Chapter XIII

“Gone,” was all that any one of them could say of Jim Torrance, and “Gone” was all that they were to know of him for many a day. Speculation was rife: He had met up with Bordereau somewhere in the wilderness. Bordereau had killed him and there was an end of him. Or, he had decided that he had tackled too stiff a job, going up against Bordereau and his gang, and had ducked out, going fast and far to save his hide. Or, he still lurked somewhere near Sundown, playing his lone hand, still hunting down the man he so long had hunted. Or, after all--for what did anyone really know about him?--he was just one of those wandering, restless figures always moving across the great Southwest, and had merely shown up here and passed as he doubtless had in so many other places, like a comet.

Sally Dawn returned to the King Cannon ranch, to the sprawling old home under the oaks, and did not want for company on the way nor friends about her when she got there. It had been a week before they made the journey down from the mountains above Pocket Valley, for it was that long before they dared move Lying Bill Yarbo. Now he reposed in pampered ease in a bright bedroom at the ranch house and even began to stir about a little, and there was always Sally Dawn or Mrs. Sam to make him sort of glad he had been shot up. There was also, a thorn in his side, Sam Pepper, for the Peppers had closed up their house and moved over to Sally’s. And further there were other friends, always two or three of them within calling distance, sometimes six or eight. Two foot-loose young cowboys, Smudge Talbot and Curly Redmond, well known to Drennen, had been put on the Cannon pay roll and, after two days, were taking full advantage of every opportunity to make eyes at their fair employer; Dick Pardee, one of the three brothers who owned Cold Spring Ranch, could generally be found here when wanted; and Andy Forsythe, Art Simmons and Blackie Webb, Cannon friends from nearby outfits, were always coming and going when they weren’t just lingering. Sally Dawn felt something rise up in her throat and had her eyes go wet many and many a time when she saw how old friends rallied about her as word went to them of what had happened and of the threat that a vanished Steve Bordereau still constituted.

For Bordereau, like Jim Torrance, had somehow passed over the horizon and into a desert of silence, leaving no sign of his whereabouts or of his intent. About him, too, was much speculation; most men began to contend that he had played his last card here and was gone for good. And a good thing that would be--but what about Sally Dawn’s gold, her last hope, that had gone with him?

The Stag Horn still flourished, in fact did a bigger business than ever before, for there was always the chance that Steve Bordereau’s bravado would bring him back, that the game was not yet played out; and an intensely interested community, splitting itself fairly in half on the rock of the Sally Dawn-Steve Bordereau situation, wanted to be on hand when anything further happened. Murdo, denying all knowledge of the substitution of Doc Taylor’s dead body for Bordereau’s, still operated the two bars and the gambling rooms; Florinda still plied her trade and fished for suckers’ dollars with her exotic lure.

Despite existent conditions, on the King Cannon ranch Sally Dawn found herself living a more normal, a brighter life than had been hers for many a weary day. That smoldering, smoky, sullen look was less in her eyes now, and something of the infectious gayety came back into her rippling laughter, and she could again tease a romantically inclined cowboy in the same playful spirit that had been hers when she was sixteen. A source of unfailing glee for her existed in the residence here, cheek by jowl, of Lying Bill Yarbo and Sam Pepper.

“Don’t you love the two old humbugs?” she laughed to Mrs. Sam. “They have to try so hard to hate each other.”

Carrying Bill Yarbo his mid-afternoon nourishment of soup and pie and strong coffee--he was out on the porch in the mellow sunshine now, for, with the first storm vanished and the skies blue again, a last mild period of Indian summer claimed the land--she also bore an olive branch. She was fully determined to be an intriguing little dove of peace until she had her way with these two and made them in all things the staunch friends that she suspected deep down in her wise little heart that they were--and Sally Dawn Cannon, once she made up her mind about a thing, was as stubborn as Barney, the old pensioner mule out in the pasture.

“Sam Pepper was asking about you, Bill,” she said cheerily. “Do you know that, if anything happened to you, Sam would be lost! He says--”

“Don’t tell me what Sam Pepper says!” growled Bill Yarbo. “He’s a man I don’t want to think about. I can stomach some of his cussedness, but leastways a man oughtn’t to lie like he does all the time.”

That tickled her so, it started her laughing so merrily, that Bill got red in the face. From him she went, as soon as she had a chance, to speak to Sam of his old friend Bill Yarbo.

Sam sniffed.

“Him! Pampering him, Sally, is just like feeding a rattlesnake. He ain’t the kind you can tie to; he ain’t got no courage and he ain’t got no stamina. I never knowed a bigger coward and quitter, and once I knowed a man that set a trap for a bear and caught a rabbit instead and was scared to take his game out’n the trap lest it bite him! Look how Bill Yarbo let Jim Torrance down in that mite of a scrimmage up in the hills! Shucks!”

Sally Dawn made a good story of all this when she carried it to Mrs. Sam, but at the end of her recital she asked wonderingly, “Do you suppose they both actually believe what they say about each other?”

* * * * *

It was not that sorrow and mistrust of the future did not visit the girl during these days. On her return here, had it not been that so many a true-hearted friend came along to chase shadows away, she must have wept her heart out. She slipped away as soon as she could and crept through the dusk to her mother’s grave, that pitiful grave so hurriedly dug, so unceremoniously filled. She threw herself face down and hugged the earth to her tortured breast; she shoved herself back from it and beat the earth with her small clenched fists....

But a pair of shrewd and kind eyes had been upon her, and after a little while Mrs. Sam came out to her and took her into her arms and let her cry. The very next day a fence was built around the grave, and Mrs. Sam said to Sam: “It looks mighty pretty out there now, Sam; kind of bright and gay and cozy. I don’t know where she could get so many flowers this time of year.”

Also Sally Dawn knew her times of black depression superinduced by the vague yet still ominous threat of some further act of a lawless and desperate Steve Bordereau, by the mess of money affairs which seemed to make it impossible for her to hold on here much longer--and by a troubling uncertainty concerning the missing Jim Torrance.

“Shucks, Sally,” said Mrs. Sam, her hands in biscuit dough and her round arms floury, “you just get your mind off that roving rascal. Fellers like him take care of themselves all right; it’s here-they-come and there-they-go, and you’ve got enough on your mind without pestering yourself with a lone wolf like Jim Torrance.” She brushed the hair out of her eyes with a forearm that left a snowy streak on her placid brow and looked sharply into the girl’s troubled eyes with her shrewd ones. “I’d say you’re just as well off if you never see hide nor hair of that man again. Run outside and make Davy Drennen happy.”

Sally Dawn shook her head.

“I keep worrying about him,” she said. And then she added thoughtfully: “He’s no wolf either. He was mighty kind and gentle with me. I’ll never forget. Why, that first night--”

Mrs. Sam sighed.

“I know, child. Well, don’t you fret any; after all, most likely he’ll come riding back any minute.”

“Do you think so?” asked Sally Dawn. She idled around the kitchen aimlessly a few minutes, then drifted out on the porch and stood there a long while, looking up the long wavering white road, stretching lonely and empty into the blue hills that were just now turning misty in the sunset.

She was still standing there, day-dreaming, when suddenly she became aware of something that looked like a small blue-gray cloud forming against the tenderly flushed horizon. There had been no rains for a week, the roads were dry and that faint blue-gray cloud was a cloud of dust. For a single instant she tingled from head to foot; then she relaxed against the pillar supporting the roof over the porch and sighed. It was Thursday afternoon and time for Hank Webber to bring the stage, rocking and rumbling, down from Bridgewater to Sundown. There had been the time when the stage itself--with its speeding horses, with the mystery it always was, what with its unknown passengers and mail and, perhaps, money box--had fascinated her. Today she had not the least interest in stage-coaches. But then she did not know that Hank Webber was bringing to Sundown word that would put Jim Torrance’s name on many a tongue that night and keep it rolling there with one implication or another for days.

“All hell’s busted loose up around Mountain City,” said Hank as he booted his brake on in front of the Sundown House. “Three stick-ups in three days, the Mountain City Bank, the Rock Valley Mine and the Yellow Pine Lumber Company. Four men killed already, two-three more bad hurt, and nary a one of the raiders gathered in. It’s a gang’s work, six or eight or ten of ’em, riding masked and shooting fast and straight; they’ve got away with some says fifty thousand and some says a hundred thousand dollars--and everybody says the man that’s leading ’em is Jim Torrance.”

The news inundated Sundown in a swelling tidal wave of excitement. Bridgewater was but sixty miles away; Mountain City lay but a score of miles southeast of Bridgewater; both the Rock Valley Mine and the Yellow Pine Lumber outfit were within less than a half day’s ride on horseback from Mountain City. The result was that many men hereabouts had friends and acquaintances in the newly raided district, and presently the names of those who had been ruthlessly shot down were added to the news which Hank Webber and Will Banks, the guard who rode with him, had brought.

By the time word of this back-tracked along the stage road to reach the King Cannon ranch, Sundown was eddying into a turmoil. There were hard-eyed, angry men vowing that this was all the work of Steve Bordereau and that Jim Torrance had nothing to do with it; there were other men, those who had come to group strongly about Clark Murdo, who lifted voices no less strong and challenging in placing the onus of the whole affair where the first rumors had already put it, at Jim Torrance’s door.

“There’ll be fights over it tonight,” said Curly Redmond, who had raced back to the ranch with the news, “and it’ll be lucky for them that mixes in ’em if they’re only fist fights!”

“How do they dare say it was Jim Torrance?” cried Sally Dawn hotly. “As if anybody knew! If the men were all masked and all got away--”

“That’s what I wanted to know,” answered Curly, “and I asked all over, and at first nobody could guess at it any better’n I could; and then a feller told me that he heard Phil Moody say that Hank Webber said--”

“Just about what I expected!” sniffed Sally Dawn sarcastically. “What nice straight proof of anything!”

“Hold on, Sally,” cut in Dave Drennen. “Anyhow let’s get what Curly was going to say. Go ahead, Curly.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about it, but they say Hank said that at the bank hold-up, the bandana that the leader of the raiders was wearing slipped, and a man that was standing in the bank and skipped into a corner saw the robber’s face, and he said it was a man he used to know. He said it was Jim Torrance.”

Sally Dawn flared out. “It’s a lie!” Save for that single exclamation from her the little group which had gathered in the yard was hushed.

“Then there’s something else that they’re saying in town,” Curly went on. “At the Rock Valley Mine there was a sheet of paper stuck with a knife to a door. One of the big shots at the mine was killed; his name was Connoly; and on the paper it said, ‘Connoly did me dirt once, and this is what he gets for it.’ And it was signed with Jim Torrance’s name.”

Mrs. Sam patted Sally Dawn’s shoulder.

“I reckon that ought to let our Jim out,” she said drily. “He might be a robber all right, but he ain’t fool enough to do a thing like that.” And Sally Dawn caught her roughened hand and squeezed it with all her might.

But when she slipped away to be all alone and sat in a place that had been a favorite dreaming and brooding spot since childhood, where a big flat rock stood up commandingly from the hillside back of the house, and when she let her eyes traffic with the far-away stars, and the hush of night over the wide range lands was over her, she asked herself, “What do I really know about Jim Torrance?” She clung to the fact that he had been good to her. But how many and many a time had she been afraid of him? His face seemed to take form between her eyes and the sky and to come closer and to grow clearer; she could see again those hard, dark eyes which gave glimpses of mystery and perhaps of menace through the narrowed lids, and his mouth that at times frightened her, it could become so cruel and savage.

She jumped up and hurried back to the house, eager for companionship.

Rumors, rumors and rumors--they flew as swift and erratic and dark and elusive as night hawks. Sometimes they dealt with Steve Bordereau; they had him everywhere, on both sides of the international border. For the greatest part they bruited Jim Torrance’s name about. Again, he had fought with Bordereau and had been shot to death; he had been seen gambling for high stakes at High Crest; he had had a run-in with a sheriff of Morongo County and had been gathered in and had escaped; he was leading a bandit band, all killers, down near Nacional; he was headed back toward Sundown. Those were the tales a-wing, and there were many more of their sort--until at last a cleancut and definite word was brought of him.

It was Sam Pepper this time who brought the news out to the ranch from Sundown, Sam Pepper wild with excitement, thumping his heels into his horse’s flanks, beginning to shout through the dusk long before a word could be made out. So by the time he scrambled up onto the porch to his swiftly gathering audience, he was so out of breath he could hardly gasp out what he had to say.

“Now, Sam,” said Mrs. Sam sharply, “you go easy a minute and get your breath, else you’re going to bust a boiler, and I’ll be a handsome young widder woman and will up and marry Bill Yarbo. We ain’t going to run away, and whatever you’ve got to say will most likely keep.”

“J-Jim T-Torrance!” stammered Sam. “He--he--”

Sally Dawn, not in the least patient like Mrs. Sam, pounced on him and caught him by an arm and began to shake him. Then Sam got his story out.

“There’s been another hold-up, the biggest of the lot. Over to Canyon City. The biggest bank in seven counties. Cleaned out. I don’t know how many men was killed--but they say they nailed the boss robber this time. They say it sure was Jim Torrance. They say he’s shot all to hell and was left behind for dead--that he’s dying now--most likely dead by this time. And down in Sundown, Clark Murdo is serving free drinks and--”

He stopped for air. For a long, still moment no one said a word, but eyes went from Sam’s puckered face to other eyes and they were all alike in their expressions, all alike in that they stared out from under frowning brows. All, that is, saving Sally Dawn’s alone.

Hers were wide with horror. Her lips were parted; she had started to say something but had not spoken. The color seeped out of her cheeks until they were white.

“Sally--” said Mrs. Sam.

The girl whirled and ran into the house; they heard the door slam.

“Better go look after her, old lady,” Sam said to his wife. “Seems as though she’s hit hard; seems as though she’s sort of took a liking to this Jim Torrance.”

“Leave her alone,” snapped Mrs. Sam. “She’s all right, that girl is.”

Very swiftly Sally Dawn showed them just how all right she was. She came back, out onto the porch, pulling on a pair of gauntlets. In this short time she had jerked off her house dress and gotten into riding breeches and boots; she had a sweater over her arm and a little hat jammed down emphatically over her curls. The color had come back into her cheeks; there were twin hot spots in them and her eyes were shining.

“Sally!”

“Saddle me a horse, will you, Dave?” said Sally Dawn, as cool as “Good morning.”

“But where on earth--” began Mrs. Sam, only to be cut short with Sally Dawn’s counter question, “Where do you suppose?”

“But--”

“Will you saddle me a horse, Dave? Or will you, Curly? Or shall I?”

“It’s fifty mile--” expostulated Mrs. Sam.

“I don’t care if it’s five hundred!”

“And it’s almost dark--”

“Oh!”

Sally Dawn made a dart for the steps. Both Dave Drennen and Curly Redmond were galvanized; both sped away to the corrals. And what was more, when her horse was saddled, their two horses were saddled along with it.