The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

The doctor, who was younger and more cruel than even a doctor has a right to be, said that Martha had died from a stoppage of the heart, undoubtedly induced by the strong drug in the sleeping powder that had been administered. In other words, Sam had killed her. He loved her. How deeply he had loved her, none of us had ever had sense enough to realize.

We had her funeral, and Chad's, two days later. They were buried in the second grove of aspen trees, two miles beyond the cabin. All the people in the valley came. At first, I thought that they had come to honor the dead, and Sam. But, as I stood by the graves, and watched the faces about me, faces that held suspicion, horror, curiosity; sly faces, cruel faces, eager faces, I did not care to think why most of them had come.

Sam noticed it, too. For, though I had not said a word to him, as we walked home from the graves, he said to me, "Don't blame them, Mary. What else could we expect? Decency breeds decency, and-filth draws filth."

There were only four of us around the table that evening. Mrs. Ricker had gone straight to her room, after the funeral. Danny, with no protest from Sam, had left the day before to take Gaby's body to San Francisco. It had seemed heartless to allow her to go alone; but I could not be spared, and there was no one else to go with her. John might have gone; but Danny refused to allow him to, saying, unselfishly, that Sam needed John more than she needed him.

"You people," Hubert Hand spoke suddenly, to John and Sam and me, as we sat there, looking at a supper that nobody pretended to eat, "have been awfully decent about not asking questions since the other afternoon."

"I'm done with questions," Sam said. "Through. Finished."

"Just the same," Hubert Hand replied, "there are a lot of answers that are going to have to be given, sooner or later. You heard Mrs. Ricker say that I was Martha's father -- "

"Never mind that, now, Hand," Sam interrupted. "I've known, since the first week you came to the ranch, that there was, or had been, something between you two. You'd been her lover, I suppose. Well-men do. That's all. I never went around thinking you, nor any man, was a plaster saint. I reckon you deserted her, eh? And treated her like hell, generally. And she found a refuge here. And, later, probably, heard that you were in trouble, and sent you a letter and told you to come here. Put you wise about the chess racket. Helped you. Made a refuge for you. Women do.

"I suppose she slipped poor Martha in, in place of the child she'd got from the orphanage-used the same papers. Well-to keep on repeating myself, mothers do. You and she have both lived straight and acted decent for the years you've been here. If the two of you want to keep on living in this hell-hole, and keep on straight and acting decent, you'll get the same treatment from me you've always got. If you are Martha's parents, that's more reason, not less, for my not wanting to break up our family here, or make trouble for either one of you."

Hubert Hand pushed back his chair, got up, and walked to the window. "By God, but you're a white man, Sam! " he said. "You're so damn white that you make every one around you look yellow as sulphur by contrast.

"You've got it doped out right about Ollie Ricker and me. She was twelve years older than I was-I always felt like that was kind of an excuse for me. Guess not, though. She was a good enough girl until I came along, just out of prison, and as rotten as two years in prison can make a kid. That's pretty damn rotten. I shouldn't have been sent up, that time. Nothing but a kid's trick-grand row in a dump down on Barbary Coast.

"My mother was dead. My dad was a high-hatter. He went back on me, cold, after that. Found my room locked when I went home. I went back to Ollie. She kept me pretty straight for a while. I ought to have married her, and I know it, before the kid was born. But she was so jealous that she made life a living hell for me. I-well, I wouldn't marry her.

"It was her fault that I got sent up the second time. She talked to a girl friend of hers, and the girl snitched. Up to that time, I think that Ollie Ricker talked more than any living woman. She took a vow, the day they got me, that she'd never speak an unnecessary word again in her life. I'll say she's kept that vow pretty well. I wish to God I'd taken the same vow, before I shot my mouth off about John, the other day."

"You don't think that I did it, then? " I wished John could have seemed less eager.

"On the square," Hubert answered, "I don't see who else could have done it. That makes no never minds. I wish I'd kept my mouth shut, on account of Sam -- "

"Leave me out of it," Sam growled, "and forget it. Forget the whole damn thing, if you can. I'm through. If I hadn't been so busy playing the fool while Martha was dying, we could likely have saved her. We'll never get any place with this thing. Nobody will. Look at us, messing around with a lot of damn fool clues, and suspicions, telling one lie to cover another-like a batch of gossiping old grannies, while Martha was lying there, dying. And me growling and snarling at her all afternoon. I'm a fool. I'm a damn sight worse-I'm an old fool. A girl got killed on the Desert Moon Ranch. A boy killed himself for love of her. The killer got clean away. So far as I'm concerned, it is going to rest there. I'm closing the book. Soon as I can, I'll sell out the damn place, lock, stock and barrel."

"That doesn't go for me, dad," John said. "And I think you'll change your mind. I'm not willing to go on the rest of my life with half a dozen people thinking that I killed Gabrielle. No sir, not with one person thinking it. Hubert Hand seems to be in a sort of sentimental mood, right now. How long's he going to stay that way? When he gets over it, what's he going to do with the club he has in his hand? Nothing? Maybe. Depends on how much he might need some cash, sometime in the future."

Hubert said, "I'm no damn blackmailer."