A Texas Ranger by William MacLeod Raine (read with me .TXT) 📖

CHAPTER XVIII A WITNESS IN REBUTTAL

Two hours later, Lieutenant Fraser was closeted with Brandt and Hilliard. He told them his story— or as much of it as he deemed necessary. The prosecuting attorney heard him to an end before he gave a short, skeptical laugh.

“It doesn’t seem to me you’ve quite lived up to your reputation, lieutenant,” he commented.

“I wasn’t trying to,” retorted Steve.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I have told you how I got into the valley. I couldn’t go in there and betray my friends.”

Hilliard wagged his fat forefinger. “How about betraying our trust? How about throwing us down? We let you escape, after you had given us your word to do this job, didn’t we?”

“Yes. I had to throw you down. There wasn’t any other way.”

“You tell a pretty fishy story, lieutenant. It doesn’t stand to reason that one man did all the mischief on that Squaw Creek raid.”

“It is true. Not a shadow of a doubt of it. I’ll bring you three witnesses, if you’ll agree to hold them guiltless.”

“And I suppose I’m to agree to hold you guiltless of Faulkner’s death, too?” the lawyer demanded.

“I didn’t say that. I’m here, Mr. Hilliard, to deliver my person, because I can’t stand by the terms of our agreement. I think I’ve been fair with you.”

Hilliard looked at Brandt, with twinkling eyes. It struck Fraser that they had between them some joke in which he was not a sharer.

“You’re willing to assume full responsibility for the death of Faulkner, are you? Ready to plead guilty, eh?”

Fraser laughed. “Just a moment. I didn’t say that. What I said was that I’m here to stand my trial. It’s up to you to prove me guilty.”

“But, in point of fact, you practically admit it.”

“In point of fact, I would prefer not to say so. Prove it, if you can.”

“I have witnesses here, ready to swear to the truth, lieutenant.”

“Aren’t your witnesses prejudiced a little?”

“Maybe.” The smile on Hilliard’s fat face broadened. “Two of them are right here. Suppose we find out.”

He stepped to the door of the inner office, and opened it. From the room emerged Dillon and his daughter. The Texan looked at Arlie in blank amazement.

“This young lady says she was present, lieutenant, and knows who fired the shot that killed Faulkner.”

The ranger saw only Arlie. His gaze was full of deep reproach. “You came down here to save me,” he said, in the manner of one stating a fact.

“Why shouldn’t I? Ought I to have let you suffer for me? Did you think I was so base?”

“You oughtn’t to have done it. You have brought trouble on yourself.”

Her eyes glowed with deep fires. “I don’t care. I have done what was right. Did you think dad and I would sit still and let you pay forfeit for us?”

The lieutenant’s spirits rejoiced at the thing she had done, but his mind could not forget what she must go through.

“I’m glad and I’m sorry,” he said simply.

Hilliard came, smiling, to relieve the situation. “I’ve got a piece of good news for both of you. Two of the boys that were in that shooting scrap three miles from town came to my office the other day and admitted that they attacked you. It got noised around that there was a girl in it, and they were anxious to have the thing dropped. I don’t think either of you need worry about it any more.”

Dillon gave a shout. “Glory, hallelujah!” He had been much troubled, and his relief shone on his face. “I say, gentlemen, that’s the best news I’ve heard in twenty years. Let’s go celebrate it with just one.”

Brandt and Hilliard joined him, but the Texan lingered.

“I reckon I’ll join you later, gentlemen,” he said.

While their footsteps died away he looked steadily at Arlie. Her eyes met his and held fast. Beneath the olive of her cheeks, a color began to glow.

He held out both his hands. The light in his eyes softened, transfigured his hard face. “You can’t help it, honey. It may not be what you would have chosen, but it has got to be. You’re mine.”

Almost beneath her breath she spoke. “You forgot— the other girl.”

“What other girl? There is none— never was one.”

“The girl in the picture.”

His eyes opened wide. “Good gracious! She’s been married three months to a friend of mine. Larry Neill his name is.”

“And she isn’t your sweetheart at all? Never was?”

“I don’t reckon she ever was. Neill took that picture himself. We were laughing, because I had just been guying them about how quick they got engaged. She was saying I’d be engaged myself before six months. And I am. Ain’t I?”

She came to him slowly— first, the little outstretched hands, and then the soft, supple, resilient body. Slowly, too, her sweet reluctant lips came round to meet his.

“Yes, Steve, I’m yours. I think I always have been, even before I knew you.”

“Even when you hated me?” he asked presently.

“Most of all, when I hated you,” She laughed happily. “That was just another way of love.”

“We’ll have fifty years to find out all the different ways,” the man promised.

“Fifty years. Oh, Steve!”

She gave a happy little sigh, and nestled closer.

 

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A TEXAS RANGER ***

This file should be named txsrn10.txt or txsrn10.zip Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, txsrn11.txt VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, txsrn10a.txt

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our Web sites at: http://gutenberg.net or http://promo.net/pg

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).

 

Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04 or ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04

Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, as it appears in our Newsletters.

 

Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 If they reach just 1-2% of the world’s population then the total will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year’s end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

eBooks Year Month

1 1971 July 10 1991 January 100 1994 January 1000 1997 August 1500 1998 October 2000 1999 December 2500 2000 December 3000 2001 November 4000 2001 October/November 6000 2002 December* 9000 2003 November* 10000 2004 January*

 

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones that have responded.

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, just ask.

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to donate.

International donations are accepted, but we don’t know ANYTHING about how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made deductible, and don’t have the staff to handle it even if there are ways.

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation PMB 113 1739 University Ave. Oxford, MS 38655-4109

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment method other than by check or money order.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.

We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information online at:

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html

***

If you can’t reach Project