Winning the Wilderness Part 53

Then, as an afterthought, Champers added:

"It's so danged hot this afternoon I can't get over to Gra.s.s River; and I got word to meet Jacobs over at the Little Wolf Ranch later, so I think I'll take the crooked trail up to that place; it's a lot the coolest road, and I'll wait till the sun's most down. I guess that three thousand dollar mortgage can wait over a day now, less you feel too cramped."

Thomas Smith rose from his chair. His face was ashy and his small black eyes burned with a wicked fire. He gave one long, steady look into Champers' face and slipped from the rear door like a shadow.

Darley Champers knew he had won the day, and no sense of personal danger had ever troubled him. He settled back in his chair, drew a long sigh of relief, and soon snored comfortably through his afternoon's nap.

When he awoke it was quite dark, for the storm cloud covered the sky and the hot breath from the west was like the air from a furnace mouth.

"It's not late, but it's danged hot. I wonder why that Jew wanted me to meet him over there. Couldn't he have come here? I'm wet with sweat now.

How'll I be by the time I get out to that ranch?" Champers stretched his limbs and mopped his hot neck with his handkerchief. "I reckon I'd better go, though. Jacobs always knows why he wants a thing. And he's the finest man ever came out of Jewey. With him in town and Asher Aydelot on a farm, no city nor rural communities could be more blessed."

Then he remembered Thomas Smith and a cold s.h.i.+ver seized his big, perspiring body.

"I wonder why I dread to go," he said, half aloud. "The creek trail will be cool, but, golly, I'm danged cold right now."

Again his mind ran to Smith's face as he had seen it last. He put on his hat and started to take his long raincoat off the hook behind the rear door.

"Reckon I'd better take it. It looks like storming," he muttered. "h.e.l.lo!

What the devil!"

For Rosie Gimpke, with blazing cheeks and hair dripping with perspiration, was hidden behind the coat.

"Oh, Mr. Champers, go queek and find Yon Yacob, but don't go the creek roat. I coom slippin' to tell you to go sure, and I hit when that strange man coom slippin' in. I hear all you say, an' I see him troo der crack here, an' he stant out there a long time looking back in here. So I half to wait an' you go nappin' an' I still wait. I wait to say, hurry, but don't go oop nor down der creek trail. I do anything for Miss s.h.i.+rley, an'

I like you for takin' care off her goot name; goot names iss hardt to get back if dey gets avay. Hurry."

"Heaven bless your good soul!" Champers said heartily. "But why not take the cool road? I've overslept and I've got to hurry and the storm's hustling in."

"Don't, please don't take it," Rosie begged.

The next minute she was gone and as Champers closed and locked his doors he said to himself, "She does her work like a hero and never will have any credit for it, 'cause she's not a pioneer nor a soldier. But she has saved more than one poor fellow snared into that joint I winked at for years."

Then, obedient to her urging, he followed the longer, hotter road toward the Jacobs' stock ranch bordering on Little Wolf Creek.

Meantime, John Jacobs inspected his property, forgetful of the intense heat and the coming storm, his mind full of a strange foreboding. At the top of the hill above where the road wound down through deep shadows he sat a long while on his horse. "I wonder what makes me so lonely this evening," he mused. "I'm not of a lonely nature, nor morose, thank the Lord! There's no telling why we do or don't want to do things. I wonder where Champers is. He ought to be coming up pretty soon. I wonder if I hadn't had that dream two nights ago about that picture I saw in a book, when I was a little chap, if I'd had this fool's cowardice about being out here alone today. And what was it that made me look over all those papers in my vault box last night? I have helped Careyville some, and the library I built will have a good endowment when I'm gone, and so will the children's park, and the Temperance Societies. Maybe I've not lived in vain, if I have been an exacting Jew. I never asked for the blood in my pound of flesh, anyhow. I wonder where Champers can be."

He listened intently and thought he heard someone coming around the bend down the darkening way.

"That's he, I guess, now," he said.

Then he turned his face toward the wide prairie unrolling to the westward.

Overhanging it were writhing clouds, hurled hither and thither, twisted, frayed, and burst asunder by the t.i.tanic forces of the upper air, and all converging with centripetal violence toward one vast maelstrom. Its long, funnel-shaped form dipped and lifted, trailing back and forth like some sensate thing. With it came an increasing roar from the clas.h.i.+ng of timber up the valley. The vivid shafts of lightning and the blackness that followed them made the scene terrific with Nature's majestic madness.

"I must get shelter somewhere," Jacobs said. "I am sorry Champers failed me. I wanted his counsel before I slipped up on Wyker tonight. I thought I heard him coming just now. Maybe he's waiting for me under cover. I'll go down and see."

The roar of the cyclone grew louder and the long swinging funnel lifted and dipped and lifted again, as the awful forces of the air hurled it onward.

Down at the sharp bend in the road Thomas Smith was crouching, just where the rift in the bank opened to the creek, and the face of the man was not good to look upon nor to remember.

"I'll show Darley Champers how well my left hand works. There'll be no telltale scar left on his face when I'm through, and he can tumble right straight down to the water from here and on to h.e.l.l, and Wyker's joint may bear the blame. d.a.m.ned old Dutchman, to turn me out now. I set him up in business when I had money. Here comes Champers now."

The storm-cloud burst upon the hill at that moment. John Jacobs' horse leaped forward on the steep slope, slid, and fell to its knees. As it sprang up again the two men could not see each other, for a flash of lightning blinded them and in the crash of thunder that burst at the same instant, filling the valley with deafening roar, the sharp report of a double pistol-shot was swallowed up.

An hour later Darley Champers, drenched with rain, stumbled down the crooked trail in the semi-darkness. The cool air came fanning out of the west and a faint rift along the horizon line gave promise of a glorious April sunset.

As Darley reached the twist in the trail which John Jacobs always dreaded, the place Thaine Aydelot and Leigh s.h.i.+rley had invested with sweet memories, he suddenly drew his rein and stared in horror.

Lying in the rift with his head toward the deep waters of Little Wolf Creek lay Thomas Smith, scowling with unseeing eyes at the fast clearing sky. While on the farther side of the road lay the still form of John Jacobs, rain-beaten and smeared with mud, as if he had struggled backward in his death-throes.

As Champers bent tenderly over him, the smile on his lips took away the awfulness of the sight, and the serenity of the rain-drenched face rested as visible token of an abundant entrance into eternal peace.

Gra.s.s River and Big Wolf settlements had never before known a tragedy so appalling as the a.s.sa.s.sination of John Jacobs at the hands of an "unknown"

man. Hans Wyker had gone to Kansas City on the day before the event and Wykerton never saw his face again. Rosie Gimpke, who did not know the stranger's name, and Darley Champers, who thought he did, believed nothing could be gained by talking, so they held their peace. And Thomas Smith went "unknown" back to the dust of the prairie in the Gra.s.s River graveyard.

The coroner tried faithfully to locate the blame. But as Jacobs was unarmed and was shot from the front, and the stranger had only one bullet in his revolver and was shot from behind, and as n.o.body lost nor gained by not untangling the mystery, the affair after a nine days' complete thres.h.i.+ng, went into local history, the place of sepulchre.

CHAPTER XXI

JANE AYDELOT'S WILL

Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice, O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best That Heaven itself could give thee--rest.

--Snow Bound.

Darley CHAMPERS sat in his little office absorbed in business. The May morning was ideal. Through the front door the sounds of the street drifted in. Through the rear door the roomy backyard, which was Champers' one domestic pleasure, sent in an odor of white lilac. By all the rules Champers should have preferred hollyhocks and red peonies, if he had cared for flowers at all. It was for the memory of the old mother, whom he would not turn adrift to please a frivolous wife, that he grew the white blossoms she had loved. But as he never spoke of her, nor seemed to see any other flowers, n.o.body noticed the peculiarity.

"I wonder how I missed that mail?" he mused, as he turned a foreign envelope in his hands. "I reckon the sight of that poor devil, Smith, dropping into town so suddenly five days ago upset me so I forgot my mail and went to see the s.h.i.+rleys. And the hot afternoon and Smith's coming in here, and--"Darley leaned back in his chair and sighed.

"Poor Jacobs! Why should he be taken? Smith was gunning for me and mistook his man. Lord knows I wasn't fit to go."

He leaned his elbow heavily on the table, resting his head on his hand.

"If Jacobs went on in my place, sacrificed for my sins, so help me G.o.d, I'll carry on his work here. I'll fight the liquor business to the end of my days. There shan't no joint nor doggery never open a door on Big Wolf no more. I'll do a man's part for the world I've been doin' for my own profit most of my life."

His brow cleared, and a new expression came to the bluff countenance. The humaneness within him was doing its perfect work.

"But about this mail, now." He took up the letter again. "Carey says he ain't coming back. Him and young Aydelot's dead sure to go to China soon.

An' I'm to handle his business as per previous directions. This is the first of it. Somebody puttin' on mournin' style, I reckon."

Champers took up a black-edged envelope, whose contents told him as Dr.

Horace Carey's representative that Miss Jane Aydelot of Cloverdale was no longer living and much more as unnecessary to the business of the moment as a black-bordered envelope is unnecessary to the business of life. Then he opened a drawer in his small office safe and took out a bundle of letters.

"Here's a copy of her will. That's to go to Miss s.h.i.+rley to read. An' a copy of old Francis Aydelot's will. What's the value of that, d' you reckon? Also to be showed to Miss Leigh s.h.i.+rley. An' here's--what?"