Hidden Gold Part 28

"What are you talking about?" Dorothy's eyes, too, were blazing now, but more in champions.h.i.+p of Wade than of herself. She still did not fully understand the drift of what Miss Rexhill had said.

"Really, you are almost amusing." Helen looked at her through half-closed lids. "You are quite freakish. I suppose you must be a moral degenerate, or something of the sort." She waited for the insult to sink in, but Dorothy was fairly dazed and bewildered. "Do you want me to call things by their true names?"

"Yes," answered Dorothy, "I do. Tell me what you are talking about."

"I don't mind, I'm sure. Plain speaking has never bothered me. It's the deed that's horrible, not the name. You were found in Mr. Moran's office with Mr. Wade, late at night, misbehaving yourself. Do you dare to come now to me and...."

"That is not true!" The denial came from Dorothy with an intensity that would have carried conviction to any person less infuriated than the woman who faced her. "Oh!" Dorothy raised her hands to her throat as though struggling for breath. "I never dreamed you meant that. It's a deliberate lie!"

In the grip of their emotions, neither of the girls had noticed the entrance of Senator Rexhill. Helen saw him first and dramatically pointed to him.

"There is my father. Ask him!"

"I do not need to ask him what I've done." Dorothy felt as though she would suffocate. "No one would believe that story of Gordon, whatever they might think of me."

"Ask me? Ask me what?" the Senator nervously demanded. He had in his pocket a telegram just received from Was.h.i.+ngton, stating that the cavalry would be sent from Fort Mackenzie only at the request of the Governor of Wyoming. The Governor was not at all likely to make such a request, and Rexhill was more worried than he had been before, in years.

He could only hope that Tug Bailey would escape capture. "Who is this?"

He put on his gla.s.ses, and deliberately looked Dorothy over. "Oh, it's the young woman whom Race found in his office."

"She has come here to plead for Gordon Wade--to demand that I tell her where he is now. I don't know, of course; none of us know; but I wouldn't tell her if I did." Helen spoke triumphantly.

"You had better leave us," Rexhill said brusquely to Dorothy. "You are not wanted here. Go home!"

While they were talking, Dorothy had looked from one to the other with the contempt which a good woman naturally feels when she is impugned.

Now she crossed the room and confronted the Senator.

"Did you tell your daughter that I was caught in your office with Gordon Wade?" she demanded; and before her steady gaze Rexhill winced.

"You don't deny it, do you?" he bl.u.s.tered.

"I don't deny being there with him, and I won't deny anything else to such a man as you. I'm too proud to. For your own sake, however, you would have done better not to have tried to blacken me." She turned swiftly to his daughter. "Perhaps you don't know all that I supposed you did. We were in Moran's office--Mr. Wade and myself--because we felt sure that your father had some criminal purpose here in Crawling Water.

We were right. We found papers showing the location of gold on Mr.

Wade's ranch, which showed your father's reasons for trying to seize the land."

Helen laughed scornfully.

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

"No, of course not," her father growled. "Come on up to our rooms. Let her preach here until she is put out." He was on his way to the door when the vibrant command in Dorothy's voice halted him.

"Wait. You'd better listen to me, for it's the last chance you'll have.

I have you absolutely at my mercy. I've caught you! You are trapped!"

There was no doubting that the girl believed what she said, and the Senator's affairs were in a sufficiently precarious state to bid him pause.

"Nonsense!" He made his own tone as unconcerned as he could, but there was a look of haunting dread in his eyes.

"Senator Rexhill,"--Dorothy's voice was low, but there was a quality in it which thrilled her hearers,--"when my mother and I visited your daughter a few days ago, she gave my mother a blotter. There was a picture on it that reminded my mother of me as a child; that was why she wanted it. It has been on my mother's bureau ever since. I never noticed anything curious about it until this evening." She looked, with a quiet smile at Helen. "Probably you forgot that you had just blotted a letter with it."

Helen started and went pale, but not so pale as her father, who went so chalk-white that the wrinkles in his skin looked like make-up, against its pallor.

"I was holding that blotter before the looking-gla.s.s this evening,"

Dorothy continued, in the same low tone, "and I saw that the ink had transferred to the blotter a part of what you had written. I read it. It was this: 'Father knew Santry had not killed Jensen....'"

The Senator moistened his lips with his tongue and strove to chuckle, but the effort was a failure. Helen, however, appeared much relieved.

"I remember now," she said, "and I am well repaid for my moment of sentiment. I was writing to my mother and was telling her of a scene that had just taken place between Mr. Wade and my father. I did not write what you read; rather, it was not all that I wrote. I said--'Gordon thought that father knew Santry had not killed Jensen.'"

"Have you posted that letter?" her father asked, repressing as well as he could his show of eagerness.

"No. I thought better about sending it. I have it upstairs."

"If you hadn't it, of course you could write it again, in any shape you chose," Dorothy observed crisply, though she recognized, plainly enough, that the explanation was at least plausible.

"There is nothing in that," Rexhill declared, when he had taken a deep breath of relief. "Your champions.h.i.+p of Wade is running away with you.

What other--er!--grave charges have you to bring against me?"

"I have one that is much more grave," she retorted, so promptly that he could not conceal a fresh start of uneasiness. "This morning, Mr.

Trowbridge and I were out for a ride. We rode over to the place where Jensen was shot, and Mr. Trowbridge found there a cartridge sh.e.l.l which fits only one gun in Crawling Water. That gun belongs to a man named Tug Bailey."

By now Rexhill was thoroughly aroused, for although he was too good a jurist not to see the flaws in so incomplete a fabric of evidence against him, he was impressed with the influence such a story would exert on public opinion. If possible, this girl's tongue must be stopped.

"Pooh!" He made a fine show of indifference. "Why bring such tales to me? You'd make a very poor lawyer, young woman, if you think that such rumors will serve to impeach a man of my standing."

"There is a warrant out for Bailey," Dorothy went on quietly. "If he is caught, and I choose to make public what I know and can guess, I am sure that you will never reach a court. You underestimate the people here. I would not have to prove what I have told you. I need only to proclaim it, and--I don't know what they'd do to you. It makes me a bit sick to think about it."

The thought made the Senator sick, too, for of late he had seen that things were going very badly for him. He was prepared to temporize, but there was no need for him to contemplate surrender, or flight, so long as Bailey remained at large. If the man were captured, and there was likelihood of a confession being wrung from him, then most decidedly discretion would be the better part of valor.

"Oh, of course," he confessed, "I am willing to admit that in such a community as this you might make trouble, unjustly, for me and my daughter. I am anxious to avoid that, because my interests are valuable here and I have my daughter's safety to consider."

"Don't think of me," Helen interposed quickly. Above all fear for herself would be the shame of being beaten by Dorothy and of having her triumph go to the making of Wade's happiness. The thought of that appeared far worse to her mind than any physical suffering. "Do what you think is right. We are not cowards."

"But I must think of you, my dear. I am responsible to your mother." He turned to Dorothy again. "How much do you want?"

"How much? Oh!" She flushed hotly beneath the insult, but she chose to ignore it. "There is only one price that will purchase my silence. Tell me where Mr. Wade is?"

"Bless my soul, I don't know." The Senator affected a display of injured innocence, which sat oddly upon his harried countenance. "I am willing to do what I can to save trouble, but I can't do the impossible."

For a moment, in a wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told herself that she must keep her countenance, and she did so.

"There is not a man in Crawling Water who does not believe that Race Moran is responsible for Mr. Wade's disappearance," she declared. "That is another thing that you should consider, for it is one more link in the chain of evidence--impressions, you may call them, but they will be accepted as evidence by Wade's friends."

Rexhill was considering it, and swiftly, in the light of the visit he had had from Trowbridge. The cattleman had left him with a distinct feeling that every word spoken had been meant. "If we can prove it against you, we'll ride you to h.e.l.l on a rail." The language was melodramatic, but it seemed very suggestive as the Senator called it to mind. He regretted that he had supported Moran in his l.u.s.t for revenge.

The lawless spirit of the West seemed to have poisoned his own blood, but somehow the feeling of indifference as to suffering personal violence had been left out, and he realized that the West was no place for him.

"Even so," he said pompously, "even if what you say of Moran should prove true, it does not follow that I know it, or am a party to it. Race Moran is his own master."

"He is your employee--your agent--and you are responsible for what he does in your behalf," Dorothy retorted desperately. "Why do you bandy words with me like this? You may be able to do it with me, but don't think that you can do it with Mr. Trowbridge, and the others, if I tell them what I know. I tell you, you can't. You feel safe before me alone, but you are in much greater danger than you think. You don't seem to realize that I am holding your lives in my hand."