Brand Blotters Read online

  Melissy, horror-stricken, had sat silent, but now she found her voice.

  “He is unarmed!” she cried to the cowpuncher.

  He made no answer. Another sound in the brush, close at hand, was distracting his attention, though not his gaze.

  Just as he whipped up his rifle Melissy sprang forward. She heard the sound of the explosion fill the draw, saw Bellamy clutch at the air and slowly sink to the ground. Before the echoes had died away she had flung herself toward the inert body.

  The outlaw took a step or two forward, as if to make sure of his work, but at the sound of running footsteps he changed his mind, swung to the saddle and disappeared among the rocks.

  An instant later Bob Farnum burst into view.

  “What’s up?” he demanded.

  Melissy looked up. Her face was perfectly ashen. “Phil Norris ... he shot Mr. Morse.”

  Farnum stepped forward. “Hurt badly, Mr. Morse?”

  The wounded man grinned faintly. “Scared worse, I reckon. He got me in the fleshy part of the left arm.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIII

  OLD ACQUAINTANCES

  “You wanted to see me?”

  The voice had the soft, slow intonation of the South, and it held some quality that haunted the memory. Or so Melissy thought afterward, but that may have been because of its owner’s appeal to sympathy.

  “If you are Miss Yarnell.”

  “Ferne Yarnell is my name.”

  “Mr. Bellamy asked me to call on you. He sent this letter of introduction.”

  A faint wave of color beat into the cheek of the stranger. “You know Mr. Bellamy then?”

  “Yes. He would have been here to meet you, but he met with an accident yesterday.”

  “An accident!” There was a quick flash of alarm in the lifted face.

  “He told me to tell you that it was not serious. He was shot in the arm.”

  “Shot. By whom?” She was ashen to the lips.

  “By a man called Duncan Boone.”

  “I know him. He is a dangerous man.”

  “Yes,” Melissy nodded. “I don’t think we know how very dangerous he is. We have all been deceived in him till recently.”

  “Does he live here?”

  “Yes. The strange thing is that he and Mr. Bellamy had never met in this country until a few days ago. There used to be some kind of a feud between the families. But you must know more about that than I do.”

  “Yes. My family is involved in the feud. Mr. Bellamy is a distant cousin of mine.”

  “So he told me.”

  “Have you known him long?”

  Melissy thought that there was a little more than curiosity in the quick look the young woman flung at her.

  “I met him when he first came here. He was lost on the desert and I found him. After that we became very unfriendly. He jumped a mining claim belonging to my father. But we’ve made it up and agreed to be friends.”

  “He wrote about the young lady who saved his life.”

  Melissy smiled. “Did he say that I was a cattle and a stage rustler?”

  “He said nothing that was not good.”

  “I’m much obliged to him,” the Western girl answered breezily. “And now do tell me, Miss Yarnell, that you and your people have made up your mind to stay permanently.”

  “Father is still looking the ground over. He has almost decided to buy a store here. Yet he has been in the town only a day. So you see he must like it.”

  Outside the open second story window of the hotel Melissy heard a voice that sounded familiar. She moved toward the window alcove, and at the same time a quick step was heard in the hall. Someone opened the door of the parlor and stood on the threshold. It was the man called Boone.

  Melissy, from the window, glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze was upon Ferne Yarnell.

  That young woman looked up from the letter of introduction she was reading and a startled expression swept into her face.

  “Dunc Boone,” she cried.

  The man doffed his hat with elaborate politeness. “Right glad to meet up with you again, Miss Ferne. You was in short dresses when I saw you last. My, but you’ve grown pretty. Was it because you heard I was in Arizona that you came here?”

  She rose, rejecting in every line of her erect figure his impudent geniality, his insolent pretense of friendliness.

  “My brother is in the hotel. If he learns you are here there will be trouble.”

  A wicked malice lay in his smiling eyes. “Trouble for him or for me?” he inquired silkily.

  His lash flicked her on the raw. Hal Yarnell was a boy of nineteen. This man had a long record as a gunfighter to prove him a desperate man. Moreover, he knew how hopelessly heart sick she was of the feud that for many years had taken its toll of blood.

  “Haven’t you done us enough harm, you and yours? Go away. Leave us alone. That’s all I ask of you.”

  He came in and closed the door. “But you see it ain’t all I ask of you, Ferne Yarnell. I always did ask all I could get of a girl as pretty as you.”

  “Will you leave me, sir?”

  “When I’m through.”

  “Now.”

  “No, I reckon not,” he drawled between half shuttered eyes.

  She moved toward the door, but he was there before her. With a turn of his wrist he had locked it.

  “This interview quits at my say-so, honey. Think after so many years of absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder you’re going to trample over me like I was a kid? Guess again.”

  “Unlock that door,” she ordered.

  “When I get good and ready. We’ll have our talk out first.”

  Her eyes blazed. She was white as paper though she faced him steadily. But her heart wavered. She dared not call out for fear her brother might hear and come to her assistance. This she must forestall at all costs.

  A heel clicked in the alcove. For the first time Norris, or Boone as the Southern girl had called him, became aware of a third party in the room. Melissy was leaning out of the window. She called down to a man standing on the street.

  “Jack, come up here quick. I want you.”

  Boone took a step forward. “You here, ’Lissie Lee?”

  She laughed scornfully. “Yes, I’m here. An unexpected pleasure, isn’t it?”

  “Do you know Ferne Yarnell?” he asked, for once taken aback.

  “It looks as if I do.”

  His quick furtive eye fell upon an envelope on the floor. He picked it up. Upon it was written, “Miss Ferne Yarnell,” and in the corner, “Introducing Miss Lee.”

  A muscle twitched in his face. When he looked up there was an expression of devilish malignity on it.

  “Mr. Bellamy’s handwriting, looks like.” He turned to the Arizona girl. “Then I didn’t put the fellow out of business.”

  “No, you coward.”

  The angry color crept to the roots of his hair. “Better luck next time.”

  The door knob rattled. Someone outside was trying to get in. Those inside the room paid no obvious attention to him. The venomous face of the cattle detective held the women fascinated.

  “When Dick Bellamy ambushed Shep he made a hell of a bad play of it. My old mammy used to say that the Boones were born wolves. I can see where she was right. The man that killed my brother gets his one of these days and don’t you forget it. You just stick around. We’re due to shoot this thing out, him and me,” the man continued, his deep-socketed eyes burning from the grim handsome face.

  “Open the door,” ordered a voice from the hall, shaking the knob violently.

  “You don’t know he killed your brother. Someone else may have done it. And it may have been done in self defence,” the Arkansas girl said to Boone in a voice so low and reluctant that it appeared the words were wrung from her by torture.

  “Think I’m a buzzard head? Why for did he run away? Why
did he jump for the sandhills soon as the word came to arrest him?” He snapped together his straight, thin-lipped mouth, much as a trap closes on its prey.

  A heavy weight hurtled against the door and shook it to the hinges. Melissy had been edging to the right. Now with a twist of her lissom body she had slipped past the furious man and turned the key.

  Jack Flatray came into the room. His glance swept the young women and fastened on the man. In the crossed eyes of the two was the thrust of rapiers, the grinding of steel on steel, that deadly searching for weakness in the other that duelists employ.

  The deputy spoke in a low soft drawl. “Mornin’, Boone. Holding an executive session, are you?”

  The lids of the detective narrowed to slits. From the first there had been no pretense of friendship between these two. There are men who have only to look once at each other to know they will be foes. It had been that way with them. Causes of antagonism had arisen quickly enough. Both dominant personalities, they had waged silent unspoken warfare for the leadership of the range. Later over the favor of Melissy Lee this had grown more intense, still without having ever been put into words. Now they were face to face, masks off.

  “Why yes, until you butted in, Mr. Sheriff.”

  “This isn’t my busy day. I thought I’d just drop in to the meeting.”

  “You’ve made a mistake. We’re not holding a cattle rustlers’ convention.”

  “There are so many ladies present I can’t hear you, but maybe if you said it outside I could,” the deputy suggested gently, a gleam of steely anger in his eyes.

  “Say it anywhere to oblige a friend,” sneered Boone.

  From the moment of meeting neither man had lowered his gaze by the fraction of an inch. Red tragedy was in the air. Melissy knew it. The girl from Arkansas guessed as much. Yet neither of them knew how to avert the calamity that appeared impending. One factor alone saved the situation for the moment. Flatray had not yet heard of the shooting of Bellamy. Had he known he would have arrested Boone on the spot and the latter would have drawn and fought it out.

  Into the room sauntered Lee. “Hello, ’Lissie. Been looking for you an hour, honey. Mornin’, Norris. Howdy, Jack! Dad burn yore ornery hide, I ain’t see you long enough for a good talk in a coon’s age.”

  Melissy seized on her father joyfully as an interposition of Providence. “Father, this is Miss Yarnell, the young lady I told you about.”

  The ranchman buried her little hand in his big paw. “Right glad to meet up with you, Miss Yarnell. How do you like Arizona by this time? I reckon Melissy has introduced you to her friends. No? Make you acquainted with Mr. Flatray. Shake hands with Mr. Norris, Miss Yarnell. Where are you, Norris?”

  The owner of the Bar Double G swung round, to discover for the first time that harmony was not present. Boone stood back with a sullen vindictive expression on his face.

  “Why, what’s up, boys?” the rancher asked, his glance passing from one to another.

  “You ain’t in this, Lee,” Boone informed him. Then, to Flatray: “See you later.”

  The deputy nodded carelessly. “Any time you like.”

  The lank old Confederate took a step forward to call Boone back, but Melissy caught him by the sleeve.

  “Let him go,” she whispered emphatically.

  “I know my boss,” returned Lee with a laugh.

  “If you’re quite through with me, Miss Lee, I’ll not intrude longer,” Flatray said.

  “But I’m not,” spoke Melissy quickly.

  She did not intend to let him get away to settle his quarrel with Boone.

  “I’m rather busy,” he suggested.

  “Your business will have to wait,” she came back decisively.

  Lee laughed and clapped Jack on the shoulder. “Might as well know your boss too, boy.”

  Melissy flushed with a flash of temper. “I’m nothing of the kind, dad.”

  “Sho! A joke’s a joke, girl. That’s twice hand-runnin’ I get a call-down. You’re mighty high-heeled to-day, ’pears like.”

  Jack smiled grimly. He understood some things that were hidden from Lee.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIV

  CONCERNING THE BOONE-BELLAMY-YARNELL FEUD

  The story that Ferne Yarnell told them in the parlor of the hotel had its beginnings far back in the days before the great war. They had been neighbors, these three families, had settled side by side in this new land of Arkansas, had hunted and feasted together in amity. In an hour had arisen the rift between them that was to widen to a chasm into which much blood had since been spilt. It began with a quarrel between hotheaded young men. Forty years later it was still running its blind wasteful course.

  Even before the war the Boones had begun to go down hill rapidly. Cad Boone, dissipated and unprincipled, had found even the lax discipline of the Confederate army too rigid and had joined the guerrillas, that band of hangers-on which respected neither flag and developed a cruelty that was appalling. Falling into the hands of Captain Ransom Yarnell, he had been tried by drumhead courtmartial and executed within twenty four hours of his capture.

  The boast of the Boones was that they never forgot an injury. They might wait many years for the chance, but in the end they paid their debts. Twenty years after the war Sugden Boone shot down Colonel Yarnell as he was hitching his horse in front of the courthouse at Nemo. Next Christmas eve a brother of the murdered man—Captain Tom, as his old troopers still called him—met old Sugden in the postoffice and a revolver duel followed. From it Captain Tom emerged with a bullet in his arm. Sugden was carried out of the store feet first to a house of mourning.

  The Boones took their time. Another decade passed. Old Richard Bellamy, father of the young man, was shot through the uncurtained window of his living rooms while reading the paper one night. Though related to the Yarnells, he had never taken any part in the feud beyond that of expressing his opinion freely. The general opinion was that he had been killed by Dunc Boone, but there was no conclusive evidence to back it. Three weeks later another one of the same faction met his fate. Captain Tom was ambushed while riding from his plantation to town and left dead on the road. Dunc Boone had been seen lurking near the spot, and immediately after the killing he was met by two hunters as he was slipping through the underbrush for the swamps. There was no direct evidence against the young man, but Captain Tom had been the most popular man in the county. Reckless though he was, Duncan Boone had been forced to leave the country by the intensity of the popular feeling against him.

  Again the feud had slumbered. It was understood that the Yarnells and the Bellamys were ready to drop it. Only one of the opposite faction remained on the ground, a twin brother of Duncan. Shep Boone was a drunken ne’er-do-well, but since he now stood alone nothing more than empty threats was expected of him. He spent his time idly with a set of gambling loafers, but he lacked the quality of active malice so pronounced in Dunc.

  A small part of the old plantation, heavily mortgaged, still belonged to Shep and was rented by him to a tenant, Jess Munro. He announced one day that he was going to collect the rent due him. Having been drinking heavily, he was in an abusive frame of mind. As it chanced he met young Hal Yarnell, just going into the office of his kinsman Dick Bellamy, with whom he was about to arrange the details of a hunting trip they were starting upon. Shep emptied his spleen on the boy, harking back to the old feud and threatening vengeance at their next meeting. The boy was white with rage, but he shut his teeth and passed upstairs without saying a word.

  The body of Shep Boone was found next day by Munro among the blackberry bushes at the fence corner of his own place. No less than four witnesses had seen young Yarnell pass that way with a rifle in his hand about the same time that Shep was riding out from town. They had heard a shot, but had thought little of it. Munro had been hoeing cotton in the field and had seen the lad as he passed. Later he had heard excited voices, and presently a shot. Other circumstantial evidence wound a net around the boy. He was a
rrested. Before the coroner held an inquest a new development startled the community. Dick Bellamy fled on a night train, leaving a note to the coroner exonerating Hal. In it he practically admitted the crime, pleading self defence.

  This was the story that Ferne Yarnell told in the parlor of the Palace Hotel to Jack Flatray and the Lees.

  Melissy spoke first. “Did Mr. Bellamy kill the man to keep your brother from being killed?”

  “I don’t know. It must have been that. It’s all so horrible.”

  The deputy’s eyes gleamed. “Think of it another way, Miss Yarnell. Bellamy was up against it. Your brother is only a boy. He took his place. A friend couldn’t have done more for another.”

  The color beat into the face of the Arkansas girl as she looked at him. “No. He sacrificed his career for him. He did a thing he must have hated to do.”

  “He’s sure some man,” Flatray pronounced.

  A young man, slight, quick of step, and erect as a willow sapling, walked into the room. He looked from one to another with clear level eyes. Miss Ferne introduced him as her brother.

  A thought crossed the mind of the deputy. Perhaps this boy had killed his enemy after all and Bellamy had shouldered the blame for him. If the mine owner were in love with Ferne Yarnell this was a hypothesis more than possible. In either case he acquitted the slayer of blame. In his pocket was a letter from the sheriff at Nemo, Arkansas, stating that his county was well rid of Shep Boone and that the universal opinion was that neither Bellamy nor young Yarnell had been to blame for the outcome of the difficulty. Unless there came to him an active demand for the return of Bellamy he intended to let sleeping dogs lie.

  No such demand came. Within a month the mystery was cleared. The renter Munro delivered himself to the sheriff at Nemo, admitting that he had killed Shep Boone in self defence. The dead man had been drinking and was exceedingly quarrelsome. He had abused his tenant and at last drawn on him. Whereupon Munro had shot him down. At first afraid of what might happen to him, he had stood aside and let the blame be shouldered upon young Yarnell. But later his conscience had forced him to a confession. It is enough here to say that he was later tried and acquitted, thus closing the chapter of the wastrel’s tragic death.