Jean of the Lazy A

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Jean of the Lazy A

By B. M. BOWER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I HOW TROUBLE CAME TO THE LAZY A
II CONCERNING LITE AND A FEW FOOTPRINTS
III WHAT A MAN'S GOOD NAME IS WORTH
IV JEAN
V JEAN RIDES INTO A SMALL ADVENTURE
VI AND THE VILLAIN PURSUED LITE
VII ROBERT GRANT BURNS GETS HELP
VIII JEAN SPOILS SOMETHING
IX A MAN-SIZED JOB FOR JEAN
X JEAN LEARNS WHAT FEAR IS LIKE
XI LITE'S PUPIL DEMONSTRATES
XII TO "DOUBLE" FOR MURIEL GAY
XIII PICTURES AND PLANS AND MYSTERIOUS FOOTSTEPS
XIV PUNCH VERSUS PRESTIGE
XV A LEADING LADY THEY WOULD MAKE OF JEAN
XVI FOR ONCE AT LEAST LITE HAD HIS WAY
XVII "WHY DON'T YOU GIVE THEM SOMETHING REAL?"
XVIII A NEW KIND OF PICTURE
XIX IN LOS ANGELES
XX CHANCE TAKES A HAND
XXI JEAN BELIEVES THAT SHE TAKES MATTERS INTO HER OWN HANDS
XXII JEAN MEETS ONE CRISIS AND CONFRONTS ANOTHER
XXIII A LITTLE ENLIGHTENMENT
XXIV THE LETTER IN THE CHAPS
XXV LITE COMES OUT OF THE BACKGROUND
XXVI HOW HAPPINESS RETURNED TO THE LAZY A

JEAN OF THE LAZY A

CHAPTER I

HOW TROUBLE CAME TO THE LAZY A

Without going into a deep, psychological discussion
of the elements in men's souls that breed
events, we may say with truth that the Lazy A ranch
was as other ranches in the smooth tenor of its life
until one day in June, when the finger of fate wrote
bold and black across the face of it the word that blotted
out prosperity, content, warm family ties,--all those
things that go to make life worth while.

Jean, sixteen and a range girl to the last fiber of her
being, had gotten up early that morning and had washed
the dishes and swept, and had shaken the rugs of the
little living-room most vigorously. On her knees, with
stiff brush and much soapy water, she had scrubbed the
kitchen floor until the boards dried white as kitchen
floors may be. She had baked a loaf of gingerbread,
that came from the oven with a most delectable odor,
and had wrapped it in a clean cloth to cool on the
kitchen table. Her dad and Lite Avery would show
cause for the baking of it when they sat down, fresh
washed and ravenous, to their supper that evening. I
mention Jean and her scrubbed kitchen and the gingerbread
by way of proving how the Lazy A went unwarned
and unsuspecting to the very brink of its disaster.

Lite Avery, long and lean and silently content with
life, had ridden away with a package of sandwiches,
after a full breakfast and a smile from the slim girl
who cooked it, upon the business of the day; which
happened to be a long ride with one of the Bar Nothing
riders, down in the breaks along the river. Jean's
father, big Aleck Douglas, had saddled and ridden away
alone upon business of his own. And presently, in mid-
forenoon, Jean closed the kitchen door upon an
immaculately clean house filled with the warm, fragrant
odor of her baking, and in fresh shirt waist and her
best riding-skirt and Stetson, went whistling away down
the path to the stable, and saddled Pard, the brown colt
that Lite had broken to the saddle for her that spring.
In ten minutes or so she went galloping down the coulee
and out upon the trail to town, which was fifteen miles
away and held a chum of hers.

So Lazy A coulee was left at peace, with scratching
hens busy with the feeding of half-feathered chicks,
and a rooster that crowed from the corral fence seven
times without stopping to take breath. In the big
corral a sorrel mare nosed her colt and nibbled
abstractedly at the pile of hay in one corner, while the
colt wabbled aimlessly up and sniffed curiously and then
turned to inspect the rails that felt so queer and hard
when he rubbed his nose against them. The sun was
warm, and cloud-shadows drifted lazily across the coulee
with the breeze that blew from the west. You never
would dream that this was the last day,--the last few
hours even,--when the Lazy A would be the untroubled
home of three persons of whose lives it formed so
great a part.

At noon the hens were hovering their chickens in the
shade of the mower which Lite was overhauling during
his spare time, getting it ready for the hay that was
growing apace out there in the broad mouth of the
coulee. The rooster was wallowing luxuriously in a
dusty spot in the corral. The young colt lay stretched
out on the fat of its side in the sun, sound asleep. The
sorrel mare lay beside it, asleep also, with her head
thrown up against her shoulder. Somewhere in a shed
a calf was bawling in bored lonesomeness away from its
mother feeding down the pasture. And over all the
coulee and the buildings nestled against the bluff at
its upper end was spread that atmosphere of homey
comfort and sheltered calm which surrounds always a
home that is happy.

Lite Avery, riding toward home just when the shadows
were beginning to grow long behind him, wondered
if Jean would be back by the time he reached the
ranch. He hoped so, with a vague distaste at finding
the place empty of her cheerful presence. Be looked
at his watch; it was nearly four o'clock. She ought to
be home by half-past four or five, anyway. He glanced
sidelong at Jim and quietly slackened his pace a little.
Jim was telling one of those long, rambling tales of
the little happenings of a narrow life, and Lite was
supposed to be listening instead of thinking about when
Jean would return home. Jim believed he was listening,
and drove home the point of his story.

"Yes, sir, them's his very words. Art Osgood heard
him. He'll do it, too, take it from me, Crofty is shore
riled up this time."

"Always is," Lite observed, without paying much
attention. "I'll turn off here, Jim, and cut across.
Got some work I want to get done yet to-night. So
long."

He swung away from his companion, whose trail to
the Bar Nothing led him straight west, passing the Lazy
A coulee well out from its mouth, toward the river.
Lite could save a half mile by bearing off to the north
and entering the coulee at the eastern side and riding
up through the pasture. He wanted to see how the
grass was coming on, anyway. The last rain should
have given it a fresh start.

He was in no great hurry, after all; he had merely
been bored with Jim's company and wanted to go on
alone. And then he could get the fire started for
Jean. Lite's life was running very smoothly indeed;
so smoothly that his thoughts occupied themselves
largely with little things, save when they concerned
themselves with Jean, who had been away to school for
a year and had graduated from "high," as she called it,
just a couple of weeks ago, and had come home to keep
house for dad and Lite. The novelty of her presence
on the ranch was still fresh enough to fill his thoughts
with her slim attractiveness. Town hadn't spoiled her,
he thought glowingly. She was the same good little
pal,--only she was growing up pretty fast, now. She
was a young lady already.

So, thinking of her with the brightening of spirits
which is the first symptom of the world-old emotion
called love, Lite rounded the eastern arm of the bluff
and came within sight of the coulee spread before him,
shaped like the half of a huge platter with a high rim of
bluff on three sides.

His first involuntary glance was towards the house,
and there was unacknowledged expectancy in his eyes.
But he did not see Jean, nor any sign that she had
returned. Instead, he saw her father just mounting in
haste at the corral. He saw him swing his quirt down
along the side of his horse and go tearing down the
trail, leaving the wire gate flat upon the ground behind
him,--which was against all precedent.

Lite quickened his own pace. He did not know why
big Aleck Douglas should be hitting that pace out of
the coulee, but since Aleck's pace was habitually
unhurried, the inference was plain enough that there was
some urgent need for haste. Lite let down the rails of
the barred gate from the meadow into the pasture,
mounted, and went galloping across the uneven sod.
His first anxious thought was for the girl. Had something
happened to her?

At the stable he looked and saw that Jean's saddle did
not hang on its accustomed peg inside the door, and he
breathed freer. She could not have returned, then. He
turned his own horse inside without taking off the saddle,
and looked around him puzzled. Nothing seemed
wrong about the place. The sorrel mare stood placidly
switching at the flies and suckling her gangling colt in
the shady corner of the corral, and the chickens were
pecking desultorily about their feeding-ground in
expectation of the wheat that Jean or Lite would fling
to them later on. Not a thing seemed unusual.

Yet Lite stood just outside the stable, and the
sensation that something was wrong grew keener. He was
not a nervous person,--you would have laughed at the
idea of nerves in connection with Lite Avery. He felt
that something was wrong, just the same. It was not
altogether the hurried departure of Aleck Douglas,
either, that made him feel so. He looked at the house
setting back there close to the bluff just where it began
to curve rudely out from the narrowest part of the
coulee. It was still and quiet, with closed windows and
doors to tell there was no one at home. And yet, to
Lite its very silence seemed sinister.

Wolves were many, down in the breaks along the
river that spring; and the coyotes were an ever-present
evil among the calves, so that Lite never rode abroad
without his six-shooter. He reached back and loosened
it in the holster before he started up the sandy path
to the house; and if you knew the Lazy A ranch as
well as Lite knew it, from six years of calling it home,
you would wonder at that action of his, which was
instinctive and wholly unconscious.

So he went up through the sunshine of late afternoon
that sent his shadow a full rod before him, and he
stepped upon the narrow platform before the kitchen
door, and stood there a minute listening. He heard
the mantel clock in the living-room ticking with the
resonance given by a room empty of all other sound.
Because his ears were keen, he heard also the little
alarm clock in the kitchen tick-tick-tick on the shelf
behind the stove where Jean kept it daytimes.

Peaceful enough, for all the silence; yet Lite reached
back and laid his fingers upon the smooth butt of his
six-shooter and opened the door with his left hand,
which was more or less awkward. He pushed the door
open and stepped inside. Then for a full minute he
did not move.

On the floor that Jean had scrubbed till it was so
white, a man lay dead, stretched upon his back. His
eyes stared vacantly straight up at the ceiling, where a
single cobweb which Jean had not noticed swayed in
the air-current Lite set in motion with the opening of
the door. On the floor, where it had dropped from his
hand perhaps when he fell, a small square piece of
gingerbread lay, crumbled around the edges. Tragic
halo around his head, a pool of blood was turning brown
and clotted. Lite shivered a little while he stared down
at him.

In a minute he lifted his eyes from the figure
and looked around the small room. The stove shone
black in the sunlight which the open door let in. On
the table, covered with white oilcloth, the loaf of gingerbread
lay uncovered, and beside it lay a knife used to
cut off the piece which the man on the floor had not
eaten before he died. Nothing else was disturbed.
Nothing else seemed in the least to bear any evidence
of what had taken place.

Lite's thoughts turned in spite of him to the man
who had ridden from the coulee as though fiends had
pursued. The conclusion was obvious, yet Lite loyally
rejected it in the face of reason. Reason told him
that there went the slayer. For this dead man was
what was left of Johnny Croft, the Crofty of whom
Jim had gossiped not more than half an hour before.
And the gossip had been of threats which Johnny Croft
had made against the two Douglas brothers,--big
Aleck, of the Lazy A, and Carl, of the Bar Nothing
ranch adjoining.

Suicide it could scarcely be, for Crofty was the type
of man who would cling to life; besides, his gun was
in its holster, and a man would hardly have the strength
or the desire to put away his gun after he has shot
himself under one eye. Death had undoubtedly been
immediate. Lite thought of these things while he stood
there just inside the door. Then he turned slowly and
went outside, and stood hesitating upon the porch. He
did not quite know what he ought to do about it, and
so he did not mean to be in too great a hurry to do
anything; that was Lite's habit, and he had always
found that it served him well.

If the rider had been fleeing from his crime, as was
likely, Lite had no mind to raise at once the hue and
cry. An hour or two could make no difference to the
dead man,--and you must remember that Lite had for
six years called this place his home, and big Aleck
Douglas his friend as well as the man who paid him
wages for the work he did. He was half tempted to
ride away and say nothing for a while. He could let
it appear that he had not been at the house at all and so
had not discovered the crime when he did. That would
give Aleck Douglas more time to get away. But there
was Jean, due at any moment now. He could not go
away and let Jean discover that gruesome thing on the
kitchen floor. He could not take it up and hide it away
somewhere; he could not do anything, it seemed to him,
but just wait.

He went slowly down the path to the stable, his chin
on his chest, his mind grappling with the tragedy and
with the problem of how best he might lighten the blow
that had fallen upon the ranch. It was unreal,--it
was unthinkable,--that Aleck Douglas, the man who
met but friendly glances, ride where he might, had
done this thing. And yet there was nothing else to believe.
Johnny Croft had worked here on the ranch for
a couple of months, off and on. He had not been steadily
employed, and he had been paid by the day instead
of by the month as was the custom. He had worked
also for Carl Douglas at the Bar Nothing; back and
forth, for one or the other as work pressed. He was
too erratic to be depended upon except from day to
day; too prone to saddle his horse and ride to town and
forget to return for a day or two days or a week, as
the mood seized him or his money held out.

Lite knew that there had been some dispute when he
had left; he had claimed payment for more days than
he had worked. Aleck was a just man who paid honestly
what he owed; he was also known to be "close-
fisted." He would pay what he owed and not a nickel
more,--hence the dispute. Johnny had gone away
seeming satisfied that his own figures were wrong, but
later on he had quarreled with Carl over wages and
other things. Carl had a bad temper that sometimes
got beyond his control, and he had ordered Johnny off
the ranch. This was part of the long, full-detailed
story Jim had been telling. Johnny had left, and he
had talked about the Douglas brothers to any one who
would listen. He had said they were crooked, both of
them, and would cheat a working-man out of his pay.
He had come back, evidently, to renew the argument
with Aleck. With the easy ways of ranch people, he
had gone inside when he found no one at home,--
hungry, probably, and not at all backward about helping
himself to whatever appealed to his appetite. That
was Johnny's way,--a way that went unquestioned,
since he had lived there long enough to feel at home.
Lite remembered with an odd feeling of pity how
Johnny had praised the first gingerbread which Jean
had baked, the day after her arrival; and how he had
eaten three pieces and had made Jean's cheeks burn
with confusion at his bold flattery.

He had come back, and he had helped himself to the
gingerbread. And then he had been shot down. He
was lying in there now, just as he had fallen, and his
blood was staining deep the fresh-scrubbed floor. And
Jean would be coming home soon. Lite thought it would
be better if he rode out to meet her, and told her what
had happened, so that she need not come upon it
unprepared. There was nothing else that he could bring
himself to do, and his mood demanded action of some
sort; one could not sit down at peace with a fresh
tragedy like that hanging over the place.

He had reached the stable when a horse walked out
from behind the hay corral and stopped, eyeing him
curiously. It was Johnny's horse. Even as improvident
a cowpuncher as Johnny Croft had been likes to
own a "private" horse,--one that is his own and can
be ridden when and where the owner chooses. Lite
turned and went over to it, caught it by the dragging
bridle-reins, and led it into an empty stall. He did
not know whether he ought to unsaddle it or leave it as
it was; but on second thought, he loosened the cinch in
kindness to the animal, and took off its bridle, so that
it could eat without being hampered by the bit. Lite
was too thorough a horseman not to be thoughtful of
an animal's comfort.

He led his own horse out, and then he stopped
abruptly. For Pard stood in front of the kitchen door,
and Jean was untying a package or two from the saddle.
He opened his mouth to call to her; he started forward;
but he was too late to prevent what happened. Before
his throat had made a sound, Jean turned with the
packages in the hollow of her arm and stepped upon the
platform with that springy haste of movement which
belongs to health and youth and happiness; and before
he had taken more than the first step away from his
horse, she had opened the kitchen door.

Lite ran, then. He did not call to her. What was
the use? She had seen. She had dropped her packages,
and turned and ran to meet him, and caught him
by the arm in a panic of horror. Lite patted her hand
awkwardly, not knowing what he ought to say.

"What made you go in there?" came of its own
accord from his lips. "That's no place for a girl."

"It's Johnny Croft!" she gasped just above her
breath. "How--did it happen, Lite?"

"I don't know," said Lite slowly, looking down and
still patting her hand. "Your father and I have both
been gone all day. I just got back a few minutes ago
and found out about it." His tone, his manner and
his words impressed upon Jean the point he wanted her
to get,--that her father had not yet returned, and so
knew nothing of the crime.

He led her back to where Pard stood, and told her to
get on. Without asking him why, Jean obeyed him,
with a shudder when her wide eyes strayed fascinated
to the open door and to what lay just within. Lite
went up and pulled the door shut, and then, walking beside
her with an arm over Pard's neck, he led the way
down to the stable, and mounted Ranger.

"You can't stay here," he explained, when she looked
at him inquiringly. "Do you want to go over and stay
at Carl's, or would you rather go back to town?" He
rode down toward the gate, and Jean kept beside him.

"I'm going to stay with dad," she told him shakily.
"If he stays, I'll--I'll stay."

"You'll not stay," he contradicted her bluntly.
"You can't. It wouldn't be right." And he added
self-reproachfully: "I never thought of your cutting
across the bench and riding down the trail back of the
house. I meant to head you off--"

"It's shorter," said Jean briefly. "I--if I can't
stay, I'd rather go to town, Lite. I don't like to stay
over at Uncle Carl's."

Therefore, when they reached the mouth of the
coulee, Lite turned into the trail that led to town.
All down the coulee the trail had been dug deep with
the hoofprints of a galloping horse; and now, on the
town trail, they were as plain as a primer to one
schooled in the open. But Jean was too upset to
notice them, and for that Lite was thankful. They
did not talk much, beyond the commonplace speculations
which tragedy always brings to the lips of the
bystanders. Comments that were perfectly obvious
they made, it is true. Jean said it was perfectly awful,
and Lite agreed with her. Jean wondered how it
could have happened, and Lite said he didn't know.
Neither of them said anything about the effect it would
have upon their future; I don't suppose that Jean, at
least, could remotely guess at the effect. It is certain
that Lite preferred not to do so.

They were no more than half way to town when they
met a group of galloping horsemen, their coming heralded
for a mile by the dust they kicked out of the trail.

In the midst rode Jean's father. Alongside him
rode the coroner, and behind him rode the sheriff.
The rest of the company was made up of men who had
heard the news and were coming to look upon the
tragedy. Lite drew a long breath of relief. Aleck
Douglas, then, had not been running away.

CHAPTER II

CONCERNING LITE AND A FEW FOOTPRINTS

"Lucky you was with me all day, up to four
o'clock, Lite," Jim said. "That lets you out
slick and clean, seeing the doctor claims he'd been dead
six hours when he seen him last night. Crofty--why,
Crofty was laying in there dead when I was talking
about him to you! Kinda gives a man the creeps to
think of it. Who do you reckon done it, Lite?"

"How'n hell do _I_ know?" Lite retorted irritably.
"I didn't see it done."

Jim studied awhile, an ear cocked for the signal that
the coroner was ready to begin the inquest. "Say,"
he leaned over and whispered in Lite's ear, "where
was Aleck at, all day yesterday?"

"Riding over in the bend, looking for black-leg
signs," said Lite promptly. "Packed a lunch, same as
I did."

The answer seemed to satisfy Jim and to eliminate
from his mind any slight suspicion he may have held,
but Lite had a sudden impulse to improve upon his
statement.

"I saw Aleck ride into the ranch as I was coming
home," he said. As he spoke, his face lightened as
with a weight lifted from his mind.

Later, when the coroner questioned him about his
movements and the movements of Aleck, Lite repeated
the lie as casually as possible. It might have carried
more weight with the jury if Aleck Douglas himself had
not testified, just before then, that he had returned
about three o'clock to the ranch and pottered around the
corral with the mare and colt, and unsaddled his horse
before going into the house at all. It was only when
he had discovered Johnny Croft's horse at the haystack,
he said, that he began to wonder where the rider could
be. He had gone to the house--and found him on
the kitchen floor.

Lite had not heard this statement, for the simple
reason that, being a closely interested person, he had
been invited to remain outside while Aleck Douglas
testified. He wondered why the jury,--men whom
he knew and had known for years, most of them,--
looked at one another so queerly when he declared that
he had seen Aleck ride home. The coroner also had
given him a queer look, but he had not made any comment.
Aleck, too, had turned his head and stared at
Lite in a way which Lite preferred to think he had not
understood.

Beyond that one statement which had produced such
a curious effect, Lite did not have anything to say that
shed the faintest light upon the matter. He told where
he had been, and that he had discovered the body just
before Jean arrived, and that he had immediately
started with her to town. The coroner did not cross-
question him. Counting from four o'clock, which Jim
had already named as the time of their separation, Lite
would have had just about time to do the things he
testified to doing. The only thing he claimed to have
done and could not possibly have done, was to see Aleck
Douglas riding into the coulee. Aleck himself had
branded that a lie before Lite had ever uttered it.

The result was just what was to be expected. Aleck
Douglas was placed under arrest, and as a prisoner he
rode back to town alongside the sheriff,--an old friend
of his, by the way,--to where Jean waited impatiently
for news.

It was Lite who told her. "It'll come out all right,"
he said, in his calm way that might hide a good deal of
emotion beneath it. "It's just to have something to
work from,--don't mean anything in particular. It's
a funny way the law has got," he explained, "of
arresting the last man that saw a fellow alive, or the first
one that sees him dead."

Jean studied this explanation dolefully. "They
ought to find out the last one that saw him alive," she
said resentfully, "and arrest him, then,--and leave
dad out of it. There's no sense in the law, if that's
the way it works."

"Well, I didn't make the law," Lite observed, in
a tone that made Jean look up curiously into his
face.

"Why don't they find out who saw him last?" she
repeated. "Somebody did. Somebody must have
gone there with him. Lite, do you know that Art Osgood
came into town with his horse all in a lather of
sweat, and took the afternoon train yesterday? I saw
him. I met him square in the middle of the street, and
he didn't even look at me. He was in a frightful hurry,
and he looked all upset. If I was the law, I'd leave
dad alone and get after Art Osgood. He acted to me,"
she added viciously, "exactly as if he were running
away!"

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