The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod RaineЧитать онлайн книгу.
away with him?”
“Yes, ma'am. But that doesn't look good to most people. They say he had his friends come to take him away so y'u wouldn't hold him and let us boys get him. This cousin business is a fairy tale the way they size it up. How come this cousin to let him go if he held up the ranch to put the sick man out of business? No, miss. This country has made up its mind that your friend is the original Ned Bannister. My opinion is that nothing on earth can save him.”
“I don't want your opinion. I'm going to save him, I tell you; and you are going to help. Are his friends nothing but a bunch of quitters?” she cried, with sparkling eyes.
“I didn't know I was such a great friend of his,” answered the cowboy sulkily.
“You're a friend of Jim McWilliams, aren't you? Are you going to sneak away and let these curs hang him?”
Denver flushed. “Y'u're dead right, Miss Helen. I guess I'll see it out with you. What's the orders?”
“I want you to help me organize a defense. Get all Mac's friends stirred up to make a fight for him. Bring as many of them in to see me during the day as you can. If you see any of the rest of the Lazy D boys send them in to me for instructions. Report yourself every hour to me. And make sure that at least three of your friends that you can trust are hanging round the jail all day so as to be ready in case any attempt is made to storm it before dark.”
“I'll see to it.” Denver hung on his heel a moment before leaving. “It's only square to tell y'u, Miss Helen, that this means war here tonight. These streets are going to run with blood if we try to save them.”
“I'm taking that responsibility,” she told him curtly; but a moment later she added gently: “I have a plan, my friend, that may stop this outrage yet. But you must do your best for me.” She smiled sadly at him. “You're my foreman, to-day, you know.”
“I'm going to do my level best, y'u may tie to that,” he told her earnestly.
“I know you will.” And their fingers touched for an instant.
Through a window the girl could see a crowd pouring down the street toward the hotel. She flew up the stairs and out upon the second-story piazza that looked down upon the road.
From her point of vantage she easily picked them out—the two unarmed men riding with their hands tied behind their backs, encircled by a dozen riders armed to the teeth. Bannister's hat had apparently fallen off farther down the street, for the man beside him was dusting it. The wounded prisoner looked about him without fear, but it was plain he was near the limit of endurance. He was pale as a sheet, and his fair curls clung moistly to his damp forehead.
McWilliams caught sight of her first, and she could see him turn and say a word to his comrade. Bannister looked up, caught sight of her, and smiled. That smile, so pale and wan, went to her heart like a knife. But the message of her eyes was hope. They told the prisoners silently to be of good cheer, that at least they were not deserted to their fate.
“What is it about—the crowd?” Nora asked of her mistress as the latter was returning to the head of the stairs.
In as few words as she could Helen told her, repressing sharply the tears the girl began to shed. “This is not the time to weep—not yet. We must save them. You can do your part. Mr. Bannister is wounded. Get a doctor over the telephone and see that he attends him at the prison. Don't leave the 'phone until you have got one to promise to go immediately.”
“Yes, miss. Is there anything else?”
“Ask the doctor to call you up from the prison and tell you how Mr. Bannister is. Make it plain to him that he is to give up his other practice, if necessary, and is to keep us informed through the day about his patient's condition. I will be responsible for his bill.”
Helen herself hurried to the telegraph office at the depot. She wrote out a long dispatch and handed it to the operator. “Send this at once please.”
He was one of those supercilious young idiots that make the most of such small power as ever drifts down to them. Taking the message, he tossed it on the table. “I'll send it when I get time.”
“You'll send it now.”
“What—what's that?”
Her steady eyes caught and held his shifting ones. “I say you are going to send it now—this very minute.”
“I guess not. The line's busy,” he bluffed.
“If you don't begin sending that message this minute I'll make it my business to see that you lose your position,” she told him calmly.
He snatched up the paper from the place where he had tossed it. “Oh, well, if it's so darned important,” he-conceded ungraciously.
She stood quietly above him while he sent the telegram, even though he contrived to make every moment of her stay an unvoiced insult. Her wire was to the wife of the Governor of the State. They had been close friends at school, and the latter had been urging Helen to pay a visit to Cheyenne. The message she sent was as follows:
Battle imminent between outlaws and cattlemen here. Bloodshed certain to-night. My foreman last night killed in self-defense a desperado. Bannister's gang, in league with town authorities, mean to lynch him and one of my other friends after dark this evening. Sheriff will do nothing. Can your husband send soldiers immediately? Wire answer.
The operator looked up sullenly after his fingers had finished the last tap. “Well?”
“Just one thing more,” Helen told him. “You understand the rules of the company about secrecy. Nobody you knows I am sending this message. If by any chance it should leak out, I shall know through whom. If you want to hold your position, you will keep quiet.”
“I know my business,” he growled. Nevertheless, she had spoken in season, for he had had it in his mind to give a tip where he knew it would be understood to hasten the jail delivery and accompanying lynching.
When she returned to the hotel? Helen found Missou waiting for her. She immediately sent him back to the office, and told him to wait there until the answer was received. “I'll send one of the boys up to relieve you so that you may come with the telegram as soon as it arrives. I want the operator watched all day. Oh, here's Jim Henson! Denver has explained the situation to you, I presume. I want you to go up to the telegraph office and stay there all day. Go to lunch with the operator when he goes. Don't let him talk privately to anybody, not even for a few seconds. I don't want you to seem to have him under guard before outsiders, but let him know it very plainly. He is not to mention a wire I sent or the answer to it—not to anybody, Jim. Is that plain?”
“Y'u bet! He's a clam, all right, till the order is countermanded.” And the young man departed with a cheerful grin that assured Helen she had nothing to fear from official leaks.
Nora, from answering a telephone call, came to report to the general in charge. “The doctor says that he has looked after Mr. Bannister, and there is no immediate danger. If he keeps quiet for a few days he ought to do well. Mr. McWilliams sent a message by him to say that we aren't to worry about him. He said he would—would—rope a heap of cows on the Lazy D yet.”
Nora, bursting into tears, flung herself into Helen's arms. “They are going to kill him. I know they are, and—and 'twas only yesterday, ma'am, I told him not to—to get gay, the poor boy. When he tried to—to—” She broke down and sobbed.
Her mistress smiled in spite of herself, though she was bitterly aware that even Nora's grief was only superficially ludicrous.
“We're going to save him, Nora, if we can. There's hope while there's life. You see, Mac himself is full of courage. HE hasn't given up. We must keep up our courage, too.”
“Yes, ma'am, but this is the first gentleman friend I ever had hanged, and—” She broke off, sobbing, leaving the rest as a guess.
Helen filled it out aloud. “And you were going to say that you care more for him than any of the others.