It was morning when the colonel reached the ranch.
He found his wife and Eva sitting in Custer’s room.
They knew the hour, and they were waiting there to be
as near him as they could. They were weeping quietly.
In the kitchen across the patio they could hear Hannah
sobbing.
They sat there for a long time in silence. Suddenly
they heard a door slam in the patio, and the sound of
some one running.
“Colonel Pennington! Colonel Pennington!” a voice
cried.
The colonel stepped to the door of Custer’s room. It
was the bookkeeper calling him.
“What is it?” he asked. “Here I am.”
“The Governor has granted a stay of execution. There
is new evidence. Miss Burke is on her way here now.
She has found the man who killed Crumb!”
What more he said the colonel did not hear, for he
had turned back into the room, and, collapsing on his
son’s bed, had broken into tears—he who had gone
through those long weeks like a man of iron.
It was nearly noon before Shannon arrived. She had
been driven from Los Angeles by an attaché of the district
attorney’s office. The Penningtons had been standing
on the east porch, watching the road with binoculars,
so anxious were they for confirmation of their hopes.
She was out of the car before it had stopped and was
running toward them. The man who had accompanied
her followed, and joined them on the porch. Shannon
threw her arms around Mrs. Pennington’s neck.
“He is safe!” she cried. “Another has confessed, and
has satisfied the district attorney of his guilt.”
“Who was it?” they asked.
Shannon turned toward Eva.
“It is going to be another blow to you all,” she said;
“but wait until I’m through, and you will understand
that it could not have been otherwise. It was Guy who
killed Wilson Crumb.”
“Guy? Why should he have done it?”
“That was it. That was why suspicion was never directed
toward him. Only he knew the facts that
prompted him to commit the deed. It was Allen who
suggested to me the possibility that it might have been
Guy. I have spent nearly two months at the sanatorium
with this gentleman from the district attorney’s office, in
an effort to awaken Guy’s sleeping intellect to a realization
of the past, and of the present necessity for recalling
it. He has been improving steadily, but it was only yesterday
that memory returned to him. We worked on the
theory that if he could be made to realize that Eva lived,
the cause of his mental sickness would be removed. We
tried everything, and we had almost given up hope when,
almost like a miracle, his memory returned, while he was
looking at a kodak picture of Eva that I had shown him.
The rest was easy, especially after he knew that she had
recovered. Instead of the necessity for confession resulting
in a further shock, it seemed to inspirit him. His
one thought was of Custer, his one hope that we would
be in time to save him.”
“Why did he kill Crumb?” asked Eva.
“Because Crumb killed Grace. He told me the whole
story yesterday.”
Very carefully Shannon related all that Guy had told
of Crumb’s relations with his sister, up to the moment
of Grace’s death.
“I am glad he killed him!” said Eva. “I would have
had no respect for him if he hadn’t done it.”
“Guy told me that the evening before he killed Crumb
he had been looking over a motion picture magazine, and
he had seen there a picture of Crumb which tallied with
the photograph he had taken from Grace’s dressing table—a
portrait of the man who, as she told him, was responsible
for her trouble. Guy had never been able to
learn this man’s identity, but the picture in the magazine,
with his name below it, was a reproduction of the same
photograph. There was no question as to the man’s
identity. The scarfpin, and a lock of hair falling in a
peculiar way over the forehead, marked the pictures as
identical. Though Guy had never seen Crumb, he knew
from conversations that he had heard here that it was
Wilson Crumb who was directing the picture that was
to be taken on Ganado. He immediately got his pistol,
saddled his horse, and rode up to the camp in search
of Crumb. It was he whom one of the witnesses mistook
for Custer. He then did what the district attorney
attributed to Custer. He rode to the mouth of Jackknife,
and saw the lights of Crumb’s car up near El
Camino Largo. While he was in Jackknife, Eva must
have ridden down Sycamore from her meeting with
Crumb, passing Jackknife before Guy rode back into
Sycamore. He rode up to where Crumb was attempting
to crank his engine. Evidently the starter had failed to
work, for Crumb was standing in front of the car, in
the glare of the headlights, attempting to crank it. Guy
accosted him, charged him with the murder of Grace,
and shot him. He then started for home by way of
El Camino Largo. Half a mile up the trail he dismounted
and hid his pistol and belt in a hollow tree.
Then he rode home.
“He told me that while he never for an instant regretted
his act, he did not sleep all that night, and was
in a highly nervous condition when the shock of Eva’s
supposed death unbalanced his mind; otherwise he
would gladly have assumed the guilt of Crumb’s death
at the time when Custer and I were accused.
“After we had obtained Guy’s confession, Allen gave
us further information tending to prove Custer innocent.
He said he could not give it before without incriminating
himself; and as he had no love for Custer,
he did not intend to hang for a crime he had not committed.
He knew that he would surely hang if he confessed
the part that he had played in formulating the
evidence against Custer.
“Crumb had been the means of sending Allen to the
county jail, after robbing him of several thousand dollars.
The day before Crumb was killed, Allen’s sentence
expired. The first thing he did was to search for
Crumb, with the intention of killing the man. He
learned at the studio where Crumb was, and he followed
him immediately. He was hanging around the camp out
of sight, waiting for Crumb, when he heard the shot
that killed him. His investigation led him to Crumb’s
body. He was instantly overcome by the fear, induced
by his guilty conscience, that the crime would be laid
at his door. In casting about for some plan by which
he might divert suspicion from himself, he discovered an
opportunity to turn it against a man whom he hated. The
fact that he had been a stableman on Ganado, and was
familiar with the customs of the ranch, made it an easy
thing for him to go to the stables, saddle the Apache,
and ride him up Sycamore to Crumb’s body. Here he
deliberately pulled off the fore shoe from the horse and
hid it under Crumb’s body. Then he rode back to the
stable, unsaddled the Apache, and made his way to the
village.
“The district attorney said that we need have no fear
but that Custer will be exonerated and freed. And,
Eva”—she turned to the girl with a happy smile—“I have
it very confidentially that there is small likelihood that
any jury in southern California will convict Guy, if he
bases his defense upon a plea of insanity.”
Eva smiled bravely and said:
“One thing I don’t understand, Shannon, is what you
were doing brushing the road with a bough from a tree,
on the morning after the killing of Crumb, if you weren’t
trying to obliterate some one’s tracks.”
“That’s just what I was trying to do,” said Shannon.
“Ever since Custer taught me something about tracking,
it has held a certain fascination for me, so that I often
try to interpret the tracks I see along the trails in the
hills. It was because of this, I suppose, that I immediately
recognized the Apache’s tracks around the body
of Crumb. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that
Custer had killed him, and I did what I could to remove
this evidence. As it turned out, my efforts did more
harm than good, until Allen’s explanation cleared up
the matter.”
“And why,” asked the colonel, “did Allen undergo this
sudden change of heart?”
Shannon turned toward him, her face slightly flushed,
though she looked him straight in the eyes as she spoke.
“It is a hard thing for me to tell you,” she said.
“Allen is a bad man—a very bad man; yet in the worst
of man there is a spark of good. Allen told me this
morning, in the district attorney’s office, what it was that
had kindled to life the spark of good in him. He is my
father.”
