The Trail of Conflict Part 24

"But Carey is----"

"Send him out," Beechy reiterated weakly and closed his eyes as though he were again slipping into a coma.

"You'd better go, Jim. There's some deviltry afoot and Beechy knows what it is. Send Mother Eagan down in ten minutes if she can be spared."

Carey looked down at the motionless figure on the bed.

"I wonder if he knows anything about Small," he whispered. "He left early this morning and----"

"You mean?"

"The same," answered Carey enigmatically and left the cabin. The wind banged the door after him. Benson could see Beechy wince. Then he was conscious of what was going on about him.

"He's gone, Carl," he whispered.

Beechy's lips twisted in a smile as he opened his eyes, and eased himself on his elbow.

"I reckoned we'd shake him if I played 'possum. I'm feelin' better every minute. Get a paper and pencil, Mr. Benson. I want you to take something down for me. This bogus heart of mine is likely to pound on for years, then again it may shut up shop any minute."

"I'll do it, Beechy, but first, tell me about Mrs. Courtlandt. I must know that she is safe."

"She's safe, all right. She started for the X Y Z and Greyson. I kept my brain steady till she got out of sight. She was ridin' her own horse.

I'm not deceiving you. I wouldn't have any harm come to her for her own sake, let alone the Lieutenant's. Now you listen and put down what I tell you, _sabe_?"

Beechy told the story of his acquaintance with Ranlett, with frequent pauses for rest and to get his breath. Someone on the border, he wouldn't tell who, had sent him to the manager of the Double O. Outside the wind rose steadily. It flung itself against the corners of the small building, it shook the window frames as a terrier does a rat; the flame in the lamp flickered and steadied.

"Get me straight, Mr. Benson," Beechy concluded. "I ain't excusing myself. I was dead wrong--but Ranlett caught me when I was bitter and discouraged. He set out as how we were to pull off this hold-up on a carful of gold belonging to some 1917-18 millionaires that had made their money in munitions. Then this morning I got a hint 'twas government money. I up an' had it out with Ranlett. I allowed I'd touch nothin' belonging to the government. His eyes got like red-hot coals.

'You don't think for a minute you'll get away with turning goody-goody after hearin' my plans, do you?' says he, his hand twitching. 'No, I don't, Ranlett,' says I, 'but you want to remember that thievin's one thing an' murder's another.' Then crack! It was like a sh.e.l.l burstin'

and I didn't know anythin' more till I looked up into what seemed two s.h.i.+mmery gold stars--the Lieutenant's wife was holdin' me."

"Who hit you? Ranlett?"

"Not on your life! He ain't takin' no chances. He wasn't even figurin'

in the hold-up to-night; he is to direct operations from a dugout in the rear. It was Carey's range-rider."

"What!"

"Somewhere he'd found out I was linked up with the Lieutenant. Now you know why I wouldn't tell before----Who's coming?"

The knock preceded the entrance of Mother Eagan. She fairly blew into the room. Her round, s.h.i.+ning face was red; she was panting from exertion. The man on the bed straightened up, smoothed his hair, adjusted the collar of his s.h.i.+rt and turned reckless, smiling blue eyes upon his visitor. She was a woman, therefore to be impressed, irrespective of age or size or charm. That was Beechy, Benson thought as he watched him. He was a curious combination of characteristics. The woman looked from one to the other.

"Where's the man I was sent down to drag back to life?" she asked with a good-natured chuckle. Her eyes lingered on Beechy. "Sure you don't look sick to me."

Benson slipped the paper he held into his pocket.

"Make him lie down and keep quiet, Mother Eagan, and put something on that bruise. I'll go on to the X Y Z now that you're being taken care of, Beechy."

"Righto. Mr. Greyson may need help in that little matter I was tellin'

you about. Mother Eagan, it sure is good to see you. You're the handsomest white woman I've seen since I left the border--you----"

Benson closed the cabin door behind him. Beechy was incorrigible, but Mother Eagan was fool-proof. She'd laugh and volley back at him while she made his poor, racked body comfortable.

When Tommy reached the pack-trail which led toward the X Y Z he pulled up his horse. He looked back at the buildings of the B C ranch, then speculatively at the hill behind them. On the other side of that Beechy had left Ranlett. Suppose, just suppose, that the late manager of the Double O was not incapacitated to the extent his a.s.sailant thought?

Suppose that he should be able to make his getaway? To put the bandits on their guard? Mrs. Steve was doubtless with Greyson by this time planning to checkmate the bad men. Wasn't it up to him to make sure of The Skunk?

Without giving his b.u.mp of caution time to rouse from its habitual state of coma, Tommy made for the hill. Lightning crackled the sky, the rain came.

"'It ain't no use to grumble and complain, It's every bit as easy to rejoice When the Lord sorts out the weather and sends rain, Rain's my choice,'"

he quoted with cheery philosophy as he pulled the broad brim of his hat down and the collar of his s.h.i.+rt up.

The spectral grove was a protection from wind and rain when he entered it. He dismounted when he reached the pines on the crest of the hill from which he could look down into Buzzard's Hollow. Fortunately he knew every foot of the surrounding country. In the years he had been at the Double O he had explored foot-hills and valleys, had fished in the streams that crossed them.

With flash-light in one hand and his forty-five in the other Benson waited for the lightning. He must get his bearings. The storm rattled and crashed among the mountains. It was deafening--but--what was that?

In the interval between crashes he had caught another sound. It was the spasmodic roar and hum of a plane. It was a sinister sound in that place at that hour. In a flash Tommy's mind reverted to the plane which had pa.s.sed over the stream on Sunday. Again he heard Courtlandt's curt answer to his question, "Nothing, except that your information confirms me in my suspicion that Marks and Schoeffleur signaled that pilot when he went over." Was that the reason the two men had been missing this morning when Gerrish rounded up the outfit to send them in search of the runaway Shorthorns?

Benson's hands were like ice as standing behind the bole of a giant spruce he watched the progress of the aeroplane. The lightning flashed steadily. Against the glare of the sky the great shape was silhouetted.

Almost instantly as though a.s.sured of his bearings, the pilot shut off his motor and spiraled down toward the hollow. The machine lighted as softly on the carpet of tumbleweed as might a fluff of thistle-down. It made a smooth three-point landing.

"That pilot's a veteran, none of the amateur's b.u.mp in his," Benson muttered, at the same time subconsciously thanking the great G.o.d Thor for his cooperation as he took advantage of a reverberating roll of thunder to slide down the hillside. He went so amazingly fast that he would have come up against the wall of the shack with a crash had he not seized a shrub and stopped himself in time. Through the cracks between the imperfectly matched boards that made the wall he could see light. On hands and knees, his heart thumping as only that well-regulated organ can thump in the breast of a brave man who realizes the risk he is running, Tommy put his ear to a crack. He heard the sound of voices, his nostrils were filled with the odor of cigarette smoke. He recognized Ranlett's high pitched nasal tones. Evidently the pilot had brought a pa.s.senger, for Benson could distinguish two other voices. The late manager's was weak, as though with pain, but it held an ugly note.

"That's better, Marks. That'll stop the bleeding. I was a fool to try to follow that fellow Beechy. But--but I was mad to get at him. Bill Small swore that he'd fixed him so that he wouldn't move again--I don't know now whether he believed it or whether he was trying to double-cross me."

"Nice fella, Beechy. We'd better be getting out of this; he may give the alarm." Benson had never heard the voice before. It was thick and guttural and evidently belonged to the pilot. Marks must have been the pa.s.senger.

"He can't. He's all in. He could hardly get up that hill. Bad heart.

Even if he told the girl----"

"A girl in it! Good day! I'm through!"

"Hold on, young feller! Don't get cold feet so easily. I--I don't know where he met up with her--but--she can't get far. There is no telephone at the B C and the lines connecting the X Y Z and the Double O with each other and Slippy Bend are 'Out of order.'" There was a sardonic note in his voice as he mimicked the stereotyped words. "We're safe, I tell you.

The boys will pull off that stunt and come winging back here laden with silver bricks before any of that bunch can get anywhere. No one will think of looking here for the loot; it's too near the centre of sheriffville. We'll take what silver we can in the plane and the boys can cache the rest till the excitement has died down. Simms will be sound asleep in his bed at Upper Farm by the time the authorities get round to him. He can s.h.i.+p us a silver brick in a tub of b.u.t.ter at his discretion. I tell you, it's a cinch," he exulted a sound midway between a chuckle and a groan.

With a crash, as though the resident giant in a pa.s.sion of rage had knocked the rocky crowns of the mountains together, the storm spent itself. In an incredibly short time the moon began to peer from between scudding clouds. Benson crept slowly round the shack, his mind seething with anger and resentment. Both ranches cut off! Where was Mrs. Steve?

Moving when the moon was obscured, burrowing in the soaked tumbleweed when it emerged from hiding, Benson made his way slowly and with infinite caution to the aircraft. He crept round it till the plane, which looked like nothing so much as a Brobdingnagian bird of prey, was between him and the shack. He looked up at it. Suppose there were someone in it! For an instant his heart obstructed his breathing. He must know. He scratched one wing with his flash-light. To his taut nerves it seemed as though the sound reverberated among the foot-hills.

Surely a person on guard would respond to that.

Rea.s.sured by the silence within the machine, Benson groped along the side of the plane until he located the pilot's seat. He climbed in.

Silently expeditiously, he did a few things to the steering gear and wrecked the throttle. "You won't transport many silver bricks in this, young feller," he muttered grimly. Knowledge of any kind was a valuable commodity to have packed in one's kit-bag, he thought, as he cautiously climbed down from the machine. Thanks to the few months spent in the hangar of an aviation field in the spring of '17, he had known where and how to administer body blows.

By a circuitous route he reached the shack. With jaws set hard to keep his lips from twitching with nervousness he peered through one of the dirty windows. The light inside came from a candle stuck in a bottle which stood on the range opposite the door. Its weird, wavering light threw ghostly shadows on the walls. Someone was stretched out on the bunk. A man with an aviator's helmet pushed back on his head sat on the range, another sprawled on the floor. It was Ranlett on the bunk; Benson recognized his voice as he replied to a question.

"Ten o'clock. Better begin to watch out for the rockets soon. Remember, two green lights if they have pulled it off and want us to wait; two red lights if we are to beat it. Help me up. I'll get into the plane and then we won't waste time making our getaway when they come."

Benson stood rigid. Should he let them get out Of the shack or should he cover them where they were? If they reached the aeroplane they would immediately discover the damage and be on their guard. He must keep them in the shack. Before the two airmen could help Ranlett to his feet he fired a bullet through the window. It lodged in the wood over the bunk.

"Stay where you are! Hands up!" he shouted in a gruff voice which excitement hoa.r.s.ened. "We have you covered from each window. The man who moves gets his good and plenty. Gerrish, you cover the chap with the helmet; O'Neil, make a target of Marks and I'll devote my entire attention to the Skunk."