The Mesa Trail Part 20

Knocked him and his cayuse to glory. I thought for a time he was our man, but telephoned into town from Doniphan's and found otherwise. Took a look at the horse to make sure. Nothing doing."

His eyes went back to Thady Shea. He held open the door and gestured.

"You're Shea, eh? Come on into the office, will you? Excuse me, professor."

Shea followed his enemy host into the house, and into a small room which served Mackintavers as office and study. Sandy dropped into a chair, motioned Shea to another, and set out a box of cigars.

This greeting left Thady Shea entirely at sea. Mackintavers did not seem to be infuriated; he seemed to understand perfectly all about the check.

He seemed alert, precise, cold-blooded, as though this were some ordinary business deal.

"So you're Shea!" he repeated. "Aiblins, now-ye look it. Friend o' Mrs.

Crump, eh?"

"I am." Thady Shea began to feel sorry that he had come inside.

"How come you're turning back that money? The old lady feelin' her conscience?"

"I told you, sir, that there had been an error. When the mistake was brought to my attention, I posted straightway hither, seeking you; the money was not mine to store away; reparation was inc.u.mbent on me."

"What the h.e.l.l!" muttered Sandy, with a touch of wonder.

Mackintavers knew men. He could read men at a glance, but Thady Shea was slightly beyond his visual acuity. None the less, he came fairly close to the mark in that he adjudged Shea to be of a simple and wonderful honesty, a man of fundamental virtue. Sandy took for granted that Thady Shea was mentally unbalanced; a theory which would explain this amazing refund, and also the wild stories which were current about the man.

"I hear you own that claim Mrs. Crump is workin', Shea."

"No. It belongs to her." Thady Shea rose to his feet. "We need not prolong this--"

"Oh, don't be in a rus.h.!.+" soothed Mackintavers, cordially. "Now, I'll have your team attended to, and you'd better stay overnight with us, eh?

We'll have a talk, and we'll get squared up on the trouble between you and Dorales--"

Thady Shea looked down at him. Under those eyes Mackintavers fell silent.

"Sir, you are an infernal villain," said Thady Shea calmly. "I want none of your hospitality. There is no trouble whatever, save in your own greed and covetous rapacity. You are an arrant rogue, a caitiff vile; there can be naught between us. Sir, farewell!"

Thady Shea strode from the room and slammed the door after him.

Sandy Mackintavers sat motionless, completely astounded by this outburst. He looked down at the check in his hand, then looked out the window; he could see Thady Shea climbing into the buckboard and driving off.

"Aiblins, yes; the man's mad!" he reflected. A slow chuckle came to his lips. "And to think I never so much as said thank'ee! If the check's good, now-h'm! Better find out about it. A fool, that's what the fellow is. A loose-brained fool."

He sought the telephone and spoke with the Silver City bank. The check was good.

Later in the afternoon came the first word of the actual thief who had made off with the seven stone G.o.ds. One of the men brought in a report that he had found signs of a camp on the creek a mile distant.

Mackintavers and Old Man Durfee went out to investigate. They were good at reading signs; they discovered that a man had spent the previous night in this spot, and that he had presumably been an Indian. The tracks of his unshod horse showed a cracked off hind hoof. A few tiny shreds of gray wool showed where his saddle blanket had been laid.

Over the supper table that evening Sandy Mackintavers recounted these results to the archaeologist. Abel Dorales had not yet returned from Socorro.

"The G.o.ds are gone, professor," he stated, disconsolately. "Clean gone!

Aye. D'ye see, the thief, that fellow camped by the creek, was the same Indian who got wiped out by Doniphan's flivver this morning! The same, aye. That saddle blanket was gray, and that horse had the off hind foot cracked. Aye. The Navaho dog was the thief. And now the G.o.ds are clean gone! There was no sign of 'em about the horse, and the man himself had nothing. But he took 'em, right enough."

The professor glanced up, roused from his abstraction.

"That's queer!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Excitement rapidly grew upon him. "Look here, Mackintavers! The man who was here this afternoon, the man Shea-did you notice that queer little grip on his buckboard? He told me he had picked up that grip near the crippled horse, and he did not know what was in it!"

Just then Abel Dorales returned, to find that Thady Shea had come and gone.

Thirty minutes later Mackintavers and Dorales were on their way to Magdalena in the big car; Mackintavers was after the seven stone G.o.ds, and Dorales was after Thady Shea.

CHAPTER XIII-THADY SHEA STARTS HOME

In the early evening Thady Shea reached Magdalena. He turned in his team and buckboard to the livery stable, paid for its use from the money given him by Fred Ross, and with the little suitcase in his hand left the stable office. The first person he encountered was Fred Ross.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Ross, grinning. "Thought maybe you'd show up this evenin', so I hung around. How's tricks?"

"Fine," answered Shea, delightedly. "I'm hungry."

"So'm I. Let's eat. I got a friend waitin' to meet ye-he's leavin'

to-night."

Shea gladly followed to the Hotel Aragon. He was to-night blissfully happy. For the first time in years he felt like a boy. It was as though the reparation made to Mackintavers, and the brief but emphatic expression of his own mind to Mackintavers, had wiped away all past things. Atonement was over and done with. He was free to go where he would.

From one of the rocking-chairs in the long, narrow lobby of the hotel arose a man of girth and twinkling of eye, who came to meet them. Him Ross briefly introduced as Bill Murray, and urged haste in reaching the dining room. Thady Shea left the battered little yellow suitcase on the hat rack beside the dining-room doors, which were just about to close, and the three men hastily entered the nearly empty room.

Fred Ross had known nothing definite about Thady Shea's business with Mackintavers, but possibly he had conjectured a good deal. He was plainly much relieved to see his friend safely back.

"Bill's running a newspaper over to St. Johns," he confided, when the meal was under way. "He'd heard about you, Shea, and was kind o' set on meeting you. Wants to get the straight o' that yarn about you and Dorales. He got laid up here with a busted steering gear, and aimed to go home to-day, but waited over. Now he's goin' back to-night, so he says. It sure beats all how a fellow gets in a h.e.l.l of a hurry just when other folks want him to loaf around a spell!"

Murray tipped Thady Shea a jovial wink.

"Fred ain't lonesome, much," he said, wheezily. "Got a girl here. Fred reckons that the more he talks about stayin', the more I'll be set on goin'-which is the same true. Human nature is ornery as the devil, ain't it now? Well, I s'pose you ain't picked up any news to-day, Shea?"

"I have, sir," intoned Thady, "an item of importance. A striped Indian, of name unknown, was overcome by dire fatality this morn. Upon the road Death ambushed him, and maimed his faithful steed, and laid him low. An automobile-mark the irony!-became the instrument of darkling fate, and brought to this poor aborigine the end of all things, and the close of life."

Bill Murray stared open-mouthed, as did most people who heard Thady's sonorously rolling accents for the first time. Then he emitted a wheezy chuckle.

"Oh! You mean the Injun buck that got straddled by Doniphan's flivver!

Heard all about him to-day. He's layin' over to the funeral parlours now. Some of his tribe's in town, and they made Doniphan give him a real burial. Joke on Doniphan, ain't it?"

"And," pursued Thady, "at Mackintavers' ranch this afternoon I gathered there had been a robbery. What worldly pelf was taken, I know not, but dread confusion reigned upon the place."

"Gos.h.!.+" Bill Murray started up from his chair. "Say-that's red-hot news, Shea! Don't tell any one else around here. I'll run out and phone the ranch. Got to run off my paper to-morrow night; I'll pull some o' that plate off the front page and run this in a box. Whee! Back in a minute!"

Bill Murray departed like a genial cyclone.

Now Thady Shea told about that battered little suitcase. He was not sure what should be done with the thing, and asked the advice of Fred Ross.