The Lady Doc Part 46

"You say they are urging you to arrest her?"

The sheriff's face darkened.

"Oh, yes, they've got it all cut and dried just how it happened. They make me think of a pack of wolves that's got a weak one down; he's outnumbered and can't fight back, so jump him! tear him! They're roarin'

at me to 'do somethin'--Tinhorn Frank, Symes, Parrott, the whole outfit of 'em. Say, Dago, I wasn't raised to fight women."

"Does your chivalry extend to the lady doc?"

"No, by gum! it don't," replied the sheriff, with a promptness which made the other laugh. "If I knew any way short of choking her to get the truth I'd do it."

"You mean to try?"

"To choke her?"

"To get the truth."

"I'm goin' to appeal to her first."

The Dago Duke laughed sardonically.

"You think it won't work?"

"Not for a minute."

"I'll see what bull-dozing will do, then."

"Better save your breath."

"Why?"

"It's a question of veracity. She'll see that. Her word against mine.

Even you must admit, Dan, that I haven't her spotless reputation. A communicant of the church versus the town drunkard. She'd merely say that instead of Gila monsters I was 'having' a.s.sa.s.sins. This chronic cloud under which I live has its drawbacks. The fact that I haven't had a drink in six weeks wouldn't have the slightest weight if she chooses to persist in her denial that she met these men."

"I suppose you're right," the sheriff admitted reluctantly, "and if this wind keeps up we won't even have tracks to back up your story."

"Besides," added the Dago Duke, "if there is not great friends.h.i.+p between them there is, at least, no open quarrel to furnish a plausible reason for her silence. We would only make ourselves absurd, Dan, by any public charge. But there is some way to get the truth. Try your methods and then--well, I'll try mine."

This was in the forenoon. That evening the Dago Duke leaned against the door-jamb of the White Elephant Saloon and watched Dan Treu coming from Dr. Harpe's office with failure written upon his face. His white teeth gleamed in a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt as he waited for the sheriff.

"Don't swear, Dan. Never speak disrespectfully of a lady if you can help it."

"Dago," said the sheriff, with his slow, emphatic drawl, "I wish she was a man just for a minute--half a minute--one second would do."

"She laughed at you, yes?"

"She laughed at me, yes? Well, I guess she did. She gave me the merry ha! ha! I told her you had seen two men on horseback pa.s.s her out there in the hills, that I had seen the mark of her buggy wheels and the tracks of the two horses on the run and that the print of moccasins led from the sheep-wagon into the brush. She looked at me with that kind of stare where you can see the lie lying back of it and said--

"I didn't see anybody. I've told you that and I'll swear to it if necessary."

"'Look here, Doc,' I says, 'if you don't tell that you saw these men we'll tell it for you.'"

"That's when she laughed, cackled would be a better word, it sure wasn't a laugh, you'd call ketchin', and says--

"'You fly at it. Try startin' something like that and see what happens to you. I got some pull in this town and you'll find it out if you don't know it. You'll wake up some mornin' and find yourself out of a job. Who do you think would take that drunken loafer's word against mine? And beside, why should I keep anything back that would clear Essie Tisdale?

You're crazy, man! Why, she's a friend of mine.'

"You called the turn on her all right, Dago; she said just about what you said she would say."

"You haven't got the right kind of a mind, Dan, to sabe women of her sort. It takes a Latin to do that. There's natural craft and intrigue enough of the feminine in the southern races to follow their illogical reasoning and to understand their moods and caprices as an Anglo-Saxon never can. You are like a big, blundering, honest watch-dog, Dan, trying to do field work that requires a trained hunting dog with a fine nose and hereditary instincts. If this was a horse-stealing case, or cattle rustling, or a sheep raid, and you were dealing with men all around----"

The deputy-sheriff's jaw set grimly.

"I'd have the truth or he'd be in the hospital. I'm handicapped here because there's no money in the treasury to work with. This county's as big as a State and only two or three thousand in it, so we are about as flush as gra.s.shopper year in Kansas. The people are howling about bringin' the murderer to justice at any cost, but if I'd ask 'em to dig up a hundred apiece in cold cash for expense money they'd subside quick."

"This is one of the few occasions when my past extravagances and habits fill me with regret," replied the Dago Duke, with half-humorous seriousness. "My remittance which has shrunk until it is barely sufficient to sustain life, is already spoken for some months ahead by certain low persons who consider themselves my creditors. Tinhorn Frank, who drew to a straight and filled, is one of them, and Slivers, inside, has a mortgage on my body and soul until an alleged indebtedness is wiped out.

"Financially and socially I am nil; mentally and physically my faculties are at your disposal. Do you happen to know anything in the lady's past or present that she would not care to have exploited? Blackmail, yes? I have no scruples. What do you know?"

The deputy gave the Dago Duke a curious look, but did not answer.

"There's something," guessed the other quickly.

"Yes, Dago, there is," said Dan Treu finally with awkward hesitation.

"It's something so fierce that I hate to tell it even to you for fear there might be some mistake. It's hard to believe it myself. It sounds so preposterous that I'd be laughed at if I told it to anyone else in Crowheart."

"I'll not laugh," said the Dago Duke. "It's the preposterous--the most unlikely thing you can think of that is frequently true. I've studied that woman, with my comparatively limited opportunities, until I know her better than you think and far, far better than she thinks."

"Dago," the big deputy squirmed as he asked the question:

"Could you believe her a petty thief?"

"Without the least difficulty," replied the Dago Duke composedly.

"That she would rifle a man's pockets--roll him like any common woman of the street?"

"If it was safe--quite, quite safe."

Slowly, even reluctantly, Dan Treu told the Dago Duke the story of the Italians as he had heard it in their broken English from their own lips.

Through it all the Dago Duke whistled softly, listening without emotion or surprise. He still whistled when the deputy had finished.

"Do you believe it?" the sheriff asked anxiously, at last.

"Emphatically I do. Let me tell you something, Dan: a woman that will stoop to the petty leg-pulling, sponging, grafting that she does to save two bits or less has got a thief's make-up. Her mania for money, for getting, for saving it, is a matter of common knowledge.

"You know and I know that she will do any indelicate thing which occurs to her to get what she wants without paying for it. When she wants a drink, which the good G.o.d knows is often, she asks any man she happens to know and is near to buy it for her. Her camaraderie flatters him. She habitually 'b.u.ms' cigarettes and I've known her to go through a fellow's war-bag, in his absence, for tobacco. When she's hungry, which I should judge was all the time, she drops in casually upon a patient and humorously raids the pantry--all with that air of nonchalant good fellows.h.i.+p which s.h.i.+elds her from much criticism, since what in reality is miserliness and gluttony pa.s.ses very well for amusing eccentricity."

Dan Treu laughed.