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CHAPTER XV

"There's one thing sure in all cases of crime: If people would only depend more on Nature and less on themselves, they'd get results sooner."

Lowell and his chief clerk were finishing one of their regular evening discussions of the crime which most people were forgetting, but which still occupied the Indian agent's mind to the complete exclusion of all reservation business.

"What do you mean?" asked Rogers, from behind smoke clouds.

"Just the fact that, if we can only find it, Nature has tagged every crime in a way that makes it possible to get an answer."

"But there are lots of crimes in which no manifestation of Nature is possible."

"Not a one. What are finger-prints but manifestations of Nature? And yet for ages we couldn't see the sign that Nature hung out for us. No doubt we're just as obtuse about a lot of things that will be just as simple and just as plain when their meaning is finally driven home."

"But Nature hasn't given a hint about that Dollar Sign road crime. Yet it took place outdoors, right in Nature's haunts."

"You simply mean that we haven't been able to comprehend Nature's signals."

"But you've been over the ground a dozen times, haven't you?"

"Fifty times – but all that merely proves what I contend. If I go over that ground one hundred times, and don't find anything, what does it prove? Merely that I am ninety-nine times stupider than I should be. I should get the answer the first time over."

Rogers laughed.

"I prefer the most comfortable theory. I've settled down in the popular belief that Bill Talpers did the killing. Think how easy that makes it for me – and the chances are that I'm right at that."

"You are hopeless, Ed! But remember, if this thing goes unsolved it will only be because we haven't progressed beyond the first-reader stage in interpreting what Mother Nature has to teach us."

For several days following the acquittal of Fire Bear and McFann, Lowell had worked almost unceasingly in the hope of getting new evidence in the case which nearly everybody else seemed willing to forget. A similar persistency had marked Lowell's career as a newspaper reporter. He had turned up several sensations when rival newspaper men had abandoned certain cases as hopeless so far as new thrills were concerned.

Lowell had not exaggerated when he told Rogers he had gone over the scene of the murder fifty times. He had not gone into details with his clerk. Rogers would have been surprised to know that his chief had even blocked out the scene of the murder in squares like a checkerboard. Each one of these squares had been examined, slowly and painfully. The net result had been some loose change which undoubtedly had been dropped by Talpers in robbing the murdered man; an eagle feather, probably dropped from a coup stick which some one of Fire Bear's followers had borrowed from an elder; a flint arrowhead of great antiquity, and a belt buckle and some moccasin beads.

Far from being discouraged at the unsuccessful outcome of his checkerboarding plan, Lowell took his automobile, on the morning following his talk with Rogers, and again visited the scene of the crime.

For six weeks the hill had been bathed daily in sunshine. The drought, which the Indians had ascribed to evil spirits called down by Fire Bear, had continued unbroken. The mud-holes in the road, through which Lowell had plunged to the scene of the murder when he had first heard of the crime, had been churned to dust. Lowell noticed that an old buffalo wallow at the side of the road was still caked in irregular formations which resembled the markings of alligator hide. The first hot winds would cause these cakes of mud to disintegrate, but the weather had been calm, and they had remained just as they had dried.

As he glanced about him at the peaceful panorama, it occurred to the agent that perhaps too much attention had been centered upon the exact spot of the murder. Yet, it seemed reasonable enough to suppose, no murderer would possibly lie in wait for a victim in such an open spot. If the murder had been deliberately planned, as Lowell believed, and if the victim's approach were known, there could have been no waiting here on the part of the murderer.

Getting into his automobile, Lowell drove carefully up the hill, studying both sides of the road as he went. Several hundred yards from the scene of the murder, he found a clump of giant sagebrush and greasewood, close to the road. Lowell entered the clump and found that from its eastern side he could command a good view of the Dollar Sign road for miles. Here a man and horse might remain hidden until a traveler, coming up the hill, was almost within hailing distance. The brush had grown in a circle, leaving a considerable hollow which was devoid of vegetation. Examining this hollow closely, Lowell paused suddenly and uttered a low ejaculation. Then he walked slowly to his automobile and drove in the direction of the Greek Letter Ranch.

When he arrived at the ranch house Lowell was relieved to find that Helen was not at home. Wong, who opened the door a scant six inches, told him she had taken the white horse and gone for a ride.

"Well, tell Mister Willis Morgan I want to see him," said Lowell.

Wong was much alarmed. Mister Morgan could not be seen. The Chinese combination of words for "impossible" was marshaled in behalf of Wong's employer.

Lowell, putting his shoulder against the Greek letter brand which was burnt in the panel, pushed the door open and stepped into the room which served as a library.

"Now tell Mister Morgan I wish to see him, Wong," said the agent firmly.

The door to the adjoining room opened, and Lowell faced the questioning gaze of a gray-haired man who might have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty. One hand was in the pocket of a velvet smoking-jacket, and the other held a pipe. The man's eyes were dark and deeply set. They did not seem to Lowell to be the contemplative eyes of the scholar, but rather to belong to a man of decisive action – one whose interests might be in building bridges or tunnels, but whose activities were always concerned with material things. His face was lean and bronzed – the face of a man who lived much in the outdoors. His nose was aquiline, and his lips, though thin and firm, were not unkindly. In fact, here was a man who, in the class-room, might be given to quips with his students, rather than to sternness. Yet this was the man of whom it was said… Lowell's face grew stern as the long list of indictments against Willis Morgan, recluse and "squaw professor," came to his mind.

The gray-haired man sat down at the table, and Lowell, in response to a wave of the hand that held the pipe, drew up opposite.

"You and I have been living pretty close together a long time," said Lowell bluntly, "and if we'd been a little more neighborly, this call might not be so difficult in some ways."

"My fault entirely." Again the hand waved – this time toward the ceiling-high shelves of books. "Library slavery makes a man selfish, I'll admit."

The voice was cold and hard. It was such a voice that had extended a mocking welcome to Helen Ervin when she had stood hesitatingly on the threshold of the Greek Letter Ranch-house. Lowell sneered openly.

"You haven't always been so tied up to your books that you couldn't get out," he said. "I want to take you back to a little horseback ride which you took just six weeks ago."

"I don't remember such a trip."

"You will remember it, as I particularize."

"Very well. You are beginning to interest me."

"You rode from here to the top of the hill on the Dollar Sign road. Do you remember?"

"What odds if I say yes or no? Go on. I want to hear the rest of this story."

"When you reached a clump of tall sage and grease wood, not far below the crest of the hill, you entered it and remained hidden. You had a considerable time to wait, but you were patient – very patient. You knew the man you wanted to meet was somewhere on the road – coming toward you. From the clump of bushes you commanded a view of the Dollar Sign road for miles. As I say, it was long and tedious waiting. It had rained in the night. The sun came out, strong and warm, and the atmosphere was moist. Your horse, that old white horse which has been on the ranch so many years, was impatiently fighting flies. Though you are not any kinder to horseflesh than you are to human beings who come within your blighting influence, you took the saddle off the animal. Perhaps the horse had caught his foot in a stirrup as he kicked at a buzzing fly."

The keen, strong features into which Lowell gazed were mask-like in their impassiveness.

"Soon you saw something approaching on the road over the prairie," went on the agent. "It must be the automobile driven by the man you had come to meet. You saddled quickly and rode out of the sagebrush. You met the man in the automobile as he was climbing the hill. He stopped and you talked with him. You had violent words, and then you shot him with a sawed-off shotgun which you had carried for that purpose. You killed the man, and then, to throw suspicion on others, conceived the idea of staking him down to the prairie. It would look like an Indian trick. Besides, you knew that there had been some trouble on the reservation with Indians who were dancing and generally inclined to oppose Government regulations. You had found a rope which had been dropped on the road by the half-breed, Jim McFann. You took that rope from your saddle and cut it in four pieces and tied the man's hands and wrists to his own tent-stakes, which you found in his automobile.

"Your plans worked out well. It was a lonely country and comparatively early in the day. There was nobody to disturb you at your work. Apparently you had thought of every detail. You had left a few tracks, and these you obliterated carefully. You knew you would hardly be suspected unless something led the world to your door. You had been a recluse for years, hated by white men and feared by red. Few had seen your face. You could retire to this lonely ranch and live your customary life, with no fear of suffering for the crime you had committed. To be sure, an Indian or two might be hanged, but a matter like that would rest lightly on your conscience.

"Apparently your plans were perfect, but you overlooked one small thing. Most clever scoundrels do. You did not think that perhaps Nature might lay a trap to catch you – a trap in the brush where you had been hidden. Your horse rolled in the mud to rid himself of the pest of flies. You were so intent on the approach of your victim that you did not notice the animal. Yet there in the mud, and visible to-day, was made the imprint of your horse's shoulder, bearing the impression of the Greek Letter brand!"

As Lowell finished, he rose slowly, his hands on the table and his gaze on the unflinching face in front of him. The gray-haired man rose also.

"I suppose," he said, in a voice from which all trace of harshness had disappeared, "you have come to give me over to the authorities on account of this crime."

"Yes."

"Very well. I committed the murder, much as you have explained it, but I did not ride the white horse to the hill. Nor am I Willis Morgan. I am Edward Sargent. Morgan was the man whom I killed and staked down on the prairie!"

CHAPTER XVI

Helen Ervin rode past the ranch door just as the gray-haired man made his statement to Lowell.

"You are Edward Sargent, the man who was supposed to have been murdered?" repeated the Indian agent, in astonishment.

"Yes; but wait till Miss Ervin comes in. The situation may require a little clearing, and she can help."

Surprise and anxiety alternated in Helen's face as she looked in through the open doorway and saw the men seated at the table. She paused a moment, silhouetted in the door, the Greek letter on the panel standing out with almost startling distinctness beside her. As she stood poised on the threshold in her riding-suit, the ravages of her previous trip having been repaired, she made Lowell think of a modernized Diana – modernized as to clothes, but carrying, in her straight-limbed grace, all the world-old spell of the outdoors.

"Our young friend has just learned the truth, my dear," said the gray-haired man. "He knows that I am Sargent, and that our stepfather, Willis Morgan, is dead."

Helen stepped quickly to Sargent's side. There was something suggesting filial protection in her attitude. Sargent smiled up at her, reassuringly.

"Probably it is better," he said, "that the whole thing should be known."

"But in a few days we should have been gone," said Helen. "Why have all our hopes been destroyed in this way at the last moment? Is this some of your work," she added bitterly, addressing Lowell – "some of your work as a spy?"

Sargent spoke up quickly.

"It was fate," he said. "I have felt from the first that I should not have attempted to escape punishment for my deed. The young man has simply done his duty. He worked with the sole idea of getting at the truth – and it is always the truth that matters most. What difference can it make who is hurt, so long as the truth is known?"

"But how did it become known," asked Helen, "when everything seemed to be so thoroughly in our favor? The innocent men who were suspected had been released. The public was content to let the crime rest at the door of Talpers – a man capable of any evil deed. What has happened to change matters so suddenly?"

"It was the old white horse that betrayed us," said Sargent, with a grim smile. "It shows on what small threads our fates hang balanced. The Greek letter brand still shows in the mud where the horse rolled on the day of the murder on the Dollar Sign hill. When our young friend here saw that bit of evidence, he came directly to the ranch and accused me of knowledge of the crime, all the time thinking I was Willis Morgan."

"Let me continue my work as a spy," broke in Lowell bitterly, "and ask for a complete statement."

"Willis Morgan was my twin brother," said Sargent. "As Willard Sargent he had made a distinguished name for himself among the teachers of Greek in this country. He was a professor at an early age, his bent toward scholarship being opposite to mine, which was along the lines of invention. My brother was a hard, cruel man, beneath a polished exterior. Cynicism was as natural to him as breathing. He married a young and beautiful woman, who had been married before, and who had a little daughter – a mere baby, Willard's wife soon died, a victim of his cynicism and studied cruelty. The future of this helpless stepdaughter of my brother's became a matter of the most intimate concern to me. My brother was mercenary to a marked degree. I had become successful in my inventions of mining machinery. I was fast making a fortune. Willard called upon me frequently for loans, which I never refused. In fact, I had voluntarily advanced him thousands of dollars, from which I expected no return. A mere brotherly feeling of gratitude would have been sufficient repayment for me. But such a feeling my brother never had. His only object was to get as much out of me as he could, and to sneer at me, in his high-bred way, while making a victim of me.

"His success in getting money from me led him into deep waters. He victimized others, who threatened prosecution. Realizing that matters could not go on as they were going, I told my brother that I would take up the claims against him and give him one hundred thousand dollars, on certain conditions. Those conditions were that he was to renounce all claim to his little stepdaughter, and that I was to have sole care of her. He was to go to some distant part of the country and change his name and let the world forget that such a creature as Willard Sargent ever existed.

"My brother was forced to agree to the terms laid down. The university trustees were threatening him with expulsion. He resigned and came out here. He married an Indian woman, and, as I understand it, killed her by the same cold-hearted, deliberately cruel treatment that had brought about the death of his first wife.

"Meantime Willard's stepdaughter, who was none other than Helen, was brought up by a lifelong friend of mine, Miss Scovill, at her school for girls in California. The loving care that she was given can best be told by Helen. I did not wish the girl to know that she was dependent upon her uncle for support. In fact, I did not want her to learn anything which might lead to inquiries into her babyhood, and which would only bring her sorrow when she learned of her mother's fate. My brother, always clever in his rascalities, learned that Helen knew nothing of my existence. He sent her a letter, when Miss Scovill was away, telling Helen that he had been crippling himself financially to keep her in school, and now he needed her at this ranch. Before Miss Scovill had returned, Helen, acting on the impulse of the moment, had departed for my brother's place. Miss Scovill was greatly alarmed, and sent me a telegram. As soon as I received word, I started for my brother's ranch. I happened to have started on an automobile tour at the time, and figured that I could reach here as quickly by machine as by making frequent changes from rail to stage.

"When Helen arrived at the ranch, it can be imagined how the success of his scheme delighted Willis Morgan, as my brother was known here. He threatened her with the direst of evils, and declared he would drag her beneath the level of the poorest squaw on the Indian reservation. Fortunately she is a girl of spirit and determination. The Chinese servant was willing to help her to escape. She would have fled at the first opportunity, in spite of my brother's declaration that escape would be impossible, but it happened that, during the course of his boasting, her captor overstepped himself. He told her of my existence, and that I had really been the one who had kept her in school. He had managed to keep a thorough system of espionage in effect, so far as Miss Scovill and myself were concerned. He had known when she left San Francisco, and he also knew that I was coming, by automobile, to take Helen from the ranch. He laughed as he told her of my coming. All the ferocity of his nature blazed forth, and he told Helen that he intended to kill me at sight, and would also kill her.

"Desirous of warning me, even at risk of her own life, Helen mailed a letter to me at Quaking-Asp Grove, hoping to catch me before I reached that place. In this letter she warned me not to come to the ranch, as she felt that tragedy impended. Talpers held up the letter and read it, and thought to hold it as a club over Helen's head, showing that she knew something of the murder.

"I rode through Quaking-Asp Grove and White Lodge and the Indian agency at night. I had a breakdown after going past Talpers's store – a tire to replace. By the time I climbed the hill on the Dollar Sign road it was well along in the morning. I saw a man coming toward me on a white horse. It was my brother, Willard Sargent, or Willis Morgan. He looked much like me. The years seemed to have dealt with us about alike. I knew, as soon as I saw him, that he had come out to kill me. We talked a few minutes. I had stopped the car at his demand, and he sat in the saddle, close beside me. There is no need of going into the details of our conversation. He was full of reproaches. His later life had been more of a punishment for him than I had suspected. His voice was full of venom as he threatened me. He told me that Helen was at the ranch, but I would never see her. He had a sawed-off shotgun in his hand. I had no weapon. I made a quick leap at him and threw him from his horse. The shotgun fell in the road. I jumped for it just as he scrambled after it. I wrested the weapon from him. He tried to draw a revolver that swung in a holster at his hip. There was no chance for me to take that from him. It was a case of his life or mine. I fired the shotgun, and the charge tore away the lower part of his face.

"Strangely enough, I had no regret at what I had done. It was not that I had saved my own life – I had managed to intervene between Helen and a fate worse than death. I weighed matters and acted with a coolness that surprised me, even while I was carrying out the details that followed. It occurred to me that, because of our close resemblance to each other, it might be possible for me to pass myself off as my brother. I knew that he had lived the life of a recluse here, and that few people knew him by sight. We were dressed much alike, as I was traveling in khaki, and he wore clothes of that material. I removed everything from his pockets, and then I put my watch and checkbook and other papers in his pockets. I even went so far as to put my wallet in his inner pocket, containing bills of large denomination.

"I had heard that there was some dissatisfaction among certain young Indians on the reservation – that those Indians were dancing and making trouble in general. It seemed to me that such a situation might be made use of in some way. Why not drag my brother's body out on the prairie at the side of the road and stake it down? Suspicion might be thrown on the Indians. I had no sooner thought of the plan than I proceeded to carry it out. I worked calmly and quickly. There was no living thing in sight to cause alarm. I took a rawhide lariat, which I found attached to the saddle on the old white horse, and used it to tie my brother's ankles and wrists to tent-stakes which I took from my automobile.

"After my work was done, I looked it over carefully, to see that I had left nothing undone and had made no blunder in what I had accomplished. I obliterated all tracks, as far as possible. Although it had rained the night before, and there was mud in the old buffalo wallows and in the depressions in the road, the prairie where I had staked the body was dry and dusty.

"After I had arranged everything to my satisfaction, I mounted the old white horse and rode to the ranch, merely following the trail the horse had made coming out. When I arrived here and made myself known to Helen, you can imagine her joy, which soon was changed to consternation when she found what had been done. But my plan of living here and letting the world suppose that I was Willard Sargent, or Willis Morgan, seemed feasible. Wong was our friend from the first. We knew we could depend on his Oriental discretion. But we were not to escape lightly. Talpers's attitude was a menace until, through a fortunate set of circumstances, we managed to secure a compensating hold over him. Undoubtedly Talpers had been first on the scene after the murder. He had robbed my brother's body, and was caught in his ghoul-like act by his partner, Jim McFann. The half-breed believed Talpers when the trader told him that a watch was all he had found on the dead man. The later discovery that Talpers had deceived him, and had really taken a large sum of money from the body, led the half-breed to kill the trader.

"I decided to await the outcome of the trial. It would have been impossible for me to let Fire Bear or McFann go to prison, or perhaps to the gallows, for my deed. If either one, or both, had been convicted, I intended to make a confession. But matters seemed to work out well for us. The accused men were freed, and it seemed to be the general opinion that Talpers had committed the crime. Talpers was dead. There was no occasion for me to confess. I had thoughts of going away, quietly, to some place where I could begin life over again. Miss Scovill is in possession of a will making Helen my heir. This will could have been produced, and thus Helen would have been well provided for. I had kept in seclusion here, and had even feigned illness, in order that none might suspect me of being other than Willis Morgan. But if any one had seen me I do not believe the deception would have been discovered, so close is my resemblance to my brother. Always having been a passable mimic, I imitated my brother's voice. It was a voice that had often stirred me to wrath, because of its cold, cutting qualities. The first time I imitated my brother's voice, Wong came in from the kitchen looking frightened beyond measure. He thought the ghost of his old employer had returned to the ranch.

"But of what use is all such planning when destiny wills otherwise? A trifling incident – the rolling of a horse in the mud – brought everything about my ears. Yet I believe it is for the best. Nor do I believe your discovery to have been a mere matter of chance. Probably you were led by a higher force than mere devotion to duty. Truth must have loyal servitors such as you if justice is to survive in this world. I am heartily glad that you persisted in your search. I feel more at ease in mind and body to-night than I have felt since the day of the tragedy. Now if you will excuse me a moment, I will make preparations for giving myself up to the authorities – perhaps to higher authorities than those at White Lodge."

Sargent stepped into the adjoining room as he finished talking. Helen did not raise her head from the table. Something in Sargent's final words roused Lowell's suspicion. He walked quickly into the room and found Sargent taking a revolver from the drawer of a desk. Lowell wrested the weapon from his grasp.

"That's the last thing in the world you should do," said the Indian agent, in a low voice. "There isn't a jury that will convict you. If it's expiation you seek, do you think that cowardly sort of expiation is going to bring anything but new unhappiness to her out there?"

"No," said Sargent. "I give you my word this will not be attempted again."

Space meeting space – plains and sky welded into harmonies of blue and gray. Cloud shadows racing across billowy uplands, and sagebrush nodding in a breeze crisp and electric as only a breeze from our upper Western plateau can be. Distant mountains, with their allurements enhanced by the filmiest of purple veils. Bird song and the chattering of prairie dogs from the foreground merely intensifying the great, echoless silence of the plains.

Lowell and Helen from a ridge —their ridge it was now! – watched the changes of the panorama. They had dismounted, and their horses were standing near at hand, reins trailing, and manes rising and falling with the undulations of the breeze. It was a month after Sargent's confession and his surrender as the slayer of the recluse of the Greek Letter Ranch. As Lowell had prophesied, Sargent's acquittal had been prompt. His story was corroborated by brief testimony from Lowell and Helen. Citizens crowded about him, after the jury had brought in its verdict of "Not guilty," and one of the first to congratulate him was Jim McFann, who had been acquitted when he came up for trial for slaying Talpers. The half-breed told Sargent of Talpers's plan to kill Helen.

"I'm just telling you," said the half-breed, "to ease your mind in case you're feeling any responsibility for Talpers's death."

Soon after his acquittal Sargent departed for California, where he married Miss Scovill – the outcome of an early romance. Helen was soon to leave to join her foster parents, and she and Lowell had come for a last ride.

"I cannot realize the glorious truth of it all – that I am to come soon and claim you and bring you back here as my wife," said Lowell. "Say it all over again for me."

He was standing with both arms about her and with her face uptilted to his. No doubt other men and women had stood thus on this glacier-wrought promontory – lovers from cave and tepee.

"It is all true," Helen answered, "but I must admit that the responsibilities of being an Indian agent's wife seem alarming. The thought of there being so much to do among these people makes me afraid that I shall not be able to meet the responsibilities."

"You'll be bothered every day with Indians – men, women, and babies. You'll hear the thumping of their moccasined feet every hour of the day. They'll overrun your front porch and seek you out in the sacred precincts of your kitchen, mostly about things that are totally inconsequential."

"But think of the work in its larger aspects – the good that there is to be done."

Lowell smiled at her approvingly.

"That's the way you have to keep thinking all the time. You have to look beyond the mass of detail in the foreground – past all the minor annoyances and the red tape and the seeming ingratitude. You've got to figure that you're there to supply the needed human note – to let these people understand that this Government of ours is not a mere machine with the motive power at Washington. You've got to feel that you've been sent here to make up for the indifference of the outside world – that the kiddies out in those ramshackle cabins and cold tepees are not going to be lonely, and suffer and die, if you can help it. You've got to feel that it's your help that's going to save the feeble and sick – sometimes from their own superstitions. There's no reason why we can't in time get a hospital here for Indians, like Fire Bear, who have tuberculosis. We're going to save Fire Bear, and we can save others. And then there are the school-children, with lonely hours that can be lightened, and with work to be found for them in the big world after they have learned the white man's tasks. But there are going to be heartaches and disillusionments for a woman. A man can grit his teeth and smash through some way, unless he sinks back into absolute indifference as a good many Indian agents do. But a woman – well, dear, I dread to think of your embarking on a task which is at once so alluring and so endless and thankless."

Helen put her hand on his lips.

"With you helping me, no task can seem thankless."

"Well, then, this is our kingdom of work," said Lowell, with a sweep of his sombrero which included the vast reservation which smiled so inscrutably at them. "There's every human need to be met out there in all that bigness. We'll face it together – and we'll win!"