots.

  He strode to a closet door and threw it open, revealing, hanging innocently on their hooks, a miscellaneous array of skirts, blouses, and dresses.

  Mary had surrendered her room to him. Feeling guilty again, and rather conscience-stricken, as though he were committing some sacrilegious action, he went to the dresser and began to search among the effects in the drawers.

  They were filled with articles of wearing apparel, delicately fringed things that delight the feminine heart, and keepsakes of all descriptions. Sanderson handled them carefully, but his search was not the less thorough on that account.

  And at last, in one of the upper drawers of the dresser, he came upon a packet of letters.

  Again his conscience pricked him, but the stern urge of necessity drove him on until he discovered an envelope addressed to the elder Bransford, in his own handwriting, and close to it a letter from Will Bransford to Mary Bransford.