Jean of the Lazy A | Page 6

did not
mean to be in too great a hurry to do anything; that was Lite's habit, and
he had always found that it served him well.
If the rider had been fleeing from his crime, as was likely, Lite had no
mind to raise at once the hue and cry. An hour or two could make no
difference to the dead man,--and you must remember that Lite had for
six years called this place his home, and big Aleck Douglas his friend
as well as the man who paid him wages for the work he did. He was
half tempted to ride away and say nothing for a while. He could let it
appear that he had not been at the house at all and so had not
discovered the crime when he did. That would give Aleck Douglas
more time to get away. But there was Jean, due at any moment now. He
could not go away and let Jean discover that gruesome thing on the
kitchen floor. He could not take it up and hide it away somewhere; he
could not do anything, it seemed to him, but just wait.
He went slowly down the path to the stable, his chin on his chest, his
mind grappling with the tragedy and with the problem of how best he
might lighten the blow that had fallen upon the ranch. It was unreal,--it
was unthinkable,--that Aleck Douglas, the man who met but friendly
glances, ride where he might, had done this thing. And yet there was
nothing else to believe. Johnny Croft had worked here on the ranch for

a couple of months, off and on. He had not been steadily employed, and
he had been paid by the day instead of by the month as was the custom.
He had worked also for Carl Douglas at the Bar Nothing; back and
forth, for one or the other as work pressed. He was too erratic to be
depended upon except from day to day; too prone to saddle his horse
and ride to town and forget to return for a day or two days or a week, as
the mood seized him or his money held out.
Lite knew that there had been some dispute when he had left; he had
claimed payment for more days than he had worked. Aleck was a just
man who paid honestly what he owed; he was also known to be "close-
fisted." He would pay what he owed and not a nickel more,--hence the
dispute. Johnny had gone away seeming satisfied that his own figures
were wrong, but later on he had quarreled with Carl over wages and
other things. Carl had a bad temper that sometimes got beyond his
control, and he had ordered Johnny off the ranch. This was part of the
long, full-detailed story Jim had been telling. Johnny had left, and he
had talked about the Douglas brothers to any one who would listen. He
had said they were crooked, both of them, and would cheat a
working-man out of his pay. He had come back, evidently, to renew the
argument with Aleck. With the easy ways of ranch people, he had gone
inside when he found no one at home,-- hungry, probably, and not at all
backward about helping himself to whatever appealed to his appetite.
That was Johnny's way,--a way that went unquestioned, since he had
lived there long enough to feel at home. Lite remembered with an odd
feeling of pity how Johnny had praised the first gingerbread which Jean
had baked, the day after her arrival; and how he had eaten three pieces
and had made Jean's cheeks burn with confusion at his bold flattery.
He had come back, and he had helped himself to the gingerbread. And
then he had been shot down. He was lying in there now, just as he had
fallen, and his blood was staining deep the fresh-scrubbed floor. And
Jean would be coming home soon. Lite thought it would be better if he
rode out to meet her, and told her what had happened, so that she need
not come upon it unprepared. There was nothing else that he could
bring himself to do, and his mood demanded action of some sort; one
could not sit down at peace with a fresh tragedy like that hanging over

the place.
He had reached the stable when a horse walked out from behind the hay
corral and stopped, eyeing him curiously. It was Johnny's horse. Even
as improvident a cowpuncher as Johnny Croft had been likes to own a
"private" horse,--one that is his own and can be ridden when and where
the owner chooses. Lite turned and went over to it, caught it by the
dragging bridle-reins, and led it into