A MURDER CONFESSION
FOUR DAYS LATER, Roberts, Big John, and Coconino Williams followed a wagon into town, with a Diamond R puncher handling the team. Steve Jennings lay weak and helpless in the wagon.
Doc Deering examined him before he was lodged in jail and pronounced him suffering from almost complete physical collapse.
When Clay had led the posse to the box canyon, he had found it deserted, as he expected. Picking up the gang’s trail had not been too difficult. Its general direction left no doubt that the rustlers were retreating into Utah.
Just before night fell, the posse had found Steve. He was alone; realizing he was too weak to continue, he had ordered Carroll and the others to save their own hides and leave him behind. He had Clay to thank that he was in Mescal, alive, for Ed Stack had wanted him strung up on the nearest tree.
With a prisoner of Steve Jennings’s caliber in his custody, Frank Dufors suddenly became an important figure again. Temporarily, the clamor over the killing of Jeb was overshadowed. But Dufors had no intention of permitting it to die down. Mart Singer, the town constable, was impressed to guard the prisoner, so that Dufors might be free to give his time and attention to the murder. He visited the Caney ranch several times and spent hours at the scene of the killing, failing, however, to uncover anything remotely resembling a clue. His failure to find any evidence didn’t discourage him, for he was not intent on solving the crime; he had his man picked out, and he didn’t propose to let him slip through his fingers this time.
Though he publicly scoffed at the whisper that Clay Roberts, stung by Shad’s blundering attempt to fasten the Jerusalem Creek shooting on him, had killed Jeb in revenge, he not only managed to spread it but found ways to enlarge on it.
Clay expected Caney to take it up. To his surprise Shad remained grimly silent. Harvey Hume had an explanation.
“He’s keeping quiet because he knows who got Jeb; lie doesn’t like you any better than he did, but he isn’t interested in seeing you accused; he wants the killing charged up where it belongs, Clay. I went up to the funeral after you left here yesterday. I talked with Shad before I came home. I can tell you he’s a changed man; the fire’s all gone out of him and he just sits iround, brooding.”
“Was Eudora at the services?” Clay asked.
“Yes, she was there. Has she heard anything about this talk against you?”
“She hasn’t mentioned it.” Clay’s eyes were unconsciously bleak. “She will hear it, of course. She’s deeper than you might think. It’s barely two weeks to the end of school; she could come over with you and your mother for that time easily enough. But she won’t consider it; she says she’s got to remain where she is.”
“Did she give you a reason?”
Clay shook his head. “I can only guess at it.”
“She’s awfully fond of little Elly. That may have something to do with it.”
“She’s got a better reason than that, Harvey. I’m on my way over to see her now. I better be moving; school will be out before I get there.”
Eudora waved to him from the schoolhouse door as he was tethering his horse at the fence. The children had left for the day. With a glad cry she surrendered herself to his embrace.
“Hold me tight, Clay!” she whispered. “You’re never out of my thoughts, my darling! Will I spoil you, telling you such things?”
“Terribly! I’m just running over with conceit already.” In quite another tone, he said, “I wish we were leaving for Texas this evening. I’ve got the longest two weeks of my life ahead of me—waiting!”
They sat down and talked across Eudora’s desk.
“The Association paid me up in full this morning,” he said. “Ringe grinned when I told him I’d like to stay on at the ranch for another two weeks.”
“Did you tell him why you were staying, Clay?”
“I didn’t have to! He guessed the reason. He said he’d been figuring for some time that the board would have to look for a new teacher for the fall term. John Ringe is a good man, Eudora. I wouldn’t want a better friend; he’s like a rock—solid and reliable.”
Eudora had always admired Big John, but she had a more important matter on her mind this afternoon. She looked up, a great soberness in her blue eyes.
“Clay—Elsie Tulliver told me this noon that her father says there’s talk going around that you shot Jeb. Have you heard it?”
“I have,” he acknowledged. “I was hoping it wouldn’t get to you. There’s nothing to it.”
“I know there isn’t! My heavens, Clay, you don’t think I doubt it, do you? I know you, darling! You would never resort to anything like that no matter what the provocation!”
“Is that the only reason—your faith in me?”
The question took Eudora by surprise. “Why—isn’t that enough?” she asked, trying to hide her confusion.
“It’s enough for me,” Clay replied. “It might not be enough for a jury.”
Her face paled and she gazed at him with a sudden tightening of her throat. “You can’t mean that seriously, Clay; that you might have to face a jury, I mean?”
“No, I don’t believe it will get to that. But something’s going to be done about murdering that boy. The county is offering a thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. I heard this afternoon that some newspaper in Tucson is offering five hundred more. I ran into the Jennings gang. I was riding up in the hills that afternoon. Unfortunately I can’t prove it. If I could get them to testify to it, they’d be discredited witnesses before they opened their mouths; no one would believe them.”
There were other reasons why he couldn’t avail himself of that alibi. What had transpired in the box canyon with Steve and his men could be twisted into damaging evidence if it came out now.
“I think we’re worrying needlessly,” Eudora said bravely.
It sounded convincing enough, but she was immediately sorry she had said it. She knew Clay was regarding her closely. In a vague feeling of panic, she got up and walked over to the window, where she stood with her back to him. He followed and turned her around and tilted her chin.
“Eudora, let’s stop this fencing.” His tone was sterner than he had ever used with her. “When Shad Caney was shot, you got hold of something that Webb Nichols was afraid to face. I think that’s what is happening this time. You’re not saying all you know, Eudora. If you’ve got a reason for not being frank with me, it must be a powerful one.”
“Clay—you’ll have to let me be the judge of that!” she got out desperately. “You know my first loyalty is to you!”
“I couldn’t go on if I thought otherwise,” he said tensely. “I’m not going to try to drag the truth out of you.”
He let her go and reached for his hat. Eudora ran to him and caught his hands.
“Clay, don’t go like this! You’re angry with me, darling! That man Dufors is behind this vicious gossip; he’s so discredited we don’t have to fear him!”
His sternness faded as her arms went around his neck. “Maybe we don’t,” he said, “but there’s fifteen hundred dollars riding on this case now, and I don’t know of anything Frank Dufors wouldn’t do for fifteen hundred dollars.”
Eudora winced. “It’s cruel of you to frighten me by saying such things. I know you don’t mean to.”
Clay didn’t attempt to press her further. He could have told her that if she had any evidence implicating either Webb or his son, or both, in the killing of young Caney, and they knew it, that she was playing a dangerous game in holding the sword of her silence over their heads, whatever her reason.
Had he been aware of the true situation, and how deeply she was committed to it, he would have insisted on her leaving the Nichols ranch at once. It wasn’t only a bit of evidence Eudora had, but Verne’s detailed confession that he had killed Jeb. On the day following the shooting, shortly after supper, Verne had come to her cabin with some vague excuse for his presence, his real purpose being to discover if she suspected him and, if so, for what reason.
Eudora had bluntly accused him of the crime and in a few minutes forced some damaging admissions from Verne. Stricken with fear, when he realized how he had given himself away, he tried to recant, but his floundering only entangled him deeper than ever. In snivelling panic, he had finally blurted out the whole miserable story.
He had been riding the line and had seen Jeb with the sheep. He had made his way back to the road and had reached the knoll by passing the schoolhouse. His father had known nothing about it, he swore.
Eudora could believe that part of it, but it did not excuse Webb Nichols in her eyes; the slaying was only an expression of the hatred with which he had been filling Verne’s mind since early childhood. For the boy himself, she had a deep pity. It was strong enough to make her promise him she would keep his secret unless the law charged some innocent man with the crime.
Walking back to the ranch this afternoon Clay and Eudora were so careful to avoid saying anything about what was uppermost in their minds that each was aware of the other’s restraint.
From a clump of buckbrush Verne spied on them as they passed. He had been watching them for several days, hounded by an ever mounting fear that Eudora would give him away.
He was at her door soon after Clay left. His eyes had a harried look and his mouth twitched nervously.
“You been telling him anything about me?” he demanded, when she permitted him to enter.
Eudora faced him with quick indignation. “Don’t you dare to take that truculent tone with me, Verne! I gave you my promise that not a word would pass my lips unless—”
“I don’t care what you tell Roberts!” he interrupted angrily. “Tell him anything you please! I was just making up what I said to you about Jeb! Scaring you, that’s what I was doing!”
Under Eudora’s coldly accusing glance, he dropped his eyes and began to scrape his boots.
“Is this what your father has advised you to tell me?” she demanded sternly.
“No!” Verne got out chokingly. “He don’t know I blabbed anything to you! If you try to say anything ag’in me, folks will know you’re doing it to keep Roberts out of trouble ’cause you’re stuck on him!”
This, certainly, was the reasoning of Webb Nichols; Verne was not equal to anything as artful. Eudora regarded the boy with a disconcerting smile.
“If that’s the case, Verne, then it doesn’t matter whether I repeat what you told me. Since you were only having some sport at my expense, I shall feel free to say whatever I please.”
It knocked all the arrogance and bluff out of Verne. Never too sharp-witted, he was helpless as consternation overcame him.
“You promised you wouldn’t say nothing,” he whined, a wild light in his eyes.
“Then you weren’t lying to me,” Eudora challenged.
“I—I don’t know what I said,” he faltered. “You got it out of me; I didn’t mean to tell you.”
Eudora was torn between pity and contempt for him. It was well enough to hold his father responsible for what Verne had done, but the boy was weak and treacherous on his own account.
“You get out of here, Verne,” she ordered, “and don’t come again. You can tell your father I’ll do my best not to betray you. If he has anything further to say about it, he’ll have to speak to me himself.”
She locked the door after Verne left and tried to reduce her racing thoughts to ordered thinking. It was true, she realized, if a trumped-up charge was brought against Clay and she rushed to aid him with her story that every word she had to say would be put down as prejudiced in his favor. It would be brought out that she and Clay planned to marry. Her love for him would be used to discredit her testimony. She knew from what had just happened that Verne would repudiate his confession. And he’d be carefully coached before he was put on the stand. It would be her word against his, with Clay’s fate hanging in the balance.
“I’ll make the jury believe me!” was her anguished thought. “I’ll find a way to bring out the truth!”
With a blessed sigh of relief she suddenly realized that there wasn’t any charge against Clay as yet; no single bit of evidence.
“I’m foolish to go to pieces like this!” she told herself. “Mr. Nichols must think it’s Verne who is in danger, or he wouldn’t have sent him to me with such a ridiculous story!”
Had something been turned up that pointed to Verne? Or did Nichols have reason to believe such a disclosure was about to be made? She felt sure that Frank Dufors would conceal any evidence he discovered unless it could be used against Clay. But there was Shad Caney; he might have found something, and he was no longer playing Dufors’s game.
Eudora sat there pondering over it for minutes on end. Clay had urged her repeatedly to leave the Nichols place and go over to the Humes’. She had refused to consider it, feeling she was perfectly safe where she was. Somehow, that sense of security had fled. It wasn’t only Verne’s spying and insolence; Webb’s manner had been growing increasingly threatening. Mrs. Nichols and the children, with the exception of Elly, were no longer friendly. Something sinister seemed to hang over the ranch. Sitting down to the table with them and pretending there was nothing wrong had become more than she could bear.
“Clay was right; I should have gone to Harvey’s several weeks ago!”
The admission, once made, cleared away any lingering doubts about what she should do. She glanced around the comfortable, homelike cabin. It was meaningless now.
I’ll leave some things for Elly, she thought. It won’t take me long to pack what I want! I’ll go to the Humes’ this evening; Harvey can come for my trunk tomorrow!