They took Custer down to the village of Ganado,
where they had left their cars and obtained horses. Here
they left the animals, including the Apache, with instructions
that he should be returned to the Rancho del Ganado
in the morning.
The inhabitants of the village, almost to a man, had
grown up in neighborly friendship with the Penningtons.
When he from whom the officers had obtained their
mounts discovered the identity of the prisoner, his surprise
was exceeded only by his anger.
“If I’d known who you was after,” he said, “you’d never
have got no horses from me. I’d ’a’ hamstrung ’em first!
I’ve known Cus Pennington since he was knee high to
a grasshopper, and whatever you took him for he never
done it. Wait till the colonel hears of this. You won’t
have no more job than a jack rabbit!”
The marshal turned threateningly toward the speaker.
“Shut up!” he advised. “If Colonel Pennington hears
of this before morning, you’ll wish to God you was a
jack rabbit, and could get out of the country in two
jumps! Now you get what I’m telling you—you’re to
keep your trap closed until morning. Hear me?”
“I ain’t deaf, but sometimes I’m a leetle mite dumb.”
The last he added in a low aside to Pennington, accompanying
it with a wink; and aloud: “I’m mighty sorry,
Cus—mighty sorry. If I’d only knowed it was you! By
gosh, I’ll never get over this—furnishin’ horses to help
arrest a friend, and a Pennington!”
“Don’t worry about that for a minute, Jim. I haven’t
done anything. It’s just a big mistake.”
The officers and their prisoner were in the car ready
to start. The marshal pointed a finger at Jim.
“Don’t forget what I told you about keeping your
mouth shut until morning,” he admonished.
They drove off toward Los Angeles. Jim watched
them for a moment, as the red tail light diminished in
the distance. Then he turned into the office of his feed
barn and took the telephone receiver from its hook.
“Gimme Ganado No. 1,” he said to the sleepy night
operator.
It was five minutes before continuous ringing brought
the colonel to the extension telephone in his bedroom.
He seemed unable to comprehend the meaning of what
Jim was trying to tell him, so sure was he that Custer
was in bed and asleep in a near-by room; but at last he
was half convinced, for he had known Jim for many
years, and well knew his stability and his friendship.
“If it was anybody but you, Jim, I’d say you were a
damned liar,” he commented in characteristic manner;
“but what in hell did they take the boy for?”
“They wouldn’t say. Just as I told ’em. I don’t
know what he done, but I know he never done it.”
“You’re right, Jim—my boy couldn’t do a crooked
thing!”
“I’m just like you, colonel—I know there ain’t a
crooked hair in Cus Pennington’s head. If there’s anything
I can do, colonel, you jest let me know.”
“You’ll bring the Apache up in the morning? Thank
you again, Jim, and good-by.”
He hung up the receiver. While he dressed hastily,
he explained to his wife the purport of the message he
had just received.
“What are you going to do, Custer?” she asked.
“I’m going to Los Angeles, Julia. Unless that marshal’s
driving a racing car, I’ll be waiting for him when
he gets there!”
Shortly before breakfast the following morning two
officers, armed with a warrant, searched the castle on
the hill. In Custer Pennington’s closet they found something
which seemed to fill them with elation—two full
bottles of whisky and an empty bottle, each bearing a
label identical with those on the bottles they had found
in the cases borne by the burros. With this evidence
and the laden pack train, they started off toward the
village.
Shannon Burke had put in an almost sleepless night.
For hours she had lain watching the black silhouette of
the big cupola against the clear sky, waiting for the light
which would announce that Custer had returned home in
safety; but no light had shone to relieve her anxiety. She
had strained her ears through the long hours of the
night for the sound of shooting from the hills; but only
the howling of coyotes and the hooting of owls had disturbed
the long silence. She sought to assure herself
that all was well—that Custer had returned and forgotten
to switch on the cupola light—that he had not
forgotten, but that the bulb was burned out. She manufactured
probable and improbable explanations by the
score; but always a disturbing premonition of evil dispersed
the cohorts of hope.
She was up early in the morning, and in the saddle
at the first streak of dawn, riding directly to the stables
of the Rancho del Ganado. The stableman was there,
saddling the horses while they fed.
“No one has come down yet?” she asked.
“The Apache’s gone,” he replied. “I don’t understand
it. He hasn’t been in his box all night. I was just
thinkin’ of goin’ up to the house to see if Custer was
there. Don’t seem likely he’d be ridin’ all night, does it?”
“No,” she said. Her heart was in her mouth. She
could scarcely speak. “I’ll ride up for you,” she managed
to say.
Wheeling Baldy, she put him up the steep hill to the
house. The iron gate that closed the patio arch at night
was still down, so she rode around to the north side of
the house and coo-hooed to attract the attention of some
one within. Mrs. Pennington, followed by Eva, came to
the door. Both were fully dressed. When they saw
who it was, they came out and told Shannon what had
happened.
He was not injured, then. The sudden sense of relief
left her weak, and for a moment she did not consider the
other danger that confronted him. He was safe! That
was all she cared about just then. Later she commenced
to realize the gravity of his situation, and the innocent
part that she had taken in involving him in the toils of
the scheme which her interference must have suggested
to those actually responsible for the traffic in stolen liquor,
the guilt of which they had now cleverly shifted to the
shoulders of an innocent man. Intuitively she guessed
Slick Allen’s part in the unhappy contretemps of the
previous night; for she knew of the threats he had made
against Custer Pennington, and of his complicity in the
criminal operations of the bootleggers.
How much she knew! More than any other, she knew
all the details of the whole tragic affair. She alone could
untangle the knotted web, and yet she dared not until there
was no other way. She dared not let them guess that she
knew more of the matter than they. She could not admit
such knowledge without revealing the source of it
and exposing herself to the merited contempt of these
people whose high regard had become her obsession,
whose friendship was her sole happiness, and the love
she had conceived for one of them the secret altar at
which she worshiped.
In the last extremity, if there was no alternative, she
would sacrifice everything for him. To that her love
committed her; but she would wait until there was no
other way. She had suffered so grievously through no
fault of her own that she clung with desperation to the
brief happiness which had come into her life, and which
was now threatened, once again because of no wrong-doing
on her part.
Fate had been consistently unkind to her. Was it
fair that she should suffer always for the wickedness of
another? She had at least the right to hope and wait.
But there was something that she could do. When
she turned Baldy down the hill from the Penningtons’,
she took the road home that led past the Evanses’ ranch,
and, turning in, dismounted and tied Baldy at the fence.
Her knock was answered by Mrs. Evans.
“Is Guy here?” asked Shannon.
Hearing her voice, Guy came from his room, drawing
on his coat.
“You’re getting as bad as the Penningtons,” he said,
laughing. “They have no respect for Christian hours!”
“Something has happened,” she said, “that I thought
you should know about. Custer was arrested last night
by government officers and taken to Los Angeles. He
was out on the Apache at the time. No one seems to
know where he was arrested, or why; but the supposition
is that they found him in the hills, for the man who runs
the feed barn in the village—Jim—told the colonel that
the officers got horses from him and rode up toward
the ranch, and that it was a couple of hours later that
they brought Custer back on the Apache. The stableman
just told me that the Apache had not been in his stall all
night, and I know—Custer told me not to tell, but it
will make no difference now—that he was going up into
the hills last night to try to catch the men who have been
bringing down loads on burros every Friday night for
a long time, and who cut his fence last Friday.”
She looked straight into Guy’s eyes as she spoke; but
he dropped his as a flush mounted his cheek.
“I thought,” she continued, “that Guy might want to
go to Los Angeles and see if he could help Custer in
any way. The colonel went last night.”
“I’ll go now,” said Guy. “I guess I can help him.”
His voice was suddenly weary, and he turned away with
an air of dejection which assured Shannon that he intended
to do the only honorable thing that he could do—assume
the guilt that had been thrown upon Custer’s
shoulders, no matter what the consequences to himself.
She had had little doubt that Guy would do this, for she
realized his affection for Custer, as well as the impulsive
generosity of his nature, which, however marred by weakness,
was still fine by instinct.
Half an hour later, after a hasty breakfast, young
Evans started for Los Angeles, while his mother and
Shannon, standing on the porch of the bungalow, waved
their good-bys as his roadster swung through the gate
into the county road. Mrs. Evans had only a vague idea
as to what her son could do to assist Custer Pennington
out of his difficulty; but Shannon Burke knew that Pennington’s
fate lay in the hands of Guy Evans, unless she
chose to tell what she knew.
Colonel Pennington had overtaken the marshal’s car before
the latter reached Los Angeles, but after a brief parley
on the road he had discovered that he could do nothing
to alter the officer’s determination to place Custer in the
county jail pending his preliminary hearing before a
United States commissioner. Neither the colonel’s plea
that his son should be allowed to accompany him to a
hotel for the night, nor his assurance that he would be
personally responsible for the young man’s appearance
before the commissioner on the following morning,
availed to move the obdurate marshal from his stand;
nor would he permit the colonel to talk with the prisoner.
This was the last straw. Colonel Pennington had managed
to dissemble outward indications of his rising ire,
but now an amused smile lighted his son’s face as he
realized that his father was upon the verge of an explosion.
He caught the older man’s eye and shook his head.
“It’ll only make it worse,” he cautioned.
The colonel directed a parting glare at the marshal,
muttered something about homeopathic intellects, and
turned back to his roadster.
