“You heard Jerry Kirk tellin’ about his wife’s uncle bein’ here from Ohio. Waal, this Bascom had a bad accident comin’ back from San Angelo,” the sheriff told him, and went on to bring Chuckaluck up to date by telling him the stage driver’s story as they walked along. “Doc’s workin’ on ’im now, an’ I reckon he’s purty bad hurt. I been standin’ by hopin’ he’d come outten it enough to answer some questions. That’s where I was when I got word you an’ Clint was fixin’ to shoot it out in thuh saloon.”

  The new deputy sheriff chuckled. “Seems like I had tuh think up some way tuh get yuh tuh thuh saloon so’s I could turn Steve Carson ovah tuh yuh, Sheriff. But I didn’ know how come Clint was so wringy. I jus’ ast ’im had his trigger finger stopped itchin’ and he r’ared up an’ was gonna drill me. If Jean Rangoon is his gal I reckon it’s nacheral he wouldn’ want me sayin’ he’d been seen ridin’ up ’round Kirk’s mesa whilst he was in San Angelo. But shucks,” he ended deprecatorily, “I was jus’ repeatin’ what Jud Montrose said.”

  “Clint tol’ Jerry all about him meetin’ Montrose up there when he fust started ridin’ with thuh Split X hands,” the sheriff said, and told him of the meeting between the two young men in front of the jail. “Which might be thuh truth,” he ended, “but Jerry didn’ believe a word o’ it.”

  They came to an open door through which a light shone. “Here’s Doc’s office,” the sheriff said, and they entered a small bare waiting-room. Another door at the rear stood ajar, and the sheriff stalked into a smaller room with whitewashed ceiling and walls. Two large lamps were suspended from a rafter on chains which allowed them to be raised or lowered. One of them hung just above the unconscious man who lay, stripped of his clothing, on a wooden operating table.

  Jerry Kirk stood in one corner of the room watching intently while Dr. Randolph, enveloped in a huge white apron, bent over the patient with a stethoscope.

  The doctor glanced up when the two men entered, took the plugs from his ears and shook his head. “No change,” he reported. “A good sign. I think he’ll pull through, all right.”

  “He ain’t talked yet?” the sheriff whispered hoarsely.

  “No. And he won’t talk for at least twenty-four hours if I can prevent it,” snapped the doctor. “I’ve been telling Jerry he was wasting his time waiting here. I’ve given him an injection that will keep him unconscious at least until to-morrow noon. When he comes out of that you can question him, but not before.”

  Jerry Kirk dragged himself away from the supporting corner walls, circled the operating table, and went over to the sheriff. The strain he was under showed in the twitching of his bloodless lips and in the glazed look of exhaustion in his eyes. He said, “I begged Doc not to do it,” he said dully. “If he’d let him come out of it enough to answer just one question …”

  “The shock of which might easily have killed him,” the doctor said harshly.

  “What if it had?” Kirk flared. “Who cares whether he lives or dies? If you’d let me ask him where Lucy is …”

  “Don’t take on like that, Jerry.” Sheriff Morgan gripped his arm and led him out of the operating-room. “Chances are he couldn’t tell you nothin’ ’cept Lucy was all right when he seen her yesterday. You better go to thuh hotel an’ sleep.”

  “Sleep? When I don’t even know …” He gritted his teeth and jerked his arm from the sheriff’s hand. “What about your posse that rode out to Adams’ place? Are they back yet?”

  “Reckon they’ll be ridin’ in any minute now, an’ mebbe we’ll have somethin’ to go on.”

  “If they … did find Lucy and Bobbie there … will they bring them and Frank Adams back here?”

  “Nope. I didn’ give ’em no such orders.” The sound of horses approaching from the direction of the Fort Davis short-cut interrupted the talk.

  Jerry Kirk stomped out of the waiting-room grating, “Don’t you know I’ll go crazy if I have to wait much longer?”

  Chuckaluck and the sheriff followed him out and saw him disappear behind the swinging doors of a saloon across the street.

  “That’ll be thuh posse comin’ back from thuh ZB spread,” the sheriff said quietly. “Le’s meet ’em up thuh street an’ hear what they got to say ’fore Jerry knows they’re back.” They walked faster, and the sheriff continued in a troubled voice:

  “There’s somethin’ you ain’t heard yet, an’ I didn’ tell Kirk, neither. But it shore looks like Frank Adams didn’t ride to Fort Davis to-day, no matter what Jud Montrose said.”

  “Why, I reckon I awready knowed that,” Chuckaluck drawled. “I was there an’ heard Twister say he didn’ meet nobuddy on thuh road.”

  “I didn’ know but what he was lyin’,” Morgan confided. “Might of had some reason if he was mixed up in it some way. But there’s a waddie name o’ Pete Ross rode in from Fort Davis early this afternoon. He tol’ me he lef’ there at daylight, an’ he didn’ meet Adams neither.”

  “Here’s yore posse,” Chuckaluck said as the riders galloped around the bend at the head of Main Street in a mist of dusty moonlight. “No use guessin’ till we fin’ out from them.”

  Sheriff Morgan stepped from the board walk, went to the middle of the street and raised his arms. Half a dozen riders slowed, then reined up in a semi-circle around him.

  The leader said, “Howdy, Sheriff. You have trouble with Paul Rangoon? We passed him an’ his boys ridin’ in when we was goin’ out to thuh ZB.”

  “Nevah min’ Rangoon, Sam. What about Adams?”

  “Wild goose chase,” said Sam Niles disgustedly. “Nary a thing out at thuh Adams’ spread.”

  “What did Frank say about not goin’ to Fort Davis like he pertended he was?”

  “I reckon he did go. There wasn’ nobody there but Montrose an’ Tex. They both swear they ain’t seen Frank sinct daylight, nor Missus Kirk an’ her kid a-tall.”

  “Did you search thuh house an’ all ’round?”

  “Shore did. Frank’s saddle an’ his fav’rite hawse is gone. I swear, Sheriff, I betcha Frank is ha’f-way tuh Pecos City right now.”

  Sheriff Morgan shook his head gravely. “I got proof he didn’ ride to Fort Davis.”

  “Then where in tarnation did he ride tuh?”

  “That’s what we got to find out. An’ whether anybody rode with ’im. There’s thuh road to El Paso he could o’ took, or thuh long way ’round t’wards Marfa that hits thuh San Angelo road two miles east. Put yore hawses up an’ get a coupla hours’ sleep,” he directed the possemen. “Fust streak o’ day we’ll all be ridin’ out to comb thuh country fo’ Frank Adams an’ Missus Kirk an’ thuh boy.” His voice was grimmer than Chuckaluck had heard it before, and when he went back to the board walk Chuckaluck asked:

  “What yuh reckon now?”

  “I’m plumb past reck’nin’,” Morgan said shortly. “If Frank Adams slipped off like that it shore looks like he had somethin’ to do with Missus Kirk an’ her boy bein’ missin’. But till we fin’ out.…” He waggled his greying head helplessly.

  Chuckaluck’s round eyes held a far-away look. He said, “I’d shore like tuh know mo’ aboot that accident Mr. Bascom had in his buckbo’d befo’ I bed down tuhnight. Did yuh say it happ’ned this side o’ where thuh wagon road from Fo’t Davis comes intuh thuh San Angelo road?”

  “That’s right,” said Morgan, eyeing him oddly. “Has that got anything to do with it?”

  “I dunno,” he answered frankly. “But I reckon I’ll jus’ mosey out an’ take me a look at that place where thuh buckbo’d went ovah.”

  The sheriff stared steadily at the round, serious face of his newest deputy, studying the shrewd, calculating gleam in his eyes for a full minute before saying decisively, “Wait here till I saddle m’hawse. I’m ridin’ out with you.”

  “I’d admire tuh have comp’ny. Be waitin’ fo’ yuh down at thuh saloon where my hawse is hitched.”

  The sheriff walked hurriedly toward home and Chuckaluck dawdled along, frowning down at the dirt-filled cracks between the boards as he tried to fit Frank Adams’ disappearance to the fantastic theory he had been laboriously building in his mind.

  Like a lot of other things that hadn’t made sense at first, it didn’t fit. Maybe Adams had changed his mind and gone somewhere besides Fort Davis and had some private reason for lying to his foreman. There might be a lot of reasons that had nothing at all to do with Mrs. Kirk’s strange disappearance.

  Yet, it all tied together, somehow. Adams’ friendship for the Kirks when they were evidently shunned by all their other neighbours, the harsh words that had passed between Kirk and him as Kirk was leaving home two months before, the unopened letter from the Ohio lawyers in the Kirk’s mailbox, the arrival of Bascom and his hurried trip to San Angelo and his near-fatal accident to-night.

  He was convinced that all those things were parts of the same puzzle which revolved around the conditions in the Kirk cabin … the Marfa sign in the wrong place … Mrs. Kirk’s reason for turning the spring water into Split X tank when her husband was trying to force Rangoon to pay him for the use of the water.

  There were just too danged many unrelated parts to the puzzle for anybody to solve it, particularly when Steve Carson, and Clint Andrews’ rash act of shooting him down before he could talk, were brought into it. There didn’t seem to be a reason for anything. Until a man knew why all these things had happened there was no use speculating on what had happened.

  Chuckaluck’s thoughts were tied up in a tight knot when the sheriff returned a few minutes later. They turned away together and spurred their horses to a trot down the San Angelo road without speaking. The moon was low in the west now, and Chuckaluck knew it was well past midnight. He was sleepy and dog-tired, and he thought wistfully of Twister comfortably stretched out under a saddle blanket, but this trip wasn’t going to take very long and he knew he would sleep better after having a look at the scene of the accident. He knew, in fact, that he wouldn’t sleep at all if he neglected to do even one small thing that would help to save Twister’s scrawny neck.

  The sheriff broke the silence after a short time by sayin, “Must of been right yonder. Road gets narrer where it was cut aroun’ thuh rock cliff, an’ it falls off steep ovah thuh edge.”

  Chuckaluck nodded, squinting ahead through the waning moonlight to the wide curve around which the road narrowed to a width not much more than enough for one vehicle to pass another. He slowed his buckskin and scanned the roadway carefully for a sign of something that might have frightened the team, but there was not enough light to see any signs had they been there.

  “Right here.” Sheriff Morgan pulled his horse up close to the outer edge and pointed to deep gashes in the soft earth where the wheels of the buckboard had curved sharply off the road and disappeared.

  Chuckaluck reined his horse nearer the edge and peered over into the shadowed darkness of the deep, silent ravine. He could see nothing where the moonlight did not penetrate.

  “I’m a-goin’ down. Is it too steep tuh ride a hawse?”

  “Not too steep, I reckon,” the sheriff told him. “There’s a trail back to town at thuh bottom so we won’t have to come back up. But what in tarnation do you think you’ll find out by lookin’ at a wrecked buckboard an’ two dead hawses?”

  “I dunno. Yuh don’ need tuh come lessen yuh wanta.” Chuckaluck spurred his horse lightly, reined him over the edge and sent him plunging down the precipice in the tracks left by the buckboard as it tumbled over and over.

  It was at least two hundred feet to the bottom, and when he reined up beside the overturned vehicle he heard the sheriff’s horse close behind him.

  They dismounted and made a cursory survey of the battered buckboard, then struck matches and inspected the dead team of horses in the tangled traces.

  Chuckaluck’s match burned out and he rocked back on his heels and said, “I thought thuh stage driver tol’ yuh one hawse was awready dead when he got down here, an’ he shot t’other one.”

  “He did. Said one of ’em had a busted neck. That’n, I reckon.” Morgan pointed to the off-horse with its head grotesquely twisted under a front hoof. “This’n had both front legs broke, so he shot him.”

  “Both of ’em’s been shot,” said Chuckaluck shortly. “Bullet holes right th’ough thuh centre o’ their forrids.”

  “You shore?” The sheriff hastily struck another match.

  “Look fo’ yorese’f.” Chuckaluck got up slowly and rolled a cigarette while the sheriff held the match flare close to examine the horses’ heads.

  “Damned if you ain’t right,” Morgan muttered. He stood up, removed his hat, and violently rumpled his thick grey hair. “Mebbe thuh driver or one o’ thuh passengers put a bullet through thuh dead one too … to make shore he wouldn’ suffer none.”

  “Mebbe.”

  “Might ask thuh driver,” suggested Morgan as they remounted.

  “I aim tuh do jus’ that,” said Chuckaluck, and quietly puffed on his cigarette as they rode the trail at the bottom of the ravine leading back to Marfa.

  CHAPTER XIII

  The hotel mattress wasn’t as soft as Chuckaluck had anticipated. He tossed and squirmed in an effort to fit his tired, chunky body to the lumps and crevices in the home-made mattress while his mind wrestled with the puzzle of the disappearance of Mrs. Kirk and her baby. He went over and over every scene, forcing himself to remember every conversation, every expression and the temper of the parties to the affair.

  Complete silence came over the little town and the moon was gone, leaving it in darkness. He was half asleep when he suddenly thought of the patchwork quilt folded at the foot of the bed, and the fanciful idea came to him that the mystery was like that. You started out with a central piece and then fitted the other pieces in to make a pattern.

  His eyes popped open, and after a long time he felt pretty sure he had hold of the central piece of the puzzle. But he didn’t have any proof. A lot depended on Frank Adams’ story. And Oscar Bascom’s. But with Frank missing and Bascom in a coma …

  That deadline—the middle of the afternoon—when he had promised to deliver Twister to the sheriff and Rangoon at Kirk’s mesa worried him. It was cutting things mighty thin. And he didn’t dare give Twister back to the law without an answer to the letter he had written Lawyer Sam Prior in San Angelo, and the stage wasn’t due to arrive in Marfa until after two o’clock. That was his only ace in the hole. He and Twister couldn’t afford to turn up on the mesa without it.

  He wasn’t worried about the Jean Rangoon angle. She would idntify them as the two men who had rescued her. But that very fact would place him right in the middle of the Kirk business with Twister, once it was known that they were partners and had ridden to the mesa together. All the lies they had told would be held against them.

  Chuckaluck groaned aloud in the still darkness when he realized that the more truth they told the more damning it would be and they would both be hung without a trial, and without help from Sam Pryor, that was what would happen as soon as they showed themselves on the mesa.

  Exhausted in mind and body, he muttered to himself, ‘My worrier’s done plumb wore out,” closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  He didn’t waken until almost eleven o’clock the next morning. He sprang from the bed and pulled on his boots. There was a tightness in his belly muscles as he realized Sheriff Morgan’s search parties must have been riding the hills for hours, spreading out in an ever widening circle to seek some sign of Frank Adams and Mrs. Kirk.

  He was worried, too, when he thought of Twister alone and with nothing to eat, and without the slightest knowledge of what was going on. Knowing his partner’s impulsiveness and his aversion to hunger, there was no telling how long he would stand it before throwing caution to the wind and riding boldly into town for chuck and information.

  Hastily splashing cold water on his face from the china washbowl on the stand he hurried down to the lobby. It was completely deserted, not even the clerk was at the desk.

  The town, too, was deserted as he stepped out into the blazing sunlight. Only a couple of saddled horses switched flies from their flanks on Main Street. There was a sense of foreboding in the utter silence, and as he started down the boardwalk his boots resounded like an army attacking over a loosely-planked bridge. He was breathing with difficulty, as though an unseen hand had reached out and caught him by the throat, and he took a few slow steps on tip-toe.

  He pushed the feeling back suddenly and angrily, and tramped down to a small restaurant. There were no other customers, and a thin, sickly-looking man behind the counter looked up in surprise when Chuckaluck walked in and seated himself on a stool.

  The look of surprise changed to one of recognition, and the man said, “Say, Mister, ain’t you thuh United States Marshall come to town to help Sheriff Morgan hunt for Missus Kirk?”

  Chuckaluck was startled into remembering that Morgan had made him a deputy quite suddenly and before a large crowd last night. Realizing that rumour had promoted him to federal marshal in a few hours, he neither affirmed nor denied the honour, but grunted something that might have been either, and asked, “Any chanct tuh get some chuck?”

  “Sure, Mister. You been out with the search parties? You’re the first one that’s come back. What did they find? They do say …”

  “I ain’t been out,” Chuckaluck said shortly. “Jus’ woke up.”

  “Then I reckon every man in town that can straddle a horse is out except you and me. Left before daylight. I don’t ride, myself. My bones’d bore holes right through the toughest saddle ever made,” the thin man ended with a weak giggle.

  “Fix me up ha’f a dozen egg san’wiches an’ thuh same of ham with plen’y ham inside an’ put ’em in a sack,” he ordered impatiently.

  The man’s expression sobered. “Sure,” he said. “You’re going out, too, I see. I’ll fix ’em right up so you won’t lose time.”