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CHAPTER XXII
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-hooedto 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.
CHAPTER XXIII
DURING the long ride to Los Angeles, and later in his cell in the county jail, Custer Pennington had devoted many hours to seeking an explanation of the motives underlying the plan to involve him in a crime of which he had no knowledge, nor even a suspicion of the identity of its instigators. To his knowledge, he had no enemies whose hostility was sufficiently active to lead them to do him so great a wrong. He had had no trouble with any one recently, other than his altercation with Slick Allen several months before; yet it was obvious that he had been deliberately sacrificed for some ulterior purpose. What that purpose was he could only surmise.
The most logical explanation, he finally decided, was that those actually responsible, realizing that discovery was imminent, had sought to divert suspicion from themselves by fastening it upon another. That they had selected him as the victim might easily be explained on the ground that his embarrassing interest in their movements had already centered their attention upon him, while it also offered the opportunity for luring him into the trap without arousing his suspicions.
It was, then, just a combination of circumstances that had led him into his present predicament; but there still remained unanswered one question that affected his peace of mind more considerably than all the others combined. Who had divulged to the thieves his plans for the previous night?
Concurrently with that question there arose before his mind’s eye a picture of Shannon Burke and Baldy as they topped the summit above Jackknife from the trail that led across the basin meadow back into the hills, he knew not where.
“I can’t believe that it was she,” he told himself for the hundredth time. “She could not have done it. I won’t believe it! She could explain it all if I could ask her; but I can’t ask her. There is a great deal that I cannot understand, and the most inexplicable thing is that she could possibly have had any connection whatever with the affair.”
When his father came with an attorney, in the morning, the son made no mention of Shannon Burke’s ride into the hills, or of her anxiety, when they parted in the afternoon, to learn if he was going to carry out his plan for Friday night.
“Did any one know of your intention to watch for these men?” asked the attorney.
“No one,” he replied; “but they might have become suspicious from the fact that the week before I had all the gates padlocked on Friday. They had to cut the fence that night to get through. They probably figured that it was getting too hot for them, and that on the following Friday I would take some other steps to discover them. Then they made sure of it by sending me that message from Los Angeles. Gee, but I bit like a sucker!”
“It is unfortunate,” remarked the attorney, “that you had not discussed your plans with some one before you undertook to carry them out on Friday night. If we could thus definitely establish your motive for going alone into the hills, and to the very spot where you were discovered with the pack train, I think it would go much further toward convincing the court that you were there without any criminal intent than your own unsupported testimony to that effect!”
“But haven’t you his word for it?” demanded the colonel.
“I am not the court,” replied the attorney, smiling.
“Well, if the court isn’t a damned fool it’ll know he wouldn’t have padlocked the gates the week before to keep himself out,” stated the colonel conclusively.
“The government might easily assume that he did that purposely to divert suspicion from himself. At least, it is no proof of innocence.”
Colonel Pennington snorted.
“The best thing to do now,” said the attorney, “is to see if we can get an immediate hearing, and arrange for bail in case he is held to the grand jury.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the colonel.
They had been gone but a short time when Guy Evans was admitted to Custer’s cell. The latter looked up and smiled when he saw who his visitor was.
“It was bully of you to come,” he said. “Bringing condolences, or looking for material, old thing?”
“Don’t joke, Cus,” exclaimed Evans. “It’s too rotten to joke about, and it’s all my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“I am the guilty one. I’ve come down to give myself up.”
“Guilty! Give yourself up! What are you talking about?”
“God, Cus, I hate to tell you. It didn’t seem such an awful thing to do until this happened. Every one’s buying booze, or selling booze, or making booze. Every one’s breaking the damned old Eighteenth Amendment, and it’s got so it don’t seem like committing a crime, or anything like that. You know, Cus, that I wouldn’t do anything criminal, and, oh, God, what’ll Eva think?”
Guy covered his face with his hands and choked back a sob.
“Just what the devil are you talking about?” inquired Pennington. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been mixed up in—well, what do you know about that?” A sudden light had dawned upon Custer’s understanding. “That hootch that you’ve been getting me—that I joked you about—it was really the stuff that was stolen from a bonded warehouse in New York? It wasn’t any joke at all?”
“You can see for yourself now how much of a joke it was,” replied Evans.
“I’ll admit,” returned Custer ruefully, “that it does require considerable of a sense of humor to see it in this joint!”
“What do you suppose they’ll do to me?” asked Guy. “Do you suppose they’ll send me to the penitentiary?”
“Tell me the whole thing from the beginning—who got you into it, and just what you’ve done. Don’t omit a thing, no matter how much it incriminates you. I don’t need to tell you, old man, that I’m for you, no matter what you’ve done.”
“I know that, Cus; but I’m afraid no one can help me. I’m in for it. I knew it was stolen from the start. I have been selling it since last May—seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-six quarts of it and I made a dollar on every quart. It was what I was going to start housekeeping on. Poor little Eva!” Again a sob half choked him. “It was Slick Allen that started me. First he sold me some; then he got me to sell you a bottle, and bring him the money. Then he had me, or at least he made me think so; and he insisted on my handling it for them out in the valley. It wasn’t hard to persuade me, for it looked safe, and it didn’t seem like such a rotten thing to do, and I wanted the money the worst way. I know they’re all bum excuses. I shan’t make any excuses—I’ll take my medicine; but it’s when I think of Eva that it hurts. It’s only Eva that counts!”
“Yes,” said Pennington, laying his hand affectionately on the other’s shoulder. “It is only Eva who counts; and because of Eva, and because you and I love her so much, you cannot go to the penitentiary.”
“What do you mean—cannot go?”
“Have you told any one else what you have just told me?”
“No.”
“Don’t. Go back home, and keep your mouth shut,” said Custer.
“You mean that you will take a chance of going up for what I did? Nothing doing! Do you suppose I’d let you, Cus, the best friend I’ve got in the world, go to the pen for me—for something I did?”
“It’s not for you, Guy. I wouldn’t go to the pen for you or any other man; but I’d go to the pen for Eva, and so would you.”
“I know it, but I can’t let you do it. I’m not rotten, Cus!”
“You and I don’t count. To see her unhappy and humiliated would be worse for me than spending a few years in the penitentiary. I’m innocent. No matter if I am convicted, I’ll know I’m innocent, and Eva’ll know it, and so will all the rest at Ganado; but, Guy, they’ve got too much on you if they ever suspect you, and the fact that you voluntarily admitted your guilt would convince even my little sister. If you were sent up it might ruin her life—it wouldruin it. Things could never be the same for her again; but if I was sentenced for a few years, it would only be the separation from a brother whom she knew to be innocent, and in whom she still had undiminished confidence. She wouldn’t be humiliated—her life wouldn’t be ruined; and when I came back everything would be just as it was before. If you go, things will not be the same when you come back—they can never be the same again. You cannot go!”
“I cannot let you go, and be punished for what I did, while I remain free!”
“You’ve got to—it’s the easiest way. We’ve all got to be punished for what you did—those who love us are always punished for our sins; but let me tell you that I don’t think you are going to escape punishment if I go up for this. You’re going to suffer more than I. You’re going to suffer more than you would if you went up yourself; but it can’t be helped. The question is, are you man enough to do this for Eva? It is your sacrifice more than mine.”
Evans swallowed hard and tried to speak. It was a moment before he succeeded.
“My God, Cus, I’d rather go myself!”
“I know you would.”
“I can never have any self-respect again. I can never look a decent man in the face. Every time I see Eva, or your mother, or the colonel, I’ll think: ‘You dirty cur, you let their boy go to the pen for something you did!’ Oh, Cus, please don’t ask me to do it! There must be some other way. And—and, Cus, think of Grace. We’ve been forgetting Grace. What’ll it mean to Grace if you are sent up?”
“It won’t mean anything to Grace, and you know it. None of us mean much to Grace any more.”
Guy looked out of the little barred window, and tears came to his eyes.
“I guess you’re right,” he said.
“You’re going to do it, Guy—for Eva?”
“For Eva—yes.”
Pennington brightened up as if a great load had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Good!” he cried. “Now the chances are that I’ll not be sent up, for they’ve nothing on me—they can’t have; but if I am, you’ve got to take my place with the folks. You’ve had your lesson. I know you’ll never pull another fool stunt like this again. And quit drinking, Guy. I haven’t much excuse for preaching; but you’re the sort that can’t do it. Leave it alone. Good-by, now; I’d rather you were not here when father comes back—you might weaken.”
Evans took the other’s hand.
“I envy you, Cus—on the level, I do!”
“I know it; but don’t feel too bad about it. It’s one of those things that’s done, and it can’t be undone. Roosevelt would have called what you’ve got to do ‘grasping the nettle.’ Grasp it like a man!”
Evans walked slowly from the jail, entered his car, and drove away. Of the two hearts his was the heavier; of the two burdens his the more difficult to bear.
Custer Pennington, appearing before a United States commissioner that afternoon for his preliminary hearing, was held to the Federal grand jury, and admitted to bail. The evidence brought by the deputies who had searched the Pennington home, taken in connection with the circumstances surrounding his arrest, seemed to leave the commissioner no alternative. Even the colonel had to admit that to himself, though he would never have admitted it to another. The case would probably come up before the grand jury on the following Wednesday.
The colonel wanted to employ detectives at once to ferret out those actually responsible for the theft and bootlegging of the stolen whisky; but Custer managed to persuade him not to do so, on the ground that it would be a waste of time and money, since the government was already engaged upon a similar pursuit.
“Don’t worry, father,” he said. “They haven’t a shred of evidence that I stole the whisky, or that I ever sold any. They found me with it —that is all. I can’t be hanged for that. Let them do the worrying. I want to get home in time to eat one of Hannah’s dinners. I’ll say they don’t set much of a table in the sheriff’s boarding house!”
“Where did you get the three bottles they found in your room?”
“I bought them.”
“I asked where, not how.”
“I might get some one else mixed up in this if I were to answer that question. I can’t do it.”
“No,” said the colonel, “you can’t. When you buy whisky, nowadays, you are usually compounding a felony. It’s certainly a rotten condition to obtain in the land of the free; but you’ve got to protect your accomplices. I shall not ask you again; but they’ll ask you in court, my boy.”
“All the good it’ll do them!”
“I suppose so; but I’d hate to see my boy sent to the penitentiary.”
“You’d hate to be in court and hear him divulge the name of a man who had trusted him sufficiently to sell him whisky.”
“I’d rather see you go to the penitentiary!” the colonel said.
That night, at dinner, Custer made light of the charge against him, yet at the same time he prepared them for what might happen, for the proceedings before the commissioner had impressed him with the gravity of his case, as had also the talk he had had with his attorney afterward.
“No matter what happens,” he said to them all, “I shall know that you know I am not guilty.”
“My boy’s word is all I need,” replied his mother.
Eva came and put her arms about him.
“They wouldn’t send you to jail, would they?” she demanded. “It would break my heart!”
“Not if you knew I was innocent.”
“N-no, not then, I suppose; but it would be awful. If you were guilty, it would kill me. I’d never want to live if my brother was convicted of a crime, and was guilty of it. I’d kill myself first!”
Her brother drew her face down and kissed her tenderly.
“That would be foolish, dear,” he said. “No matter what one of us does, such an act would make it all the worse—for those who were left.”
“I can’t help it,” she said. “It isn’t just because I have had the honor of the Penningtons preached to me all my life. It’s because it’s in me—the Pennington honor. It’s a part of me, just as it’s a part of you, and mother, and father. It’s a part of the price we have to pay
for being Penningtons. I have always been proud of it, Custer, even if I am only a silly girl.”
“I’m proud of it, too, and I haven’t jeopardized it; but even if I had, you mustn’t think about killing yourself on my account, or any one’s else.”
“Well, I know you’re not guilty, so I don’t have to.”
“Good! Let’s talk about something pleasant.”
“Why didn’t you see Grace while you were in Los Angeles?”
“I tried to. I called up her boarding place from the lawyer’s office. I understood the woman who answered the phone to say that she would call her, but she came back in a couple of minutes and said that Grace was out on location.”
“Did you leave your name?”
“I told the woman who I was when she answered the phone.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t see her,” said Mrs. Pennington. “I often think that Mrs. Evans, or Guy, should run down to Los Angeles occasionally and see Grace.”
“That’s what Shannon says,” said Custer. “I’ll try to see her next week, before I come home.”
“Shannon was up nearly all afternoon waiting to hear if we received any word from you. When you telephoned that you had been held to the Federal grand jury, she would scarcely believe it. She said there must be some mistake.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She asked whether Guy got there before you were held and I told her that you said Guy visited you in the jail. She seems so worried about the affair—just as if she were one of the family. She is such a dear girl! I think I grow to love her more and more every day.”
“Yes,” said Custer, non-committally.
“She asked me one rather peculiar question,” Eva went on.
“What was that?”
“She asked if I was sure that it was you who had been held to the grand jury.”
“That was odd, wasn’t it?”
“She’s so sure of your innocence—just as sure as we are,” said Eva.
“Well, that’s very nice of her,” remarked Custer.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE next morning he saw Shannon, who came to ride with them, the Penningtons, as had been her custom. She looked tired, as if she had spent a sleepless night. She had—she had spent two sleepless nights, and she had had to fight the old fight all over again. It had been very hard, even though she had won, for it had shown her that the battle was not over. She had thought that she had conquered the craving; but that had been when she had had no troubles or unhappiness to worry her mind and nerves. The last two days had been days of suffering for her, and the two sleepless nights had induced a nervous condition that begged for the quieting influence of the little white powder.
Custer noticed immediately that something was amiss. The roses were gone from her cheeks, leaving a suggestion of the old pallor; and though she smiled and greeted him happily, he thought that he detected an expression of wistfulness and pain in her face when she was not conscious that others were observing her.
There was a strange suggestion of change in their relations, which Custer did not attempt to analyze. It was as if he had been gone a long time, and, returning, had found Shannon changed through the natural processes of time and separation. She was not the same girl—she could never be the same again, nor could their relations ever be the same.
The careless freedom of their association, which had resembled that of a brother and sister more than any other relationship between a man and a woman, had gone forever. What had replaced it Custer did not know. Sometimes he thought that it was a suspicion
of Shannon that clung to his mind in spite of himself, but again and again he assured himself that he held no suspicion of her.
He wished, though, that she would explain that which was to him inexplicable. He had the faith to believe that she could explain it satisfactorily; but would she do so? She had had the opportunity, before this thing had occurred, and had not taken advantage of it. He would give her another opportunity that day, and he prayed that she would avail herself of it. Why he should care so much, he did not try to reason. He did not even realize how much he did care.
Presently he turned toward her.
“I am going to ride over to the east pasture after breakfast,” he said, and waited.
“Is that an invitation?”
He smiled and nodded.
“But not if it isn’t perfectly convenient,” he added.
“I’d love to come with you. You know I always do.”
“Fine! And you’ll breakfast with us?”
“Not to-day. I have a couple of letters to write that I want to get off right away; but I’ll be up between eight thirty and nine. Is that too late?”
“I’ll ride down after breakfast and wait for you—if I won’t be in the way.”
“Of course you won’t. It will take me only a few minutes to write my letters.”
“How are you going to mail them? This is Sunday.”
“Mr. Powers is going to drive in to Los Angeles to-day. He’ll mail them in the city.”
“Who looks after things when Mr. and Mrs. Powers are away?”
“Who looks after things? Why, I do.”
“The chickens, and the sow, and Baldy—you take care of them all?”
“Certainly, and I have more than that now.”
“How’s that?”
“Nine little pigs! They came yesterday. They’re perfect beauties.”
The man laughed.
“What are you laughing about?” she demanded.
“The idea of you taking care of chickens and pigs and a horse!”
“I don’t see anything funny about it, and it’s lot of fun. Did you think I was too stupid?”
“I was just thinking what a change two months have made. What would you have done if you’d been left alone two months ago with a hundred hens, a horse, and ten pigs to care for?”
“The question then would have been what the hens, the horse, and the pigs would have done; but now I know pretty well what to do. The two letters I have to write are about the little pigs. I don’t know much about them, and so I am writing to Berkeley and Washington for the latest bulletins.”
“Why don’t you ask us?”
“Gracious, but I do! I am forever asking the colonel questions, and the boys at the hog house must hate to see me coming. I’ve spent hours in the office, reading Lovejoy and Colton; but I want something for ready reference. I’ve an idea that I can raise lots more hogs than I intended by fencing the orchard and growing alfalfa between the rows, for pasture. There’s something solid and substantial about hogs that suggests a bank balance even in the years when the orange crop may be short or a failure, or the market poor.”
“You’ve got the right idea,” said Custer. “There isn’t a rancher or an orchardist, big or little, in the valley who couldn’t make more
money year in and year out if he’d keep a few brood sows.”
“What’s Cus doing?” asked Eva, who had reined back beside them. “Preaching hog raising again? That’s his idea of a dapper little way to entertain a girl—hogs, Herefords and horses! Wouldn’t he make a hit in society? Regular little tea pointer, I’ll say!”
“I knew you were about to say something,” remarked her brother. “You’ve been quiet for all of five minutes.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Eva. “I’ve been thinking how lonely it will be when you have to go away to jail.”
“Why, they can’t send me to jail—I haven’t done anything,” he tried to reassure her.
“I’m so afraid, Cus!” The tears came to her eyes. “I lay awake for hours last night, thinking about it. Oh, Cus, I just couldn’t stand it if they sent you to jail! Do you think the men who did it would let you go for something they did? Could any one be so wicked? I never hated any one in my life, but I could hate them, if they don’t come forward and save you. I could hatethem, hatethem, hatethem! Oh, Cus, I believe that I could killthe man who would do such a thing to my brother!”
“Come, dear, don’t worry about it. The chances are that they’ll free me. Even if they don’t, you mustn’t feel quite so bitterly against the men who are responsible. There may be reasons that you know nothing of that would keep them silent. Let’s not talk about it. All we can do now is to wait and see what the grand jury is going to do. In the meantime I don’t intend to worry.”
Shannon Burke, her heart heavy with shame and sorrow, listened as might a condemned man to the reading of his death sentence. She felt almost the degradation that might have been hers had she deliberately planned to ensnare Custer Pennington in the toils that had been laid for him.
She determined that she would go before the grand jury and tell all she knew. Then she would go away. She would not have to see
