Chapter XIV

Jim Torrance lay flat on his back in bed--and he didn’t know in what bed or in what house--and he didn’t even know that he was in any bed at all. He opened his eyes and looked about him dully, puzzled yet not greatly concerned. Then he strove to move slightly and was so wrenched with pain that an involuntary groan parted his pallid lips.

A face bent over him. He saw it only vaguely, an unfamiliar face of a middle-aged woman, one that looked above all other things capable. Old Doc Kibbee, of Canyon City, whenever he had a patient who demanded the best to be had in nursing, sent for Nancy Hamilton. And Nancy Hamilton now leaned over Torrance and put a calm, steady hand on his forehead and said gently yet in the tone of one who commands:

“There now, just you lay still, Mr. Torrance. You’re doing fine.”

“I don’t know who you are--I don’t know where I am,” he muttered, and closed his eyes and let his head loll to one side. She stepped to a table for a bottle and spoon and glass, but a glance over her shoulder showed her that his eyes were closed, that he was either asleep again from sheer exhaustion and weakness and the shock of pain, or was dying. Efficient and practiced as she was, there were times when she couldn’t tell. She went back to her rocking chair and dropped down heavily into it; she herself was haggard, worn out, her eyes thumbed deep into their sockets from all she had gone through since she had been sent for.

The man in bed lay still a long while, existence become for him a sort of gray haze twisting into a thousand misty labyrinths. He had moments of semi-consciousness but nothing mattered, nothing that had happened or that they did with him. He swallowed the liquids that were forced between his teeth and lay inert for long periods, neither awake nor asleep. The doctor came and went, and he knew of the visits but was not greatly concerned. Doc Kibbee talked aside with the nurse; he did not even try to listen.

He went to sleep and slept deeply for two solid hours; Nancy Hamilton sank gratefully deep down into her big chair and relaxed. She too slept. But when he awoke, there she was standing over him, saying: “Just you lay still, Mr. Torrance. You’re doing fine.”

He nodded this time. Either something they had given him or his rest made him feel stronger; his head was clearer, he thought.

Again he slept. Again he woke. This time he stared up in puzzled fashion, a heavy frown of concentration dragging his black brows down. He began to grow confused; he guessed his head hadn’t cleared after all. For the nurse had changed miraculously. Just now she had been a capable looking middle-aged woman. And here she was young and flushed and very bright-eyed and incredibly pretty, and she looked just exactly like Sally Dawn Cannon.

He closed his eyes an instant. Sally Dawn was as still as a mouse. He opened them quickly as though to catch the nurse at her tricks if she was trying any funny business on him.

“Sally Dawn!”

“Sh! You’re not to talk.” She stooped closer and for a fleeting second her cheek was against his on the pillow, her curls making him intensely aware of their softly brushing caress. “Jim!” she whispered.

“But look here--”

She stood erect, rosier than ever, and put a finger ever so softly on his lips.

“Your nurse is resting; she said I could sit with you a little while if I promised to call her if you wouldn’t just be quiet and rest.”

She always thought of his eyes as being narrowed, as though he were forever on guard, watchful and suspicious and hard. Now she saw them open up wide, quite as though they had to do that to take her all in, and she discovered that they were not absolutely night-black, but that there was a hint of warm brown in them. She smiled at him and patted his hand; his fingers curled slowly and with the gentlest pressure about hers....

Sally Dawn had already had a talk with Doc Kibbee, a chubby, pink-cheeked, hearty old fellow with snow-white mustache and imperial and sharp, wise eyes. She had commanded anxiously, “Tell me about him!”

He had hunched up his thick, round shoulders.

“How should I know? Me, I’m not much of a doctor anyhow. He’s been shot close up and lost some blood; he was hammered over the head from behind by a club or a gun barrel, and first I thought he might have a fractured skull. ’Tain’t so though. That’s what I’m always doing with patients of mine until they up and die on me--making mistakes and--”

“Doctor Kibbee! Don’t I know all about you? You’re the finest doctor that ever was! You--”

“What do _you_ know about me? I never saw you before!”

“But you did! You were a friend of King Cannon’s, weren’t you? For years and years? Well, I’m his daughter.”

“My, my!” he said. “You, King Cannon’s kid!”

“Now tell me! And tell me the truth about him.”

“Hm.” He stared at her and appeared to consider. Then, very gruff about it, he shot his own question at her: “What are you all warmed up about it for? Happen to know this Torrance?”

“Of course I do! That’s why I’m here. He--he’s the finest friend I ever had!”

Her words didn’t please him. He snorted at her.

“You’re a little fool, that’s what you are. All you young pretty girls seem to be infernal damn fools sooner or later about some no ’count, and most generally it’s sooner. Know who and what he is--and how come he’s shot up the way he is?”

“I’ve heard a lot of crazy rumors--”

“Rumors, my eye! He’s one of the gang that held up the bank right here in Canyon City, that killed Phil Gates, the cashier, that’s made off with Bill Hasbrook, the bank president, and has probably cut his throat long before now and thrown him down in a gully somewhere. That’s who your friend Torrance is.”

“Why, Doctor Kibbee!” she gasped at him. “If anybody’s an old fool--”

“If you call _him_ a friend,” he cut in bruskly, “you just go and get down on your knees and pray he dies in bed. Most likely he will anyhow, being that he’s a patient of mine. That’s what happens with me right along. Just as sure as he gets well enough to stand the shock, the boys are going to hang him good and high.”

“They won’t! They mustn’t! Oh, can’t you see it’s all just a horrible mistake?”

* * * * *

After her visit with Torrance, which lasted two hours, with him sleeping most of that time, she had a few words with Dave Drennen and Curly Redmond whom she found waiting for her outside the little house in which Jim Torrance was hospitalized. They looked unhappy, both of them, and uncertain; they shifted their boots in the dust of the road and looked furtively at each other rather than at her. Her little chin, which was emphatic enough at times despite its lack of ruggedness and square lines, came up.

“I know,” she said tartly. “You’ve been over at the saloon having a drink--and you got to talking and asking questions and getting answers--and you believe all they tell you. Oh, you make me sick!”

“It’s tough, Sally, and sorta hard to take,” said Dave doggedly. “But there’s no use trying to dodge facts. There was a hold-up, there were men killed and a bank robbed--and he’d been off and away with his crowd only he got dropped and left behind. He’d have swung for it before now, only the boys up here can’t see anything in hanging a man while he’s unconscious first and so damn near dead next. They’re just giving him time. You better come home.”

She pointed to the squat, sturdy building next door.

“That’s the jail, I suppose?”

“Yes, it is, Sally; and he’d be in there now, only the sheriff--”

Sally Dawn smiled at the two boys very sweetly, so sweetly indeed that both began shifting uneasily again.

“Thank you, boys, for having brought me over,” she said. “You can go home now if you want to.”

“Oh, hell,” said Curly Redmond, and Dave silently concurred as Sally Dawn headed straight to the jail.

“Drink, Curly?” suggested Dave Drennen.

“It’s an idea,” admitted Curly gloomily.

* * * * *

In an untidy little office cozily close to the strongly barred room which served Canyon City as its jail, Sally Dawn found the county sheriff. He was a man of equal vintage with Doc Kibbee, which is to say somewhere around sixty, and looked like something carelessly hacked out of mahogany. He was mahogany-colored and wore habitually a perfectly wooden lack of expression; he had enormous black eyebrows which looked artificial, great tufts that might have been stuck on for a masquerade, a heavy, uptwisted, black and impossible mustache and a clean-shaven, ruthless, square chin. Even his eyes looked false, they were so steady, and bright and expressionless as shoe buttons.

His boots were cocked up on top of a table littered with papers, which gave her the impression of having gathered there undisturbed for years; and along with the litter were an empty ink bottle, a couple of rusty pens, an ancient Colt forty-four, with neither hammer nor trigger, which served as a paper weight, an old long-roweled Mexican spur and a serviceable Winchester thirty-thirty. A good bit of this detail so forced itself on her that she took it in with one flick of her eager eyes; after that she saw only the man.

“You are Sheriff Evans?” she asked.

She smiled at him as at an old friend.

He remained utterly motionless, not so much as a ripple stirring him; she couldn’t even see that he breathed. Certainly he did not take his feet down from his table, nor did he remove the broad black hat that was already pushed as far back on his head as it would go, nor for a long moment did he speak. He was looking toward her, whether at her or not, and was perhaps continuing a chain of thought her entrance had interrupted--provided of course he was even thinking.

At last he said in a quiet, low-toned voice, “Yes.”

“I came to talk to you about Jim Torrance. He--he is a friend of mine.”

She waited for him to speak; he didn’t. He didn’t have anything to say; in his turn he waited for her to speak.

“He’s not a bad man,” she said with a passionate fervor that put a quiver into her voice. “He’s not a robber. He didn’t have anything to do with that bank hold-up; I know he didn’t!”

Sheriff Evans didn’t say anything one way or the other. Sally Dawn, already so overwrought with anxiety, flared up with anger.

“Do you hear me?” she cried hotly. “Do you hear me? Why don’t you say something?”

“What’ll I say?” he asked.

“Say--say anything! Don’t just sit there like a--like a-- Say that you don’t believe me, if that’s what you think.”

“I don’t believe you. Jim Torrance is as guilty as hell. I’d have him here in jail right now only I’m hoping, give him the best of care, to do two things. One is, get him to talk. The other is, hang him.”

“How do you know that he is guilty?”

“He was one of the gang that robbed the Canyon City Bank. One of ’em that killed Phil Gates, the cashier. One of ’em that made away with Will Hasbrook, the bank president. One of the gang that got away with thirty thousand dollars that day--only he didn’t happen to get away.”

“You were there? You saw it all? You saw him--”

“Nope. I wasn’t there. Tom Long was, though; Tom’s a deputy of mine. He got shot, Tom did, and’s a right sick man now. But he shot Jim Torrance before he went dark.”

Sally Dawn whirled about and went to a dingy window and made pretence of looking out, an utter impossibility, considering the unwashed state of the windowpane and the watery blur that came into her eyes. She stood with a small fist clenched, gnawing at her knuckles, biting at them to keep the tears back, to keep from bursting out hysterically. Presently in a very small voice, without turning, she said, “You’re not very sympathetic, are you, Mr. Walt Evans?”

“No. Not with any friend of this man’s. Happens Phil Gates was a friend of mine. Happens it’s the same with Will Hasbrook. Happens--”

“Happens you ever had any other friends? Happens you ever knew a man named King Cannon?”

“Hell’s bells!” said Sheriff Evans and sounded almost, not quite, human. “What about King Cannon? He’s been dead years now.”

Sally Dawn turned slowly and looked him in the eye.

“Happens I’m his daughter,” she said coolly. “Happens, when I was a little tyke, you and Doc Kibbee and Daddy--”

Walt Evans’ feet came down off the desk then like something hurled by an explosion, and he surged to his feet as quick as any boy, and his battered old black hat came off his head with something next door to a flourish--all this pretty much in one gesture.

“Sally Dawn Cannon!” he exclaimed, and sounded altogether and warmly human. “Well, I’m damned!” He looked at her with new eyes; he put out a big leathery paw and caught her hand and came close to breaking the bones in it. “And at that I might have known! I always said you’d grow up into the prettiest girl that ever sprung a dimple. Why, you little devil! Come here to me!”

He gathered her into his arms, lifted her clean off the floor and kissed her.

“Will you offer me a chair now, Mr. Evans? And will you let us talk together?” It was a flushed, breathless, and very eager Sally Dawn speaking.

“I heard about your good mother--”

“Don’t! I can’t talk about that. Not yet! And there are other things that happened down at Sundown--”

“Yes; I heard about some of them, too. Just garbled gossip, that’s all I got. I was going down to see you-- Dammit, I haven’t been down that way since your old man died, have I? I ought to be kicked-- Want to tell me about all these happenings?”

“Yes! That way I’ll be telling you about Jim Torrance, all I know about him, and then-- Well, _you’ll_ see!”

Long before she had finished, old Walt Evans was frowning and tugging at a lower lip, and his eyes, from being merely bleak, grew wintery, the sort of winter that now and again lights up to a flash of lightning.

“You’re one hell-of-a-lot like your old man, Sally Dawn,” he said soberly. “He was a man you could tie to, and somehow, kid that you are, I’d like to string all my chips along with you. Maybe you’re right as rain--and maybe, just being a girl and having a man like Jim Torrance look at you, you’ve got your heart, God bless it, all mixed up with your brains.”

“No!” said Sally Dawn, knowing what he meant. “No! I tell you this is all Steve Bordereau’s work, and that Jim Torrance is out with all he’s got to break Bordereau down, and somehow he’s got caught wrong in the thing that Bordereau has just pulled off.”

“Maybe,” said the sheriff. “Maybe. Only it looks bad. It looks so bad that, while I’d rather cut off a thumb than go against you, I’m as sure as Billy-be-damned that this Torrance has made a sucker of you. Here; look at this. Nobody but you and me knows a thing about it; I’ll ask you to take a look at it and then forget it. That means, keep your mouth shut.”

She nodded, he thought, just the way old King Cannon used to do, and a nod from that old boy was worth as much as reams of legal phrasings with signatures and seals and notaries’ stamps affixed.

From the pocket of an open, sagging vest he pulled a folded sheet of paper. He gave it to her and stood back, watching her read the few lines:

Dear Walt: They’ve got me, and it’s going to be up to you whether I
get out alive or not. They’d cut my throat in a minute. So, Walt,
hold your hand. It’s ransom, of course. I’ll be sending you another
note in a day or so. Don’t try to follow the man who brings it; don’t
do anything. Just wait. They hold the cards, and I’d rather pay than
kick off. This is damned serious, Walt.

Yours,
Bill Hasbrook.

P.S. They left one of their men behind, pretty badly hurt, I think, a
man named Jim Torrance. Hold on to him; give him the best of care; I
guess they’ll want him sent back to them along with some money; he’s
the boss of the gang. If anything happens to him, they say the same
thing will happen to me. Watch your step, Walt.

Bill.

When she had finished reading, “Now what?” said Sheriff Evans.

“I--I don’t understand,” said Sally Dawn in a small voice.

He put his big hand very lightly and sympathetically on her shoulder.

“It’s kind of easy to understand, Sally,” he said gravely. “This Torrance sort of stands out; he’s not the common run; he’s born to be a leader. What he is is the head of this gang. You can’t get away from it.”

“He isn’t! I know he isn’t! He--he is fine, Walt Evans!”

And in answer Sheriff Walt Evans leaned comfortably on those two good old Western Crutches, saying, “_Sure_, Sally Dawn, _sure_.” But nonetheless he had his mind made up, and she knew it. And her own mind was terribly unsettled. This letter from Hasbrook, president of the bank, a captive to the bank robbers, a man being held for ransom, seemed to come straight from the shoulder; and he said, “He’s the boss of the gang.”

She didn’t know what to think--but she did know what to do. She was going to stick by Jim Torrance through thick and thin, as he had stuck by her when her need was sorest. She went straight back to his bedside and there she meant to stay.

Sheriff Walt Evans went back to his chair, hoisted his boots up on top of his untidy table and read Hasbrook’s letter all over again. Sally Dawn would have been greatly surprised if she could have known just how that shrewd old brain of his was ticking. He started wriggling the toes in his boots; it must have been to them that he spoke when he said softly:

“He called me ‘Walt’ four times in this damfool letter. And he signed himself ‘Bill.’”