Jean of the Lazy A

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"He wasn't, though. Jim told me Art was going to
leave yesterday; that was in the forenoon. He's going
to Alaska,--been planning it all spring. And Carl
said he was with Art till Art left to catch the train.
Somebody else from town here had seen him take the
train, and asked about him. No, it wasn't Art."

"Well, who was it, then?"

Never before had Lite failed to tell Jean just what
she wanted to know. He failed now, and he went away
as though he was glad to put distance between them.
He did not know what to think. He did not want to
think. Certainly he did not want to talk, to Jean
especially. For lies never came easily to the tongue of
Lite Avery. It was all very well to tell Jean that he
didn't know who it was; he did tell her so, and made
his escape before she could read in his face the fear that
he did know. It was not so easy to guard his fear from
the keen eyes of his fellows, with whom he must mingle
and discuss the murder, or else pay the penalty of having
them suspect that he knew a great deal more about
it than he admitted.

Several men tried to stop him and talk about it, but
he put them off. He was due at the ranch, he said, to
look after the stock. He didn't know a thing about it,
anyway.

Lazy A coulee, when he rode into it, seemed to wear
already an air of depression, foretaste of what was to
come. The trail was filled with hoofprints, and cut
deep with the wagon that had borne the dead man to
town and to an unwept burial. At the gate he met
Carl Douglas, riding with his head sunk deep on his
chest. Lite would have avoided that meeting if he
could have done so unobtrusively, but as it was, he
pulled up and waited while Carl opened the wire gate
and dragged it to one side. From the look of his face,
Carl also would have avoided the meeting, if he
could have done so. He glanced up as Lite passed
through.

"Hell of a verdict," Lite made brief comment when
he met Carl's eyes.

Carl stopped, leaning against his horse with one
hand thrown up to the saddle-horn. He was a small
man, not at all like Aleck in size or in features. He
looked haggard now and white.

"What do you make of it?" he asked Lite. "Do
you believe--?"

"Of course I don't! Great question for a brother
to ask," Lite retorted sharply. "It's not in Aleck to
do a thing like that."

"What made you say you saw him ride home? You
didn't, did you?"

"You heard what I said; take it or leave it." Lite
scowled down at Carl. "What was there queer about
it? Why--"

"If you'd been inside ten minutes before then,"
Carl told him bluntly, "you'd have heard Aleck say he
came home a full hour or more before you say you saw
him ride in. That's what's queer. What made you
do that? It won't help Aleck none."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Lite
slouched miserably in the saddle, and eyed the other
without really seeing him at all. "They can't prove
anything on Aleck," he added with faint hope.

"I don't see myself how they can." Carl brightened
perceptibly. "His being alone all day is bad; he can't
furnish the alibi you can furnish. But they can't prove
anything. They'll turn him loose, the grand jury will;
they'll have to. They can't indict him on the evidence.
They haven't got any evidence,--not any more than
just the fact that he rode in with the news. No need
to worry; he'll be turned loose in a few days." He
picked up the gate, dragged it after him as he went
through, and fumbled the wire loop into place over the
post. "I wish," he said when he had mounted with
the gate between them, "you hadn't been so particular
to say you saw him ride home about the same time you
did. That looks bad, Lite."

"Bad for who?" Lite turned in the saddle aggressively.

"Looks bad all around. I don't see what made you
do that;--not when you knew Jim and Aleck had both
testified before you did."

Lite rode slowly down the road to the stable, and
cursed the impulse that had made him blunder so. He
had no compunctions for the lie, if only it had done any
good. It had done harm; he could see now that it had.
But he could not believe that it would make any material
difference in Aleck's case. As the story had been
repeated to Lite by half a dozen men, who had heard
him tell it, Aleck's own testimony had been responsible
for the verdict.

Men had told Lite plainly that Aleck was a fool
not to plead self-defense, even in face of the fact that
Johnny Croft had not drawn any weapon. Jim had
declared that Aleck could have sworn that Johnny
reached for his gun. Others admitted voluntarily that
while it would be a pretty weak defense, it would beat
the story Aleck had told.

Lite turned the mare and colt into a shed for the
night. He milked the two cows without giving any
thought to what he was doing, and carried the milk to
the kitchen door before he realized that it would be
wasted, sitting in pans when the house would be empty.
Still, it occurred to him that he might as well go on
with the routine of the place until they knew to a
certainty what the grand jury would do. So he went in
and put away the milk.

After that, Lite let other work wait while he cleaned
the kitchen and tried to wash out that brown stain on
the floor. His face was moody, his eyes dull with
trouble. Like a treadmill, his mind went over and over
the meager knowledge he had of the tragedy. He could
not bring himself to believe Aleck Douglas guilty of the
murder; yet he could not believe anything else.

Johnny Croft, it had been proven at the inquest,
rode out from town alone, bent on mischief, if vague,
half-drunken threats meant anything. He had told
more than one that he was going to the Lazy A, but it
was certain that no one had followed him from town.
His threats had been for the most part directed against
Carl, it is true; but if he had meant to quarrel with
Carl, he would have gone to the Bar Nothing instead of
the Lazy A. Probably he had meant to see both Carl
and Aleck, and had come here first, since it was the
nearest to town.

As to enemies, no one had particularly liked Johnny.
He was not a likeable sort; he was too "mouthy"
according to his associates. He had quarreled with a
good many for slight cause, but since he was so notoriously
blatant and argumentative, no one had taken him
seriously enough to nurse any grudge that would be
likely to breed assassination. It was inconceivable to
Lite that any man had trailed Johnny Croft to the
Lazy A and shot him down in the kitchen while he was
calmly helping himself to Jean's gingerbread. Still,
he must take that for granted or else believe what he
steadfastly refused to confess even to himself that he
believed.

It was nearly dark when he threw out the last pail
of water and stood looking down dissatisfied at the
result of his labor, while he dried his hands. The stain
was still there, in spite of him, just as the memory of
the murder would cling always to the place. He went
out and watered Jean's poppies and sweet peas and
pansies, still going over and over the evidence and trying
to fill in the gaps.

He had blundered with his lie that had meant to
help. The lie had proven to every man who heard him
utter it that his faith in Aleck's innocence was not
strong; it had proven that he did not trust the facts.
That hurt Lite, and made it seem more than ever his
task to clear up the matter, if he could. If he could
not, then he would make amends in whatever way he
might.

Almost as if he were guarding that gruesome room
which was empty now and silent,--since the clock had
not been wound and had run down,--he sat long upon
the narrow platform before the kitchen door and smoked
and stared straight before him. Once he thought he
saw a man move cautiously from the corner of the
shed where the youngest calf slept beside its mother,
He had been thinking so deeply of other things that
he was not sure, but he went down there, his cigarette
glowing in the gloom, and stood looking and listening.

He neither saw nor heard anything, and presently
he went back to the house; but his abstraction was
broken by the fancy, so that he did not sit down again
to smoke and think. He had thought until his brain
felt heavy and stupid; and the last cigarette he lighted;
he threw away, for he had smoked until his tongue was
sore. He went in and went to bed.

For a long time he lay awake. Finally he dropped
into a sleep so heavy that it was nearer to a torpor, and
it was the sunlight that awoke him; sunlight that was
warm in the room and proved how late the morning was.
He swore in his astonishment and got up hastily, a
great deal more optimistic than when he had lain down,
and hurried out to feed the stock before he boiled coffee
and fried eggs for himself.

It was when he went in to cook his belated breakfast
that Lite noticed something which had no logical
explanation. There were footprints on the kitchen floor
that he had scrubbed so diligently. He stood looking
at them, much as he had looked at the stain that would
not come out, no matter how hard he scrubbed. He had
not gone in the room after he had pulled the door shut
and gone off to water Jean's dowers. He was positive
upon that point; and even if he had gone in, his tracks
would scarcely have led straight across the room to the
cupboard where the table dishes were kept.

The tracks led to the cupboard, and were muddled
confusedly there, as though the maker had stood there
for some minutes. Lite could not see any sense in
that. They were very distinct, just as footprints always
show plainly on clean boards. The floor had evidently
been moist still,--Lite had scrubbed man-fashion,
with a broom, and had not been very particular
about drying the floor afterwards. Also he had thrown
the water straight out from the door, and the fellow
must have stepped on the moist sand that clung to his
boots. In the dark he could not notice that, or see that
he had left tracks on the floor.

Lite went to the cupboard and looked inside it,
wondering what the man could have wanted there. It was
one of those old-fashioned "safes" such as our
grandmothers considered indispensable in the furnishing of
a kitchen. It held the table dishes neatly piled: dinner
plates at the end of the middle shelf, smaller plates
next, then a stack of saucers,--the arrangement stereotyped,
unvarying since first Lite Avery had taken dishtowel
in hand to dry the dishes for Jean when she was
ten and stood upon a footstool so that her elbows would
be higher than the rim of the dishpan. The cherry-
blossom dinner set that had come from the mail-order
house long ago was chipped now and incomplete, but
the familiar rows gave Lite an odd sense of the
unreality of the tragedy that had so lately taken place
in that room.

Clearly there was nothing there to tempt a thief, and
there was nothing disturbed. Lite straightened up and
looked down thoughtfully upon the top of the cupboard,
where Jean had stacked out-of-date newspapers
and magazines, and where Aleck had laid a pair of
extra gloves. He pulled out the two small drawers just
under the cupboard top and looked within them. The
first held pipes and sacks of tobacco and books of
cigarette papers; Lite knew well enough the contents of
that drawer. He appraised the supply of tobacco,
remembered how much had been there on the morning of
the murder, and decided that none had been taken.
He helped himself to a fresh ten-cent sack of tobacco
and inspected the other drawer.

Here were merchants' bills, a few letters of no
consequence, a couple of writing tablets, two lead pencils,
and a steel pen and a squat bottle of ink. This was
called the writing-drawer, and had been since Lite first
came to the ranch. Here Lite believed the confusion
was recent. Jean had been very domestic since her
return from school, and all disorder had been frowned
upon. Lately the letters had been stacked in a corner,
whereas now they were scattered. But they were
of no consequence, once they had been read, and there
was nothing else to merit attention from any one.

Lite looked down at the tracks and saw that they led
into another room, which was Aleck's bedroom. He
went in there, but he could not find any reason for a
night-prowler's visit. Aleck's desk was always open.
There was never anything there which he wanted to
hide away. His account books and his business
correspondence, such as it was, lay accessible to the
curious. There was nothing intricate or secret about the
running of the Lazy A ranch; nothing that should
interest any one save the owner.

It occurred to Lite that incriminating evidence is
sometimes placed surreptitiously in a suspected man's
desk. He had heard of such things being done. He
could not imagine what evidence might be placed here
by any one, but he made a thorough search. He did
not find anything that remotely concerned the murder.

He looked through the living-room, and even opened
the door which led from the kitchen into Jean's room,
which had been built on to the rest of the house a few
years before. He could not find any excuse for those
footprints.

He cooked and ate his breakfast absent-mindedly,
glancing often down at the footprints on the floor, and
occasionally at the brown stain in the center. He decided
that he would not say anything about those tracks.
He would keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, and
see what came of it.

CHAPTER III

WHAT A MAN'S GOOD NAME IS WORTH

You would think that the bare word of a man who
has lived uprightly in a community for fifteen
years or so would be believed under oath, even if his
whole future did depend upon it. You would think
that Aleck Douglas could not be convicted of murder
just because he had reported that a man was shot down
in Aleck's house.

The report of Aleck Douglas' trial is not the main
feature of this story; it is merely the commencement,
one might say. Therefore, I am going to be brief as
I can and still give you a clear idea of the situation,
and then I am going to skip the next three years and
begin where the real story begins.

Aleck's position was dishearteningly simple, and there
was nothing much that one could do to soften the facts
or throw a new light on the murder. Lite watched,
wide awake and eager, many a night for the return of
that prowler, but he never saw or heard a thing that
gave him any clue whatever. So the footprints seemed
likely to remain the mystery they had seemed on the
morning when he discovered them. He laid traps,
pretending to ride away from the ranch to town before
dark, and returning cautiously by way of the trail
down the bluff behind the house. But nothing came of
it. Lazy A ranch was keeping its secret well, and by
the time the trial was begun, Lite had given up hope.
Once he believed the house had been visited in the
daytime, during his absence in town, but he could not be
sure of that.

Jean went to Chinook and stayed there, so that Lite
saw her seldom. Carl also was away much of the time,
trying by every means he could think of to swing public
opinion and the evidence in Aleck's favor. He
prevailed upon Rossman, who was Montana's best-known
lawyer, to defend the case, for one thing. He seemed
to pin his faith almost wholly upon Rossman, and
declared to every one that Aleck would never be convicted.
It would be, he maintained, impossible to convict him,
with Rossman handling the case; and he always added
the statement that you can't send an innocent man to
jail, if things are handled right.

Perhaps he did not, after all, handle things right. For
in spite of Rossman, and Aleck's splendid reputation,
and the meager evidence against him, he was found
guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in
Deer Lodge penitentiary.

Rossman had made a great speech, and had made
men in the jury blink back unshed tears. But he could
not shake from them the belief that Aleck Douglas had
ridden home and met Johnny Croft, calmly making
himself at home in the Lazy A kitchen. He could not
convince them that there had not been a quarrel, and
that Aleck had not fired the shot in the grip of a
sudden, overwhelming rage against Croft. By Aleck's
own statement he had been at the ranch some time before
he had started for town to report the murder. By
the word of several witnesses, it had been proven that
Croft had left town meaning to collect wages which he
claimed were due him or else he would "get even."
His last words to a group out by the hitching pole in
front of the saloon which was Johnny's hangout, were:
"I'm going to get what's coming to me, or there'll be
one fine, large bunch of trouble!" He had not
mentioned Aleck Douglas by name, it is true; but the fact
that he had been found at the Lazy A was proof enough
that he had referred to Aleck when he spoke.

There is no means of knowing just how far-reaching
was the effect of that impulsive lie which Lite had told
at the inquest. He did not repeat the blunder at the
trial. When the district attorney reminded Lite of
the statement he had made, Lite had calmly explained
that he had made a mistake; he should have said that
he had seen Aleck ride away from the ranch instead
of to it. Beyond that he would not go, question him as
they might.

The judge sentenced Aleck to eight years, and
publicly regretted the fact that Aleck had persisted in
asserting his innocence; had he pleaded guilty instead,
the judge more than hinted, the sentence would have
been made as light as the law would permit. It was
the stubborn denial of the deed in the face of all
reason, he said, that went far toward weaning from the
prisoner what sympathy he would otherwise have commanded
from the public and the court of justice.

You know how those things go. There was nothing
particularly out of the ordinary in the case; we read
of such things in the paper, and a paragraph or two is
considered sufficient space to give so commonplace a
happening.

But there was Lite, loyal to his last breath in the
face of his secret belief that Aleck was probably guilty;
loyal and blaming himself bitterly for hurting Aleck's
cause when he had meant only to help. There was
Jean, dazed by the magnitude of the catastrophe that
had overtaken them all; clinging to Lite as to the only
part of her home that was left to her, steadfastly
refusing to believe that they would actually take her dad
away to prison, until the very last minute when she
stood on the crowded depot platform and watched in
dry-eyed misery while the train slid away and bore
him out of her life. These things are not put in the
papers.

"Come on, Jean." Lite took her by the arm and
swung her away from the curious crowd which she did
not see. "You're my girl now, and I'm going to start
right in using my authority. I've got Pard here in
the stable. You go climb into your riding-clothes, and
we'll hit it outa this darned burg where every man and
his dog has all gone to eyes and tongues. They make
me sick. Come on."

"Where?" Jean held back a little with vague
stubbornness against the thought of taking up life again
without her dad. "This--this is the jumping-off
place, Lite. There's nothing beyond."

Lite gripped her arm a little tighter if anything,
and led her across the street and down the high sidewalk
that bridged a swampy tract at the edge of town
beyond the depot.

"We're taking the long way round," he observed
"because I'm going to talk to you like a Dutch uncle
for saying things like that. I--had a talk with your
dad last night, Jean. He's turned you over to me to
look after till he gets back. I wish he coulda turned
the ranch over, along with you, but he couldn't. That's
been signed over to Carl, somehow; I didn't go into
that with your dad; we didn't have much time. Seems
Carl put up the money to pay Rossman,--and other
things,--and took over the ranch to square it. Anyway,
I haven't got anything to say about the business
end of the deal. I've got permission to boss you,
though, and I'm sure going to do it to a fare-you-well."
He cast a sidelong glance down at her. He could not
see anything of her face except the droop of her mouth,
a bit of her cheek, and her chin that promised firmness.
Her mouth did not change expression in the slightest
degree until she moved her lips in speech.

"I don't care. What is there to boss me about?
The world has stopped." Her voice was steady, and
it was also sullen.

"Right there is where the need of bossing begins.
You can't stay in town any longer. There's nothing
here to keep you from going crazy; and the Allens are
altogether too sympathetic; nice folks, and they mean
well,--but you don't want a bunch like that slopping
around, crying all over you and keeping you in mind
of things. I'm going to work for Carl, from now on.
You're going out there to the Bar Nothing--" He
felt a stiffening of the muscles under his fingers, and
answered calmly the signal of rebellion.

"Sure, that's the place for you. Your dad and Carl
fixed that up between them, anyway. That's to be
your home; so my saying so is just an extra rope to
bring you along peaceable. You're going to stay at
the Bar Nothing. And I'm going to make a top hand
outa you, Jean. I'm going to teach you to shoot and
rope and punch cows and ride, till there won't be a
girl in the United States to equal you."

"What for?" Jean still had an air of sullen
apathy. "That won't help dad any."

"It'll start the world moving again." Lite forced
himself to cheerfulness in the face of his own
despondency. "You say it's stopped. It's us that have
stopped. We've come to a blind pocket, you might
say, in the trail we've been taking through life. We've
got to start in a new place, that's all. Now, I know
you're dead game, Jean; at least I know you used to
be, and I'm gambling on school not taking that outa
you. You're maybe thinking about going away off
somewhere among strangers; but that wouldn't do at
all. Your dad always counted on keeping you away
from town life. I'm just going to ride herd on you,
Jean, and see to it that you go on the way your dad
wanted you to go. He can't be on the job, and so I'm
what you might call his foreman. I know how he
wants you to grow up; I'm going to make it my business
to grow you according to directions."

He saw a little quirk of her lips, at that, and was
vastly encouraged thereby.

"Has it struck you that you're liable to have your
hands full?" she asked him with a certain drawl that
Jean had possessed since she first learned to express
herself in words.

"Sure! I'll likely have both hand and my hat full
of trouble. But she's going to be done according to
contract. I reckon I'll wish you was a bronk before
I'm through--"

"What maddens me so that I could run amuck down
this street, shooting everybody I saw," Jean flared out
suddenly, "is the sickening injustice of it. Dad never
did that; you know he never did it." She turned upon
him fiercely. "Do you think he did?" she demanded,
her eyes boring into his.

"Now, that's a bright question to be asking me, ain't
it?" Lite rebuked. "That's a real bright, sensible
question, I must say! I reckon you ought to be stood
in the corner for that,--but I'll let it go this time.
Only don't never spring anything like that again."

Jean looked ashamed. "I could doubt God Himself,
right now," she gritted through her teeth.

"Well, don't doubt me, unless you want a scrap on
your hands," Lite warned. "I'm sure ashamed of
you. We'll stop here at the stable and get the horses.
You can ride sideways as far as the Allens', and get
your riding-skirt and come on. The sooner you are
on top of a horse, the quicker you're going to come outa
that state of mind."

It was pitifully amusing to see Lite Avery attempt
to bully any one,--especially Jean,--who might almost
be called Lite's religion. The idea of that long,
lank cowpuncher whose shyness was so ingrained that
it had every outward appearance of being a phlegmatic
coldness, assuming the duties of Jean's dad and undertaking
to see that she grew up according to directions,
would have been funny, if he had not been so absolutely
in earnest.

His method of comforting her and easing her
through the first stage of black despair was unorthodox,
but it was effective. Because she was too absorbed in
her own misery to combat him openly, he got her started
toward the Bar Nothing and away from the friends
whose enervating pity was at that time the worst influence
possible. He set the pace, and he set it for
speed. The first mile they went at a sharp gallop that
was not far from a run, and the horses were breathing
heavily when he pulled up, well out of sight of the
town, and turned to the girl.

There was color in her cheeks, and the dullness was
gone from her eyes when she returned his glance
inquiringly. The droop of her lips was no longer the
droop of a weak yielding to sorrow, but rather the
beginning of a brave facing of the future. Lite managed
a grin that did not look forced.

"I'll make a real range hand outa you yet," he
announced confidently. "You remember the roping and
shooting science I taught you before you went off to
school? You're going to start right in where you left
off and learn all I know and some besides. I'll make
a lady of you yet,--darned if I don't."

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