The Trail to Yesterday

Yet it was not all quite clear to Langford. To be sure, he had expected to receive news that Dakota had accomplished the destruction of Doubler, but he had not anticipated the fortunate appearance of Duncan at the nester’s cabin during the commission of the murder, nor had he expected Sheila to be near the scene of the crime. It had turned out better than he had planned, for since he had burned the agreement that he had made with Dakota, the latter had no hold on him whatever, and if it were finally proved that he had committed the crime there would come an end to both Dakota and Doubler.

Only one thing puzzled him. Dakota had been to his place, he knew that he was charged with the murder and that the agreement had been burned. He also knew that Duncan and Sheila would bear witness against him. And yet, though he had had an opportunity to escape, he had not done so. Why not?

He put this interrogation to Allen, carefully avoiding reference to anything which would give the sheriff any idea that he possessed any suspicion that Dakota was not really guilty.

“That’s what’s bothering me!” declared the latter. “He’s had time enough to hit the breeze clear out of the Territory. Though,” he added, squinting at Langford, “Dakota ain’t never been much on the run. He’d a heap rather face the music. Damn the cuss!” he exploded impatiently.

He finished his breakfast in silence, and then again approached the door of Dakota’s cabin, knocking loudly, as before.

“I’m wanting that palaver now, Dakota,” he said coaxingly.

He heard Dakota laugh. “Have you viewed the corpse, Allen?” came his voice, burdened with mockery.

“No,” said Allen.

“You’re a hell of a sheriff – wanting to take a man when you don’t know whether he’s done anything.”

“I reckon you ain’t fooling me none,” said Allen slowly. “The evidence is dead against you.”

“What evidence?”

“Duncan saw you fixing Doubler, and Langford’s daughter met you coming from his cabin.”

“Who told you that?”

“Langford. He’s just brought some grub over.”

The silence that followed Allen’s words lasted long, and the sheriff fidgeted impatiently. When he again spoke there was the sharpness of intolerance in his voice.

“If talking to you was all I had to do, I might monkey around here all summer,” he said. “I’ve give you about eight hours to think this thing over, and that’s plenty long enough. I don’t like to get into any gun argument with you, because I know that somebody will get hurt. Why in hell don’t you surrender decently? I’m a friend of yours and you hadn’t ought to want to make any trouble for me. And them’s good boys that I’ve got over there and I wouldn’t want to see any of them perforated. And I’d hate like blazes to have to put you out of business. Why don’t you act decent and come out like a man?”

“Go and look at the corpse,” insisted Dakota.

“There’ll be plenty of time to look at the corpse after you’re took.”

There was no answer. Allen sighed regretfully. “Well,” he said presently, “I’ve done what I could. From now on, I’m looking for you.”

“Just a minute, Allen,” came Dakota’s voice. To Allen’s surprise he heard a fumbling at the fastenings of the door, and an instant later it swung open and Dakota stood in the opening, one of his six-shooters in hand.

“I reckon I know you well enough to be tolerably sure that you’ll get me before you leave here,” he said, as Allen wheeled and faced him, his arms folded over his chest as a declaration of his present peaceful intentions. “But I want you to get this business straight before anything is started. And then you’ll be responsible. I’m giving it to you straight. Somebody’s framed up on me. I didn’t shoot Doubler. When I left him he was cleaning his rifle. After I left him I heard shooting. I thought it was him trying his rifle, or I would have gone back.

“Then I met Sheila Langford on the river trail, near the cabin. She’d heard the shooting, too. She thinks I did it. You think I did it, and Duncan says he saw me do it. Doubler isn’t dead. At least he wasn’t dead when I left the doctor with him at sundown. But he wasn’t far from it, and if he dies without coming to it’s likely that things will look bad for me. But because I knew he wasn’t dead I took a chance on staying here. I am not allowing that I’m going to let anyone hang me for a thing I didn’t do, and so if you’re determined to get me without making sure that Doubler’s going to have mourners immediately, it’s a dead sure thing that some one’s going to get hurt. I reckon that’s all. I’ve given you fair warning, and after you get back to the edge of the clearing our friendship don’t count any more.”

He stepped back and closed the door.

Allen walked slowly toward the clearing, thinking seriously. He said nothing to Langford or his men concerning his conversation with Dakota, and though he covertly questioned the former he could discover nothing more than that which the Double R owner had already told him. Several times during the morning he was on the point of planning an attack on the cabin, but Dakota’s voice had a ring of truth in it and he delayed action, waiting for some more favorable turn of events.

And so the hours dragged. The men lounged in the shade of the trees and talked; Langford – though he had no further excuse for staying – remained, concealing his impatience over Allen’s inaction by taking short rides, but always returning; Allen, taciturn, morose even, paid no attention to him.

The afternoon waned; the sun descended to the peaks of the mountains, and there was still inaction on Allen’s part, still silence from the cabin. Just at sundown Allen called his men to him and told them to guard the cabin closely, not to shoot unless forced by Dakota, but to be certain that he did not escape.

He said they might expect him to return by dawn of the following morning. Then, during Langford’s absence on one of his rides, he loped his pony up the river trail toward Ben Doubler’s cabin.

CHAPTER XVII

DOUBLER TALKS

After the departure of the doctor Sheila entered the cabin and closed the door, fastening the bars and drawing a chair over near the table. Doubler seemed to be resting easier, though there was a flush in his cheeks that told of the presence of fever. However, he breathed more regularly and with less effort than before the coming of the doctor, and as a consequence, Sheila felt decidedly better. At intervals during the night she gave him quantities of the medicine which the doctor had left, but only when the fever seemed to increase, forcing the liquid through his lips. Several times she changed the bandages, and once or twice during the night when he moaned she pulled her chair over beside him and smoothed his forehead, soothing him. When the dawn came it found her heavy eyed and tired.

She went to the river and procured fresh water, washed her hands and face, prepared a breakfast of bacon and soda biscuit – which she found in a tin box in a corner of the cabin, and then, as Doubler seemed to be doing nicely, she saddled her pony and took a short gallop. Returning, she entered the cabin, to find Doubler tossing restlessly.

She gave him a dose of the medicine – an extra large one – but it had little effect, quieting him only momentarily. Evidently he was growing worse. The thought aroused apprehension in her mind, but she fought it down and stayed resolutely at the sick man’s side.

Through the slow-dragging hours of the morning she sat beside him, giving him the best care possible under the circumstances, but in spite of her efforts the fever steadily rose, and at noon he sat suddenly up in the bunk and gazed at her with blazing, vacuous eyes.

“You’re a liar!” he shouted. “Dakota’s square!”

Sheila stifled a scream of fear and shrank from him. But recovering, she went to him, seizing his shoulders and forcing him back into the bunk. He did not resist, not seeming to pay any attention to her at all, but he mumbled, inexpressively:

“It ain’t so, I tell you. He’s just left me, an’ any man which could talk like he talked to me ain’t – I reckon not,” he said, shaking his head with a vigorous, negative motion; “you’re a heap mistaken – you ain’t got him right at all.”

He was quiet for a time after this, but toward the middle of the afternoon Sheila saw that his gaze was following her as she paced softly back and forth in the cabin.

“So you’re stuck on that Langford girl, are you?” he demanded, laughing. “Well, it won’t do you any good, Dakota, she’s – well, she’s some sore at you for something. She won’t listen to anything which is said about you.” The laughter died out of his eyes; they became cold with menace. “I ain’t listenin’ to any more of that sorta talk, I tell you! I’ve got my eyes open. Why!” he said in surprise, starting up, “he’s gone!” He suddenly shuddered and cursed. “In the back,” he said. “You – you – ” And profanity gushed from his lips. Then he collapsed, closing his eyes, and lay silent and motionless.

Out of the jumble of disconnected sentences Sheila was able to gather two things of importance – perhaps three.

The first was that some one had told him of Dakota’s complicity in the plan to murder him and that he refused to believe his friend capable of such depravity. The second was that he knew who had shot him; he also knew the man who had informed him of Dakota’s duplicity – though this knowledge would amount to very little unless he recovered enough to be able to supply the missing threads.

Sheila despaired of him supplying anything, for it seemed that he was steadily growing worse, and when the dusk came she began to feel a dread of remaining with him in the cabin during the night. If only the doctor would return! If Dakota would come – Duncan, her father, anybody! But nobody came, and the silence around the cabin grew so oppressive that she felt she must scream. When darkness succeeded dusk she lighted the kerosene lamp, placed a bar over the window, secured the door fastenings, and seated herself at the table, determined to take a short nap.

It seemed that she had scarcely dropped off to sleep – though in reality she had been unconscious for more than two hours – when she awoke suddenly, to see Doubler sitting erect in the bunk, watching her with a wan, sympathetic smile. There was the light of reason in his eyes and her heart gave an ecstatic leap.

“Could you give me a drink of water, ma’am?” he said, in the voice that she knew well.

She sprang to the pail, to find that it contained very little. She had lifted it, and was about to unfasten the door, intending to go to the river to procure fresh water, when Doubler’s voice arrested her.

“There’s some water there – I can hear it splashin’: It’ll do well enough just now. I don’t want much. You can get some fresh after a while. I want to talk to you.”

She placed the pail down and went over to him, standing beside him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“How long have you been here? I knowed you was here all the time – I kept seein’ you, but somehow things was a little mixed. But I know that you’ve been here quite a while. How long?”

“This is the second night.”

“You found me layin’ there – in the door. I dropped there, not bein’ able to go any further. I felt you touchin’ me – draggin’ me. There was someone else here, too. Who was it?”