The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
saw the roll of money scattered over the couch; the little bag of free gold drawn from under the pillow. He had evidently been stooping to secure it when the assassin crept behind him and left him dead there, with a knife sticking between his shoulders.
"The very knife you had to-day!" said Lyster, horror-stricken at the sight.
The miner with the lamp turned and looked at her strangely, and his eyes dropped from her face to her clasped hands, on which the ring of the snakes glittered.
"Your knife?" he asked, and others, attracted by Mrs. Huzzard's scream, stood around the doors and looked at her too.
She nodded her head, scarce understanding the significance of it, and never taking her eyes from the dead man, whose face was yet hidden.
"He may not be dead," she said, at last. "Look!"
"Oh, he's dead, safe enough," and Emmons lifted his hand. "Was he trying to rob you?"
"I--no--I don't know," she answered, vaguely.
Then another man turned the body over, and utter surprise was on every face; for, though it was Akkomi's blanket, it was a much younger man who lay there.
"A white man, by Heavens!" said the miner who had first entered. "A white man, with brown paint on his face and hands! But, look here!" and he pulled down the collar of the dead man's shirt, and showed a skin fair as a child's.
"Something terribly crooked here," he continued. "Where is Overton?"
Overton! At the name her very heart grew cold within her. Had he not threatened he would kill the man who visited her at night? Had he come straight to the cabin after leaving her? Had he kept his word? Had he--
"I think Overton left camp after supper--started for the lake," answered some one.
"Well, we'll do our best to get it straight without him, then. Some of you see what time it is. This man has been dead about a half hour. Mr. Lyster, you had better write down all about it; and, if any one here has any information to give, let him have it."
His eyes were on the girl's face, but she said nothing, and he bent to wipe off the stain from the dead man's face. Some one brought water, and in a little while was revealed the decidedly handsome face of a man about forty-five years old.
"Do any of you know him?" asked the miner, who, by circumstance, appeared to have been given the office of speaker--"look--all of you."
One after another the men approached, but shook their heads; until an old miner, gray-haired and weather-beaten, gave vent to a half-smothered oath at sight of him.
"Know him?" he exclaimed. "Well, I do, though it's five years since I saw him. Heavens! I'd rather have found him alive than dead, though, for there is a standing reward offered for him by two States. Why, it's the card-sharper, horse-thief and renegade--Lee Holly!"
"But who could have killed him?"
"That is Overton's knife," said one of the men.
"But Overton had not had it since noon," said 'Tana, speaking for the first time in explanation. "I borrowed it then."
"You borrowed it? For what?"
"Oh--I forget. To cut a stick with, I think."
"You think. I'm sorry to speak rough to a lady, miss but this is a time for knowing--not thinking."
"What do you mean by that?" demanded Lyster.
The man looked at him squarely.
"Nothing to offend innocent folks," he answered. "A murder has been done in this lady's room, with a knife she acknowledges she has had possession of. It's natural enough to question her first of all."
The color had crept into her face once more. She knew what the man meant, and knew that the longer they looked on her with suspicion, the more time Overton would have to escape. Then, when they learned they were on a false scent, it would be late--too late to start after him. She wished he had taken the money and the gold. She shuddered as she thought him a murderer--the murderer of that man; but, with what skill she could, she would keep them off his track.
Her thoughts ran fast, and a half smile touched her lips. Even with that dead body at her feet, she was almost happy at the hope of saving him. The others noticed it, and looked at her in wonder. Lyster said:
"You are right. But Miss Rivers could know nothing of this. She has been with us since the moon rose, and that is more than a half-hour."
"No, only fifteen minutes," said one of the men.
"Well, where were you for the half-hour before the moon rose?" asked the man who seemed examiner. "That is really the time most interesting to this case."
"Why, good heavens, man!" cried Lyster, but 'Tana interrupted:
"I was walking up on the hill about that time."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
Mrs. Huzzard groaned dismally, and Lyster caught 'Tana by the hand.
"'Tana! think what you are saying. You don't realize how serious this is."
"One more question," and the man looked at her very steadily. "Were you not expecting this man to-night?"
"I sha'n't answer any more of your questions," she answered, coldly.
Lyster turned on the man with clenched hands and a face white with anger.
"How dare you insult her with such a question?" he asked, hoarsely. "How could it be possible for Miss Rivers to know this renegade horse-thief?"
"Well, I'll tell you," said the man, drawing a long breath and looking at the girl. "It ain't a pleasant thing to do; but as we have no courts up here, we have to straighten out crimes in a camp the best way we can. My name is Saunders. That man over there is right--this is Lee Holly; and I am sure now that I saw him leave this cabin last night. I passed the cabin and heard voices--hers and a man's. I heard her say: 'While I can't quite decide to kill you myself, I hope some one else will.' The rest of their words were not so clear. I told Overton when he came back, but the man was gone then. You ask me how I dare think she could tell something of this if she chose. Well, I can't help it. She is wearing a ring I'll swear I saw Lee Holly wear three years ago, at a card table in Seattle. I'll swear it! And he is lying here dead in her room, with a knife sticking in him that she had possession of to-day. Now, gentlemen, what do you think of it yourselves?"
CHAPTER XXIII.
GOOD-BY.
"Oh, 'Tana, it is awful--awful!" and poor Mrs. Huzzard rocked herself in a spasm of woe. "And to think that you won't say a word--not a single word! It just breaks my heart."
"Now, now! I'll say lots of things if you will talk of something besides murders. And I'll mend your broken heart when this trouble is all over, you will see!"
"Over! I'm mightily afraid it is only commencing. And you that cool and indifferent you are enough to put one crazy! Oh, if Dan Overton was only here."
The girl smiled. All the hours of the night had gone by. He had at least twelve hours' start, and the men of the camp had not yet suspected him for even a moment. They had questioned Harris, and he told them, by signs, that no man had gone through his cabin, no one had been in since dark; but he had heard a movement in the other room. The knife he had seen 'Tana take into the other room long before dark.
"And some one quarreling with this Holly--or following him--may have chanced on it and used it," contested Lyster, who was angered, dismayed, and puzzled at 'Tana, quite as much as at the finding of the body. Her answers to all questions were so persistently detrimental to her own cause.
"Don't be uneasy--they won't hang me," she assured him. "Think of them hanging any one for killing Lee Holly! The man who did it--if he knows whom he was settling for--was a fool not to face the camp and get credit for it. Every man would have shaken hands with him. But just because there is a little mystery about it, they try to make it out a crime. Pooh!"
"Oh,