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Some of the supply merchants had several thousand of these articles de luxe in their stock. In later years they gave them away to Indians and Mexicans. "Do you know where Jack Goodheart is?" asked Lee of the nearest youth. "No, ma'am, but I'll go hunt him for you," answered the puncher promptly. "Thank you." Ten minutes later a bronzed rider swung down in front of the Snaith home.
The evening after his election as sheriff, Billie called at the home of Pauline Roubideau, who was keeping house for her brother. Jack Goodheart was leaving just as Prince stepped upon the porch. It had been two years now since Jack had ceased to gravitate in the direction of Lee Snaith. His eyes and his footsteps for many months had turned often toward Polly.
There was an instant of dead silence. Each man watched the other intently, the one cool and determined, the other full of a volcanic fury. The curtain had been rung up for tragedy. A man stepped between them, twirling carelessly a rawhide rope. "Just a moment, gentlemen. I think I know a way to settle this without bloodshed." Jack Goodheart looked first at the ex-Confederate, then at the foreman.
It was not likely that the enemies of Clanton would make another attempt to frustrate the law, but there was a chance that they would. Goodheart did not take the direct road to Live-Oaks, but followed the river valley toward Los Portales. The party reached the Roubideau ranch at dusk of the third night. Pauline had been at the place three months keeping house for her father.
Mebbe you'll be able to explain it to him. Tell him you were hard up an' needed the money." The eyes of the rustler flashed from Goodheart to the sheriff. They were full of sinister suspicion. Had these men arranged to deliver him into the hands of Clanton? Was he himself going to fall into the pit he had dug? "Gimme back my gun an' I'm not afraid of him or any of you," he bluffed.
"Must of slipped his hands out of the cuffs, looks like," the guard suggested. "He got me to give him a bigger size complained they chafed his wrists." "Some trick that, if he has got kid hands." The chill eyes of Goodheart gimleted into those of his assistant. "Did you do this, Brad? God help you if you did." A light step sounded on the threshold. Pauline came into the room.
Casually Goodheart picked up the piece of wrapping-paper upon which the note had been written. He read aloud the last sentence. "'Crack Sanders one on the bean with your six-gun on account for me. Seems to me if I was you, Buck, I'd alibi myself down the river into Texas as quick as I could jog a bronco along. But, of course, I don't know yore friend Go-Get-'Em as well as you do.
He's about four miles from Round Top in an old dugout. Maybe you've heard of Saguaro Cañon. Well, he's holed up in a little gulch runnin' into it." By daybreak next morning the sheriff's posse was in the saddle. In addition to Sanders, who rode beside Billie unarmed, Goodheart and two special deputies made up the party. The sun was riding high when they reached Ojo Caliente.
"When you and Jim have put up your horses I want you to come up to aunt's for supper." "We'll be there." It was not a very gay little supper. Pauline and Jack Goodheart had very little to say for themselves, but in their eyes were bright pools of happiness. Clanton sustained the burden of the talk, assisted in a desultory fashion by Lee and Billie.
Jack Goodheart followed the gun-barrel road into a desert green and beautiful with vegetation. Now he passed a blooming azalea or a yucca with clustering bellflowers. The prickly pear and the cat-claw clutched at his chaps. The arrowweed and the soapweed were everywhere, as was also the stunted creosote.
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