Buff: A Collie and Other Dog-Stories — Buff: A Collie - The End of the Trail, Part 1
CHAPTER FOUR: THE END OF THE TRAIL
Ruth Hammerton hurried into her father’s study on her return from the post-office, whither she had fared for the evening mail.
Her dark face was aglow with a colour that had been foreign to it for many a long week--a colour that softened and mellowed the new lines of leanness and of sorrow in cheek and brow.
Her eyes were alight with nervous eagerness.
Mr. Hammerton looked up in surprise from a heap of papers on his desk, as his daughter burst so unceremoniously in upon him.
A month earlier he had been appointed local justice of the peace.
His new duties still called for much night work, in the way of study and preparation for the next day’s court duties.
So it was with a slight frown that he greeted this sudden interruption of his labours.
“I’ve just come from the post-office!
” began Ruth eagerly.
“As I was coming out two men almost bumped into me.
I looked back, as they slouched into the store and sat down by the stove.
They had a huge bulldog at their heels.
I heard one of the loafers there hail them by name.
They were Con Hegan and Billy Gates.
A boy told me they had come back to Boone Lake to-day.
He said it was their first visit here since they got out of prison.
He----” “Pshaw!
” fumed Hammerton.
“So those two crooks are back here, are they?
That means more lawlessness!
Just as I was congratulating myself that it was becoming a law-abiding and decent community at last!
I
wish----” “You don’t understand!
” broke in the girl.
“You don’t see what I mean.
You don’t get the significance of it.
And yet I’ve been all over it with you so often!
I----”
“Over what?
” demanded Hammerton, nettled by her air of excited mystery.
“Please explain what you’re driving at.
I’m tremendously busy to-night and----” “Michael Trent was the means of Hegan and Gates going to prison,” she hurried on.
“They swore they would get him for it.
We have proof of that.
The very night after they were set free Michael disappeared.
And now they are back here again, after four months!
Don’t you see----” “I see you are trying to lure me into that same endless old argument again,” returned Hammerton with a glance of regret at his piled-up work.
“But really, I can’t see why these two jailbirds’ appearance in town to-night should have flustered you so.
There was no foul play connected with Trent’s disappearance.
I’ve explained that to you, over and over.
Calvin Greer called him up on the telephone that evening.
Trent told Calvin he was sick of Boone Lake and that he was starting off on a long motor tour up country.
He said if he liked it up there he’d settle somewhere in the north counties and never come back.
Next day he and his automobile were gone.
Where is the mystery?
” “Where?
” she repeated miserably.
“Why, everywhere!
The whole thing is a mystery.
In the first place, I rode over to see Calvin Greer, at his stock farm.
He had never met Michael till that day, and he wasn’t at all familiar with Michael’s voice.
But he told me it sounded rougher and hoarser over the phone than when he talked to him face to face.
And he----” “That’s no proof.
Many people’s voices sound altogether different over the phone.
Or Trent may have had a cold.
There’s no mystery about it, I tell you.
Most assuredly there’s nothing to connect Hegan and Gates with the affair.
As to----” “You knew Michael,” she went on.
“You knew him well and you liked him.
Tell me, was he the sort of man to go away like that and not have the courtesy to say good-bye to us?
Was he?
He stopped here--he and Buff--you remember, on his way home from the market square that evening.
He sat and chatted with us for half an hour or so.
He didn’t say a word about going away.
Instead, he arranged to go horseback riding with me the next day.
Yet less than half an hour later, apparently, he tells Calvin Greer he’s leaving Boone Lake--perhaps forever.
Is that----” “Men do queer things,” said Hammerton, turning back to his papers.
“I can’t agree with you that there’s any mystery about it, daughter.
Certainly no mystery that would justify the law in suspecting----” “You know what care he took of his livestock,” pursued Ruth.
“Is it likely--is it possible--that he would have left his sheep and cattle to starve, his cows unmilked and his horses with empty mangers?
Would he have gone away like that, of his own accord, and let all his livestock starve to death?
For they would have starved to death out there on that solitary farm if you and I hadn’t gone to get them and bring them here.
” “That’s the only part of the whole thing that I can’t understand,” assented Hammerton.
“He treated his livestock as other people treat their pets.
It wasn’t like him to leave them to starve.
Out there they might have gone hungry till they died before any neighbour would have been likely to happen in and find them.
Even if he hadn’t been so fond of them, it doesn’t make sense for a man to leave such valuable property to die of neglect.
To say nothing of the ruin of his year’s crops through his absence.
Why, if you hadn’t wheedled me into having his crops looked after, the year would have been a total loss to his farm.
As it is----” “Then,” she declared triumphantly, “since you admit he wouldn’t have done such a thing of his own accord----” “I don’t admit it.
I only say I can’t understand it.
But it happened.
We have proof of that.
He went away in his car.
And he took Buff along with him.
If he had left Buff there I could have seen, perhaps, where the mystery came in.
For he and that collie were chums.
But he took Buff with him.
And he took along everything of portable value in his house, too.
No, that doesn’t look like foul play.
He did it deliberately, whatever his motive may have been.
Took along his dog and his valuables and drove away in his own car.
The car couldn’t have been stolen, either.
For he told Greer over the phone----” “If it was Michael who told----” “We don’t know his motive,” summed up Hammerton.
“But we do know he went of his own accord.
There is ample proof of that.
As for connecting Gates and Hegan with----” “He did not go of his own accord!
” announced the girl, deathly white, her eyes ablaze, as she towered over her wondering father.
“And I have every reason to know he didn’t. I don’t want to tell why I know it.
But I must, if I want you to get the truth out of those two assassins.
I know Michael Trent did not leave here of his own accord.
I know it because he loved me.
A man doesn’t run away like that from----” “What?
” shouted Hammerton in astonishment.
“He--you say he----” “I say he loved me,” reiterated the girl, her sweet voice held steady by a great effort.
“And no man will go away willingly from a woman he loves as Michael loved me.
Most of all, he won’t go away and fail to send any kind of word.
” “You never told me!
” accused her father indignantly.
“You never----” “Michael never told me,” she retorted.
“Then how----” “He never told me in so many words,” she went on.
“Yet I knew it.
A
woman always knows.
He loved me.
And he was waiting until he could put his farm on a better paying basis before he told me of it.
Now, perhaps, you’ll believe me when I say he’d never have gone away like that unless he had been kidnapped or killed.
” Long and silently Hammerton stared at his daughter, dazed by the revelation.
Then he said, hesitantly: “If I’d known--if you had told me--but----” “But now that you do know,” she persisted, “you’ll get the truth from Hegan and Gates?
You’ll start the machinery of the law to working;
and----” “Dear,” he said gently, “there’s nothing I can do.
There is no shadow of proof that either of those men was concerned in----” “As you choose!
” she exclaimed, turning to leave the room.
“Since you won’t interrogate them, I am going to.
I’m going back to the post-office to find them.
If they aren’t there, I’m going to find where they live and go----” “Are you crazy?
” stormed Hammerton, jumping up to bar her way.
“You surely can’t mean to do an insane thing like that!
I won’t permit it!
” “Then interrogate them yourself, as a magistrate of this county!
” she bade him.
“Because if you don’t do it, I shall.
If it is insane, let it be insane.
In these past months I have had enough to drive a wiser woman insane.
I love Michael Trent.
I _love_ him, I tell you!
And if he is on earth I shall find him, now that I have a clue.
” Hammerton stared wonderingly down upon his wontedly placid daughter.
Then he caught her into his arms and held her close to his heart for a moment.
Releasing her, he crossed to the telephone and called up Roy Saunders, the Boone Lake chief of police.
“Saunders?
” he queried.
Then: “Judge Hammerton speaking.
Hegan and Gates are in town again.
I want a talk with them.
You’ll find them at the post-office.
Will you bring them up here to my study?
As soon as you can, please?
No, there’s no warrant out for them.
But I don’t think they’ll be fools enough to refuse to come here.
Thanks.
” He set down the telephone and passed his arm again round the girl.
Ruth, her self-control giving way, wept convulsively on his breast.
“There!
There!
” Hammerton murmured.
“Try to get hold of yourself, darling!
They’ll be here in a few minutes.
And our one chance is to keep cool.
I--I haven’t much faith in our success with them.
It’s only fair to tell you that, Ruth.
And I’ve no legal right to question them at all.
I’m doing it to save you from doing it.
Try to be brave, if nothing comes of our talk with them.
” Airily, not to say jauntily, Con Hegan and Billy Gates strolled up the village street and into the highroad leading to the Hammerton place.
To one side of the unconcerned pair strode Saunders, the truculent but puzzled chief of police.
The men had grinned mirthfully at Saunders’ command that they accompany him to the magistrate’s home.
They had complied without a single demur.
And they lightened the tedium of the walk by guying the pompous police chief in a way that reduced him to sullen homicidal yearnings.
Marshalled by Saunders, they lounged through the doorway in the wake of a servant and were ushered into Hammerton’s study at the extreme rear of the house.
They found Hammerton seated at his desk, looking very magisterial indeed.
At a far end of the room, her face in the shadows, sat Ruth.
“Here they are, Your Honour!
” proclaimed the chief of police, ranging his two grinning charges side by side in front of the desk.
“Yep,” cheerily assented Hegan.
“Here we are, Judge.
We was planning to bolt.
But this vigilant chief kind of overawed us.
We was afraid he might cry if we stood him on his head and lit out.
” “Or,” supplemented Gates, “he’d maybe have hit one of us a crool slap on the wrist as we run past him.
Or he might go to where we live and bust one of our umbrellas, to punish us.
So we stuck.
” “The judge looks pretty near as terrifyin’ as the chief,” confided Hegan to his companion in a loud whisper and shaking with simulated awe.
“Most likely he keeps a ’lectric chair in his kitchen.
We’d best be p’lite to him.
” Hammerton checked an angry forward movement on the part of Saunders and addressed the grinning prisoners.
“I have no legal right to enforce replies to the questions I am going to ask you,” he said quietly.
“But it is only fair to tell you what rights I do possess.
It is within my jurisdiction to commit you both, here and now, for vagrancy, since you have no visible means of support in this village.
And before the thirty-day vagrancy term can expire there will be some new charge.
So, to avoid these annoyances, I advise you to wipe those grins off your faces and to drop the attempt to insult anyone here and to answer the questions I shall put to you.
Otherwise, you will leave here with handcuffs on and will proceed to the lock-up; thence to come before me in the morning on a vagrancy charge.
” The men looked at each other uncertainly.
Gates seemed to be measuring the distance to the study door.
Unobtrusively, Hammerton took a pistol from the drawer of his desk and laid it in his lap.
Instantly the two men stiffened and lost their jauntily insolent manner.
“There’s no call to threaten us, Judge,” said Hegan, nervously.
“We’re glad to answer any questions you care to spring on us.
As for vagrancy--well, we’re no vags.
We just got home to-day and, of course, we haven’t had time to look round us for any steady work yet.
But----” “You were let out of Logan Prison on the twenty-sixth of last July,” interposed Hammerton.
“Where did you go from there?
I mean as soon as you were let out.
” “We went straight to Paterson,” returned Hegan.
“We got out of Logan at ten, on the morning of the twenty-sixth.
We took the noon train to Paterson.
We got work there and we stayed on the job till yesterday, when the works shut down for the winter.
Then we come back here.
” “You hadn’t been here since you were sent to prison?
” “Not till we got here this morning from Paterson.
No, Judge.
” “H’m!
You were not here on the twenty-seventh of July?
You are certain of that?
” “Certain sure, Judge!
” declared Gates.
“We wouldn’t be likely to forget if we had.
This is our home town.
We was kind of ashamed to come back, right off, after they turned us loose from the hoosgow.
So we----” “You have not been in or near Boone Lake since you were released from prison--until to-day?
” insisted Hammerton.
“No, Your Honour, we ain’t. And we c’n prove it.
We went straight to Paterson; and there we----” “Then,” spoke up Ruth, coming forward, “how did two reputable witnesses happen to see you at Mr. Michael Trent’s farm late on the afternoon of July twenty-seventh?
” Hegan gulped.
Gates, however, answered suavely: “Flash your witnesses on us, ma’am.
If they seen us here or in this county that day they sure got good eyes.
They----” “Yep!
” supplemented Hegan.
“Who’s your witnesses?
Who are they?
” Hammerton and Saunders were looking at the troubled girl in surprise.
With true feminine quibble for truth, she had put the statement in the form of a query in speaking of the witnesses whose identity she had just invented.
The failure of her ruse distressed her keenly, even while the memory of Hegan’s start and his scared gulp made her doubly certain she was on the right track.
“Guess you never took a course of poker playing, at school, ma’am,” chuckled Gates, reading her face with all the trained skill of a true panhandler.
“Shut up, you!
” grunted Saunders in wrath.
He glowered upon the suave Gates, who promptly turned his respectful gaze to the magistrate’s face.
Hammerton, frowning perplexedly, opened his lips for further query, even while he realised the utter uselessness of trying to catch such skilled offenders by any questions he might have the wit to frame.
Before he could speak a maid rushed wildly into the room.
With a manifest effort, she came to a halt inside the doorway and stood as though trying to announce some guest.
But the guest himself entered the room, close at her heels.
