THE LAST TRICK

“I’d take it kindly if you gents would stick yore guns on the mantel-piece,” said Judge Dolan.

Jack Harpe and Luke Tweezy looked at each other.

“I ain’t wearing a gun,” said Luke Tweezy, crossing one skinny knee over the other.

“But Mr. Harpe is,” pointed out Judge Dolan.

Jack Harpe jackknifed his long body out of his chair, which was placed directly in front of an open doorway giving into an inner room, crossed the floor, and placed his sixshooter on the mantel-piece.

“What is this,” he demanded, returning to his place “a trial?”

“Not a-tall,” the Judge made haste to assure him. “Just a li’l friendly talk, thassall. I’m a-lookin’ for information, and I’ve an idea you and Luke can give it to me.”

“I’d like a li’l information my own self,” grumbled Luke Tweezy. “When are you gonna make the Dales vacate?”

“All in good time,” the Judge replied with a wintry smile. “I’ll be getting to that in short order. Here comes Kansas and Jake Rule now.”

“What you want with the sheriff?” Luke queried, uneasily.

“He’s gonna help us in our li’l talk,” explained the Judge, smoothly.

“I think I’ll get my gun,” observed Jack Harpe.

He made as if to rise but sank back immediately for Racey Dawson had suddenly appeared in the open doorway behind him and run the chill muzzle of a sixshooter into the back of his neck.

“Never sit with yore back to a doorway,” advised Racey Dawson. “If you’ll clamp yore hands behind yore head, Jack, we’ll all be the happier. Luke, fish out the knife you wear under yore left armpit, lay it on the floor and kick it into the corner.”

Luke Tweezy’s knife tinkled against the wall at the moment that the sheriff, his deputy, and two other men entered from the street. The third man was Mr. Johnson, the Wells Fargo detective. The fourth man wore his left arm in a sling and hobbled on a cane. The fourth man was Swing Tunstall.

“What kind of hell’s trick is this?” demanded Jack Harpe, glaring at the Wells Fargo detective.

“It’s the last trick, Bill,” said Mr. Johnson.

At the mention of which name Jack Harpe appeared to shrink inwardly. He looked suddenly very old.

“Take chairs, gents,” invited Judge Dolan, looking about him in the manner of a minstrel show’s interlocutor. “If everybody’s comfortable, we’ll proceed to business.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t a trial,” objected Luke Tweezy.

“And so it ain’t a trial,” the Judge rapped out smartly. “The trial will come later.”

Luke Tweezy subsided. His furtive eyes became more furtive than ever.

“Go ahead, Racey,” said Judge Dolan.

Racey, still holding his sixshooter, leaned hipshot against the doorjamb.

“It was this way,” he began, and told what had transpired that day in the hotel corral when he had been bandaging his horse’s leg and had overheard the conversation between Lanpher and Jack Harpe and later, Punch-the-breeze Thompson.

“They’s nothing in that,” declared Jack Harpe with contempt, twisting his neck to glower up at Racey. “Suppose I did wanna get hold of the Dale ranch. What of it?”

“Shore,” put in Luke Tweezy. “What of it? Perfectly legitimate business proposition. Legal, and all that.”

“Not quite,” denied Racey. “Not the way you went about it. Nawsir. Well, gents,” he resumed, “what I heard in that corral showed plain enough there was something up. Dale wouldn’t sell, and they were bound to get his land away from him. So they figured to have Nebraska Jones turn the trick by playin’ poker with the old man. When Nebraska They switched from Nebraska to Peaches Austin, plannin’ to go through with the deal at McFluke’s from the beginning. And that was where Tweezy come in. He was to get the old man to McFluke’s, and with the help of Peaches Austin cheat Dale out of the ranch.”

“That’s a damn lie!” cried Tweezy.

“I suppose you’ll deny,” said Racey, “that the day I saw you ride in here to Farewell I mean the day Jack Harpe spoke to you in front of the Happy Heart, and you didn’t answer him that day you come in from Marysville on purpose to tell Jack an’ Lanpher about the mortgage having to be renewed and that now was their chance. I suppose you’ll deny all that, huh?”

“Yo’re yo’re lyin’,” sputtered Luke Tweezy.

“Am I? We’ll see. When playin’ cards with old Dale didn’t work they caught the old man at McFluke’s one day and after he’d got in a fight with McFluke and McFluke downed him, they saw their chance to produce a forged release from Dale.”

“Who did the forging?” broke in the Judge.

“I dunno for shore. This here was found in Tweezy’s safe.” He held out a letter to the Judge.

Judge Dolan took the letter and read it carefully. Then he looked across at Luke Tweezy.

“This here,” said he, tapping the letter with stiffened forefinger, “is a signed letter from Dale to you. It seems to be a reply in the negative to a letter of yores askin’ him to sell his ranch.”

The Judge paused and glanced round the room. Then his cold eyes returned to the face of Luke Tweezy who was beginning to look extremely wretched.

“Underneath the signature of Dale,” continued the Judge, “somebody has copied that signature some fifty or sixty times. I wonder why.”

“I dunno anything about it,” Luke Tweezy denied, feebly.

“We’ll come back to that,” the Judge observed, softly. “G’on, Racey.”

“I figure,” said Racey, “that they’d hatched that forgery some while before Dale was killed. The killing made it easier to put it on record.”

“Looks that way,” nodded the Judge.

“Lookit here,” boomed Jack Harpe, “you ain’t got any right to judge us thisaway. We ain’t on trial.”

“Shore you ain’t,” asserted the Judge. “I always said you wasn’t. This here is just a talk, a friendly talk. No trial about it.”

“Here’s another letter, Judge,” said Racey Dawson.

The Judge read the other letter, and again fixed Luke Tweezy with his eye.

“This ain’t a letter exactly,” said Judge Dolan. “It’s a quadruplicate copy of an agreement between Lanpher of the 88 ranch, Jacob Pooley of Piegan City, and Luke Tweezy of Marysville, parties of the first part, and Jack Harpe, party of the second part, to buy or otherwise obtain possession of the ranch of William Dale, in the northeast corner of which property is located an abandoned mine tunnel in which Jack Harpe, the party of the second part, has discovered a gold-bearing lode.”

“A mine!” muttered Swing Tunstall. “A gold mine! And I thought they wanted it for a ranch.”

“So did I,” Racey nodded.

“I know that mine,” said Jake Rule. “Silvertip Ransom and Long Oscar drove the tunnel, done the necessary labour, got their patent, and sold out when they couldn’t get day wages to old Dale for one pony and a jack. But Dale never worked it. A payin’ lode! Hell! Who’d ‘a’ thought it?”

“Old Salt an’ Tom Loudon got a couple o’ claims on the other side of the ridge from Dale’s mine,” put in Kansas Casey. “They bought ’em off of Slippery Wilson and his wife. Them claims oughta be right valuable now.”

“They are,” nodded Judge Dolan. “The agreement goes on to say that Jack Harpe found gold-bearing lodes in both of Slippery’s old tunnels, that these claims will be properly relocated and registered I guess that’s where Jakey Pooley come in and all three mines will be worked by a company made up of these four men, each man to receive one quarter of the profits. This agreement is signed by Jack Harpe, Simon Lanpher, and Jacob Pooley.”

“And after Pooley was arrested,” contributed Racey Dawson, “the Piegan City marshal went through his safe and found the original of this agreement signed by Tweezy, Lanpher, and Harpe.”

Luke Tweezy held up his hand. “One moment,” said he. “Where was the agreement signed by Harpe, Pooley, and Lanpher found?”

“In yore safe,” replied Racey Dawson.

“Did you find it there?”

“Yep.”

“What were you doing at my safe?”

“Now don’t get excited, Luke. I happened to be in the neighbourhood of yore house in Marysville about a month ago when I noticed one of yore back windows open. I snooped in and there was Jack Harpe working on yore combination with Jakey Pooley watchin’ him. Jack Harpe was the boy who opened the safe.... Huh? Shore, I know him and Jakey Pooley sicked posses on my trail. Why not? They hadda cover their own tracks, didn’t they? But that ain’t the point. What I can’t help wondering is why Harpe and Pooley was fussin’ with the safe in the first place. What do you guess, Luke?”

Evidently Tweezy knew the answer. With a yelp of “Tried to cross me, you !” he flung himself bodily upon Jack Harpe.

In a moment the two were rolling on the floor. It required four men and seven minutes to pry them apart.