and why hadn’t they been pursued further? Had the whole pursuit been merely in the nature of a bluff? And if so, whom had it been intended to deceive? These and a score of other questions passed through his mind as he sat there waiting, but when the dull rumble of the wagon started them all into activity, he had not succeeded in finding any really plausible answers.
The return trip was necessarily slow, and dawn was just breaking as they forded the creek and drove up to the bunk-house. They had barely come to a standstill when, to Buck’s surprise, the slim figure of Mary Thorne, bare-headed and clad in riding-clothes, appeared suddenly around the corner of the ranch-house and came swiftly toward them.
“Pedro told me,” she said briefly, pausing beside the wagon. “How is he?”
“Doin’ fine,” responded Lynch promptly. “It’s a clean wound an’ ought to heal in no time. Our new hand Green tied him up like a regular professional.”
His manner was almost fulsomely pleasant; Miss Thorne’s expression of anxiety relaxed.
“I’m so glad. You’d better bring him right up to the house; he’ll be more comfortable there.”
“That ain’t hardly necessary,” objected Lynch. “He’ll do all right here. We don’t want him to be a bother to yuh.”
“He won’t be,” retorted Miss Thorne with unexpected decision. “We’ve plenty of room, and Maria has a bed all ready. The bunk-house is no place for a sick man.”
During the brief colloquy Bemis, though perfectly conscious, made no comment whatever. But Buck, glancing toward him as he lay on the husk mattress behind the driver, surprised a fleeting but unmistakable expression of relief in his tanned face.
“He don’t want to stay in the bunk-house,” thought Stratton. “I don’t know as I blame him, neither. I wonder, though, if it’s because he figures on being more comfortable up there, or – ”
The unvoiced question ended with a shrug as Lynch, somewhat curt of manner, gave the order to move.
“Yuh don’t all of yuh have to come, neither,” he added quickly. “Butch an’ Slim an’ me can carry him in.”
Miss Thorne, who had already started toward the house, glanced over one shoulder. “If Green knows something about first aid, as you say, he’d better come too, I think.”
Buck glanced questioningly at the foreman, received a surly nod and dismounted, smiling inwardly. It amused him exceedingly to see the dictatorial Tex forced to take orders from this slip of a girl. Evidently she was not quite so pathetically helpless as he had supposed the afternoon before. He began to wonder how she did it, for Lynch struck him as a far from easy person to manage. He was still turning the question over in his mind when he received a shock which for the moment banished every other thought.
The wagon was backed up to the porch, and the four punchers, each taking a corner of the mattress, lifted Bemis out and carried him across the living-room and through a door on the further side which Miss Thorne held open. The room was light and airy, and Buck was conscious of a vague sense of familiarity, which he set down to his rather brief acquaintance with the place two years ago. But when Bemis had been undressed and put to bed and his wound thoroughly cleansed with antiseptic and freshly bandaged, Stratton, really looking about him for the first time, made an odd discovery.
It was his own room! He remembered perfectly choosing it and moving in his belongings the day before he left; and as he stared curiously around he could not see that a single one of them had been touched. There were his trunks just as they had come from Texas. His bureau stood between the windows, and on it lay a pair of brushes and the few odds and ends he had left there when he enlisted. A pair of chaps and a well-worn Stetson hung near the door, and he had just stepped over to make sure they were actually the ones he had left behind when Miss Thorne, who had been talking in the living-room with Lynch, appeared suddenly on the threshold.
As their glances met she drew herself up a little, and a curious expression came into her eyes. Her lips parted impulsively, but when, after a momentary hesitation, she spoke, Buck had an impression that something quite different had been on the tip of her tongue an instant before.
“He’d better have the doctor at once, don’t you think?” she said briefly.
Buck nodded. “Yes, ma’am, he ought. I’ve done the best I could, and the chances are he’ll get along all right; but a regular doctor ought to look him over as soon as possible.”
“I thought so. I’ve just told Tex to send a man to town at once and wire Dr. Blanchard, who lives about twelve miles up the line. It’ll take him three or four hours to ride over, but there’s no one nearer.”
“I wish you’d let me go,” said Stratton impulsively. “I’ve got to return the horse I borrowed and get blankets and some things I left at the store. There’s really nothing more I can do for Bemis by hanging around.”
Her brows crinkled doubtfully. “Well, if you’re sure – I suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Tell Tex I said you were to go. He’ll give you the directions. Only you’ll have to hurry.”
With a murmured word of thanks, Buck snatched up his hat and hastened into the living-room. As he passed the big table he was aware of a door at the farther end opening, but he did not turn his head. An instant later, as he was in the act of springing off the porch, he heard a woman’s voice behind him, soft, low, and a little shaken.
“What is it, Mary? What’s happened? You don’t mean to tell me that – that another man’s been shot.”
Buck’s eyes widened, but he did not pause. “That’s the aunt, I reckon,” he muttered, as he sped down the slope. His lips straightened. “Another! Holy cats! What the devil am I up against, anyhow? A murder syndicate?”
CHAPTER VIII
THE HOODOO OUTFIT
Pop Daggett hesitated and glanced uneasily toward the door.
“I warned yuh, didn’t I, the Shoe-Bar was a hoodoo outfit?” he evaded.
Stratton shook some tobacco into a cigarette-paper and jerked the draw-string with his teeth.
“Sure you did, but that’s not the question,” he persisted. “I asked you if any other punchers had met up with – accidents out there lately.”
The old man continued to cock an eye on the store entrance.
“Since yuh gotta know,” he answered in a lowered tone, “there was two. About three months ago Jed Terry was scoutin’ around back in the mountains, Lord knows what fur, an’ fell into a cañon an’ broke his skull. Four or five weeks arter that Sam Bennett was plugged through the chest down below Las Vegas.”
“Did Lynch happen to be with either of them?”
“No, sir-ee,” returned Daggett hastily. “An’ don’t yuh go blattin’ around I told yuh anythin’ about it. I ain’t one to gossip about my neighbors, more especially Tex Lynch. Them two deaths – Say, Tex ain’t in town with yuh, is he?”
“Not that I know of. He certainly didn’t come with me.”
“Huh! Wal, yuh never c’n tell with him. As I was sayin’, Terry’s death was pernounced a accident, an’ they allowed Bennett was plugged by one of them greaser rustlers I hear tell of. I ain’t
