CHAPTER IAT THE ROUND UP CLUB
A big game had been in progress all night at the Round Up Club. Now the garish light of day streamed through the windows, but the electric cluster still flung down its yellow glare upon the table. Behind the players were other smaller tables littered with cigars, discarded packs, and glasses full or empty. The men were in their shirt sleeves. Big broad-shouldered fellows they were, with the marks of the outdoors hard-riding West upon them. No longer young, they were still full of the vigor and energy of unflagging strength. From bronzed faces looked steady unwinking eyes with humorous creases around the corners, hard eyes that judged a man and his claims shrewdly and with good temper. Most of them had made good in the land, and their cattle fed upon a thousand hills.
The least among them physically was Luck Cullison,yet he was their recognized leader. There was some innate quality in this man with the gray, steel-chilled eyes that marked him as first in whatever company he chose to frequent. A good friend and a good foe, men thought seriously before they opposed him. He had made himself a power in the Southwest because he was the type that goes the limit when aroused. Yet about him, too, there was the manner of a large amiability, of the easy tolerance characteristic of the West.
While Alec Flandrau shuffled and dealt, the players relaxed. Cigars were relit, drinks ordered. Conversation reverted to the ordinary topics that interested Cattleland. The price of cows, the good rains, the time of the fall roundup, were touched upon.
The door opened to let in a newcomer, a slim, graceful man much younger than the others present, and one whose costume and manner brought additional color into the picture. Flandrau, Senior, continued to shuffle without turning his head. Cullison also had his back to the door, but the man hung his broad-rimmed gray hat on the rack—beside an exactly similar one that belonged to the owner of the Circle C—and moved leisurely forward till he was within range of his vision.
“Going to prove up soon on that Del Oro claim of yours, Luck?” asked Flandrau.
He was now dealing, his eyes on the cards, so that he missed the embarrassment in the faces of those about him.
“On Thursday, the first day the law allows,” Cullison answered quietly.
Flandrau chuckled. “I reckon Cass Fendrick will be some sore.”
“I expect.” Cullison’s gaze met coolly the black, wrathful eyes of the man who had just come in.
“Sort of put a crimp in his notions when you took up the cañon draw,” Flandrau surmised.
Something in the strained silence struck the dealer as unusual. He looked up, and showed a momentary confusion.
“Didn’t know you were there, Cass. Looks like I put my foot in it sure that time. I ce’tainly thought you were an absentee,” he apologized.
“Or you wouldn’t have been talking about me,” retorted Fendrick acidly. The words were flung at Flandrau, but plainly they were meant as a challenge for Cullison.
A bearded man, the oldest in the party, cut in with good-natured reproof. “I shouldn’t wonder, Cass, but your name is liable to be mentioned just like that of any other man.”
“Didn’t know you were in this, Yesler,” Fendrick drawled insolently.
“Oh, well, I butted in,” the other laughed easily.He pushed a stack of chips toward the center of the table. “The pot’s open.”
Fendrick, refused a quarrel, glared at the impassive face of Cullison, and passed to the rear room for a drink. His impudence needed fortifying, for he knew that since he had embarked in the sheep business he was not welcome at this club, that in fact certain members had suggested his name be dropped from the books. Before he returned to the poker table the drink he had ordered became three.
The game was over and accounts were being straightened. Cullison was the heavy loser. All night he had been bucking hard luck. His bluffs had been called. The others had not come in against his strong hands. On a straight flush he had drawn down the ante and nothing more. To say the least, it was exasperating. But his face had showed no anger. He had played poker too many years, was too much a sport in the thorough-going frontier fashion, to wince when the luck broke badly for him.
The settlement showed that the owner of the Circle C was twenty-five hundred dollars behind the game. He owed Mackenzie twelve hundred, Flandrau four hundred, and three hundred to Yesler.
With Fendrick sitting in an easy chair just acrossthe room, he found it a little difficult to say what otherwise would have been a matter of course.
“My bank’s busted just now, boys. Have to ask you to let it stand for a few days. Say, till the end of the week.”
Fendrick laughed behind the paper he was pretending to read. He knew quite well that Luck’s word was as good as his bond, but he chose to suggest a doubt.
“Maybe you’ll explain the joke to us, Cass,” the owner of the Circle C said very quietly.
“Oh, I was just laughing at the things I see, Luck,” returned the younger man with airy offense, his eyes on the printed sheet.
“Meaning for instance?”
“Just human nature. Any law against laughing?”
Cullison turned his back on him. “See you on Thursday if that’s soon enough, boys.”
“All the time you want, Luck. Let mine go till after the roundup if you’d rather,” Mackenzie suggested.
“Thursday suits me.”
Cullison rose and stretched. He had impressed his strong, dominant personality upon his clothes, from the high-heeled boots to the very wrinkles in the corduroy coat he was now putting on. He badenemies, a good many of them, but his friends were legion.
“Don’t hurry yourself.”
“Oh, I’ll rustle the money, all right. Coming down to the hotel?” Luck was reaching for his hat, but turned toward his friends as he spoke.
Without looking again at Fendrick, he led the way to the street.
The young man left alone cursed softly to himself, and ordered another drink. He knew he was overdoing it, but the meeting with Cullison had annoyed him exceedingly. The men had never been friends, and of late years they had been leaders of hostile camps. Both of them could be overbearing, and there was scarcely a week but their interests overlapped. Luck was capable of great generosity, but he could be obstinate as the rock of Gibraltar when he chose. There had been differences about the ownership of calves, about straying cattle, about political matters. Finally had come open hostility. Cass leased from the forestry department the land upon which Cullison’s cattle had always run free of expense. Upon this he had put sheep, a thing in itself of great injury to the cattle interests. The stockmen had all been banded together in opposition to the forestry administration of the new régime, and Luck regarded Fendrick’s action as treachery to the common cause.
He struck back hard. In Arizona the open range is valuable only so long as the water holes also are common property or a private supply available. The Circle C cattle and those of Fendrick came down from the range to the Del Oro to water at a point where the cañon walls opened to a spreading valley. This bit of meadow Luck homesteaded and fenced on the north side, thus cutting the cattle of his enemy from the river.
Cass was furious. He promptly tore down the fence to let his cattle and sheep through. Cullison rebuilt it, put up a shack at a point which commanded the approach, and set a guard upon it day and night. Open warfare had ensued, and one of the sheepherders had been beaten because he persisted in crossing the dead line.
Now Cullison was going to put the legal seal on the matter by making final proof on his homestead. Cass knew that if he did so it would practically put him out of business. He would be at the mercy of his foe, who could ruin him if he pleased. Luck would be in a position to dictate terms absolutely.
Nor did it make his defeat any more palatable to Cass that he had brought it on himself by his bad-tempered unneighborliness and by his overreaching disposition. A hundred times he had blacknamed himself for an arrant fool because he had not anticipatedthe move of his enemy and homesteaded on his own account.
He felt that there must be some way out of the trap if he could only find it. Whenever the thought of eating humble pie to Luck came into his mind, the rage boiled in him. He swore he would not do it. Better a hundred times to see the thing out to a fighting finish.
Taking the broad-rimmed gray hat he found on the rack, Cass passed out of the clubhouse and into the sun-bathed street.
CHAPTER IILUCK MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Cullison and his friends proceeded down Papago street to the old plaza where their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for these four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All along the route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, and genial banter. One of them—the man who had formerly been the hard-riding, quick-shooting sheriff of the county—met also scowls once or twice, to which he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law, had indeed, if rumor were true, run a wild and stormy course in his youth. But his reign as sheriff had been a terror to lawbreakers. He had made enemies, desperate and unscrupulous ones, who had sworn to wipe him from among the living, and one of these he was now to meet for the first time since the man had stood handcuffed before him, livid with fury, and had sworn to cut his heart out at the earliest chance.
It was in the lobby of the hotel that Cullison came plump against Lute Blackwell. For just a moment they stared at each other before the former sheriff spoke.
“Out again, eh, Blackwell?” he said easily.
From the bloodshot eyes one could have told at a glance the man had been drinking heavily. From whiskey he had imbibed a Dutch courage just bold enough to be dangerous.
“Yes, I’m out—and back again, just as I promised, Mr. Sheriff,” he threatened.
The cattleman ignored his manner. “Then I’ll give you a piece of advice gratis. Papago County has grown away from the old days. It has got past the two-gun man. He’s gone to join the antelope and the painted Indian. You’ll do well to remember that.”
The fellow leaned forward, sneering so that his ugly mouth looked like a crooked gash. “How about the one-gun man, Mr. Sheriff?”
“He doesn’t last long now.”
“Doesn’t he?”
The man’s rage boiled over. But Luck was far and away the quicker of the two. His left hand shot forward and gripped the rising wrist, his right caught the hairy throat and tightened on it. He shook the convict as if he had been a child, and flung him, black in the face, against the wall, where he hung, strangling and sputtering.
“I—I’ll get you yet,” the ruffian panted. But he did not again attempt to reach for the weapon in his hip pocket.
“You talk too much with your mouth.”
With superb contempt, Luck slapped him, turned on his heel, and moved away, regardless of the raw, stark lust to kill that was searing this man’s elemental brain.
Across the convict’s rage came a vision. He saw a camp far up in the Rincons, and seated around a fire five men at breakfast, all of them armed. Upon them had come one man suddenly. He had dominated the situation quietly, had made one disarm the others, had handcuffed the one he wanted and taken him from his friends through a hostile country where any hour he might be shot from ambush. Moreover, he had traveled with his prisoner two days, always cheerful and matter of fact, not at all uneasy as to what might lie behind the washes or the rocks they passed. Finally he had brought his man safely to Casa Grande, from whence he had gone over the road to the penitentiary. Blackwell had been the captured man, and he held a deep respect for the prowess of the officer who had taken him. The sheer pluck of the adventure had alone made it possible. For such an unflawed nerve Blackwell knew his jerky rage was no match.
The paroled convict recovered his breath and slunk out of the hotel.
Billie Mackenzie, owner of the Fiddleback ranch, laughed even while he disapproved. “Some day,Luck, you’ll get yours when you are throwing chances at a coyote like this. You’ll guess your man wrong, or he’ll be one glass drunker than you figure on, and then he’ll plug you through and through.”
“The man that takes chances lives longest, Mac,” his friend replied, dismissing the subject carelessly. “I’m going to tuck away about three hours of sleep. So long.” And with a nod he was gone to his room.
“All the same Luck’s too derned rash,” Flandrau commented. “He’ll run into trouble good and hard one of these days. When I’m in Rattlesnake Gulch I don’t aim to pick posies too unobservant.”
Mackenzie looked worried. No man lived whom he admired so much as Luck Cullison. “And he hadn’t ought to be sitting in these big games. He’s hard up. Owes a good bit here and there. Always was a spender. First thing he’ll have to sell the Circle C to square things. He’ll pay us this week like he said he would. That’s dead sure. He’d die before he’d fall down on it, now Fendrick has got his back up. But I swear I don’t know where he’ll raise the price. Money is so tight right now.”
That afternoon Luck called at every bank in Saguache. All of the bankers knew him and were friendly to him, but in spite of their personal regard they could do nothing for him.
“It’s this stringency, Luck,” Jordan of the Cattlemen’s National explained to him. “We can’t let a dollar go even on the best security. You know I’d like to let you have it, but it wouldn’t be right to the bank. We’ve got to keep our reserve up. Why, I’m lying awake nights trying to figure out a way to call in more of our money.”
“I’m not asking much, Jack.”
“Luck, I’d let you have it if I dared. Why, we’re running close to the wind. Public confidence is a mighty ticklish thing. If I didn’t have twenty thousand coming from El Paso on the Flyer to-night I’d be uneasy for the bank.”
“Twenty thousand on the Flyer. I reckon you ship by express, don’t you?”
“Yes. Don’t mention it to anyone. That twenty thousand would come handy to a good many people in this country these times.”
“It would come right handy to me,” Luck laughed ruefully. “I need every cent of it. After the beef roundup, I’ll be on Easy Street, but it’s going to be hard sledding to keep going till then.”
“You’ll make a turn somehow. It will work out. Maybe when money isn’t so tight I’ll be able to do something for you.”
Luck returned to the hotel morosely, and tried to figure a way out of his difficulties. He was not going to be beaten. He never had accepted defeat,even in the early days when he had sometimes taken a lawless short cut to what he wanted. By God, he would not lose out after all these years of fighting. It had been his desperate need of money that had made him sit in last night’s poker game. But he had succeeded only in making a bad situation worse. He knew his debts by heart, but he jotted them down on the back of an envelope and added them again.
Twenty thousand was the sum he needed, and mighty badly, too. Absentmindedly he turned the envelope over and jotted down one or two other things. Twenty thousand dollars! Just the sum Jordan had coming to the bank on the Flyer. Subconsciously, Luck’s fingers gave expression to his thoughts. $20,000. Half a dozen times they penciled it, and just below the figures, “W. & S. Ex. Co.” Finally they wrote automatically the one word, “To-night.”
Luck looked at what he had written, laughed grimly, and tore the envelope in two. He threw the pieces in the waste paper basket.
CHAPTER IIIAN INITIALED HAT
Mackenzie was reading theSentinelwhile he ate a late breakfast. He had it propped against the water bottle, so that it need not interfere with the transportation of sausages, fried potatoes, hot cakes, and coffee to their common destination.
Trying to do two things at once has its disadvantages. A startling headline caught his eyes just as the cup was at his lips. Hot coffee, precipitately swallowed, scalded his tongue and throat. He set down the cup, swore mildly, and gave his attention to the news that had excited him. The reporter had run the story to a column, but the leading paragraph gave the gist of it:
While the citizens of Saguache were peacefully sleeping last night, a lone bandit held up the messengers of the Western and Southern Express Company, and relieved them of $20,000 just received from El Paso on the Flyer.Perry Hawley, the local manager of the company, together with Len Rogers, the armed guard, had just returned from thedepot, where the money had been turned over to them and receipted for. Hawley had unlocked the door of the office and had stepped in, followed by Rogers, when a masked desperado appeared suddenly out of the darkness, disarmed the guard and manager, took the money, passed through the door and locked it after him, and vanished as silently as he had come. Before leaving, he warned his victims that the place would be covered for ten minutes and at any attempt to call for help they would be shot. Notwithstanding this, the imprisoned men risked their lives by raising the alarm.
While the citizens of Saguache were peacefully sleeping last night, a lone bandit held up the messengers of the Western and Southern Express Company, and relieved them of $20,000 just received from El Paso on the Flyer.
Perry Hawley, the local manager of the company, together with Len Rogers, the armed guard, had just returned from thedepot, where the money had been turned over to them and receipted for. Hawley had unlocked the door of the office and had stepped in, followed by Rogers, when a masked desperado appeared suddenly out of the darkness, disarmed the guard and manager, took the money, passed through the door and locked it after him, and vanished as silently as he had come. Before leaving, he warned his victims that the place would be covered for ten minutes and at any attempt to call for help they would be shot. Notwithstanding this, the imprisoned men risked their lives by raising the alarm.
Further down the page Mackenzie discovered that the desperado was still at large, but that Sheriff Bolt expected shortly to lay hands on him.
“I’ll bet a dollar Nick Bolt didn’t make any such claim to the reporter. He ain’t the kind that brags,” Mackenzie told himself.
He folded the paper and returned to his room to make preparation to return to his ranch. The buzz of the telephone called him to the receiver. The voice of Cullison reached him.
“That you, Mac. I’ll be right up. No, don’t come down. I’d rather see you alone.”
The owner of the Circle C came right to business. “I’ve made a raise, Mac, and while I’ve got it I’m going to skin off what’s coming to you.”
He had taken a big roll of bills from his pocket, and was counting off what he had lost to his friend. The latter noticed that it all seemed to be in twenties.
“Twelve hundred. That squares us, Mac.”
The Scotchman was vaguely uneasy without a definite reason for his anxiety. Only last night Cullison had told him not a single bank in town would advance him a dollar. Now he had money in plenty. Where had he got it?
“No hurry at all, Luck. Pay when you’re good and ready.”
“That’s now.”
“Because I’ll only put it in the Cattlemen’s National. It’s yours if you need it.”
“I’ll let you know if I do,” his friend nodded.
Mackenzie’s eye fell on a copy of theSentinelprotruding from the other’s pocket. “Read about the hold-up of the W. & S. Express? That fellow had his nerve with him.”
“Sho! This hold-up game’s the easiest yet. He got the drop on them, and there was nothing to it. The key was still in the lock of the door. Well, when he gets through he steps out, turns the key, and rides away.”
“How did he know there was money coming in last night?”
“There’s always a leak about things of that sort.Somebody talks. I knew it myself for that matter.”
“You knew! Who told you?”
“That’s a secret, Mac. Come to think of it, I wish you wouldn’t tell anybody that I knew. I don’t want to get the man who told me in trouble.”
“Sure I won’t.” He passed to another phase of the subject. “TheSentinelsays Bolt expects to catch the robber. Think he will?”
“Not if the fellow knows his business. Bolt has nothing to go on. He has the whole Southwest to pick from. For all he knows, it was you.”
“Yes, but——”
“Or more likely me.” The gray eyes of the former sheriff held a frosty smile.
In spite of that smile, or perhaps because of it, Mackenzie felt again that flash of doubt. “What’s the use of talking foolishness, Luck? Course you didn’t do it. Anybody would know that. Man, I whiles wonder at you,” he protested, relapsing into his native tongue as he sometimes did when excited.
“I didn’t say I did it. I said I might have done it”
“Oh, well! You didn’t. I know you too well.”
But the trouble was Mackenzie did not know him well enough. Cullison was hard up, close to the wall. How far would he go to save himself?Thirty years before when they had been wild young lads these two had hunted their fun together. Luck had always been the leader, had always been ready for any daredeviltry that came to his mind. He had been the kind to go the limit in whatever he undertook, to play it to a finish in spite of opposition. And what a man is he must be to the end. In his slow, troubled fashion, Mac wondered if his old side partner’s streak of lawlessness would take him as far as a hold-up. Of course it would not, he assured himself; but he could not get the ridiculous notion out of his head. It drew his thoughts, and at last his steps toward the express office where the hold-up had taken place.
He opened a futile conversation with Hawley, while Len Rogers, the guard who had not made good, looked at him with a persistent, hostile eye.
“Hard luck,” the cattleman condoled.
“That’s what you think, is it? You and your friends, too, I reckon.”
Mackenzie looked at the guard, who was plainly sore in every humiliated crevice of his brain. “I ain’t speaking for my friends, Len, but for myself,” he said amiably.
Rogers laughed harshly. “Didn’t know but what you might be speaking for one of your friends.”
“They can all speak for themselves when they have got anything to say.”
Hawley sent a swift, warning look toward his subordinate. The latter came to time sulkily. “I didn’t say they couldn’t.”
Mackenzie drifted from this unfriendly atmosphere to the courthouse. He found Sheriff Bolt in his office. It was that official’s busy day, but he found time not only to see the owner of the Fiddleback, but to press upon him cordially an invitation to sit down and smoke. The Scotchman wanted to discuss the robbery, but was shy about attacking the subject. While he boggled at it, Bolt was off on another tack.
Inside of a quarter of an hour the sheriff had found out all he wanted to know about the poker game, Cullison’s financial difficulties, and the news that Luck had liquidated his poker debt since breakfast time. He had turned the simple cattleman’s thoughts inside out, was aware of the doubt Billie had scarcely admitted to himself, and knew all he did except the one point Luck had asked him not to mention. Moreover, he had talked so casually that his visitor had no suspicion of what he was driving at.
Mackenzie attempted a little sleuthing of his own. “This hold-up fellow kind of slipped one over on you last night, Bolt.”
“Maybe so, and maybe not.”
“Got a clew, have you?”
“Oh, yes—yes.” The sheriff looked straight at him. “I’ve a notion his initials are L. C.”
Billie felt himself flushing. “What makes you think that, Nick?”
Bolt walked to a cupboard and unlocked it. His back was toward the cattleman, but the latter could see him take something from a shelf. Turning quickly, the sheriff tossed a hat upon the table.
“Ever see this before?”
Mac picked it up. His fingers were not quite steady, for a great dread drenched his heart like a rush of icy water. Upon that gray felt hat with the pinched crown was stamped the individuality—and the initials—of Luck Cullison.
“Don’t know as I recognize it,” he lied, not very readily. “Not to know it. Why?”
“Thought perhaps you might know it. The hold-up dropped it while getting away.”
Mackenzie’s eyes flinched. “Dropped it. How was that?”
“A man happened to come along San Miguel street just as the robber swung to his horse. He heard the cries of the men inside, guessed what was doing, and exchanged shots with the miscreant. He shot this hat off the fellow’s head.”
“TheSentineldidn’t tell any such a story.”
“I didn’t give that detail to the editor.”
“Who was the man that shot the robber?”
“Cass Fendrick.”
“But he didn’t claim to recognize the hold-up?” Mackenzie forced himself to ask this in spite of his fears.
“Not for certain.”
“Then he—he had a guess.”
“Yes, Mac. He guessed a man whose initials are the same as those in that hat.”
“Who do you mean, Nick?”
“I don’t need to tell you that. You know who.”
“If you mean Luck Cullison, it’s a damned lie,” exploded the cattleman. He was furious with himself, for he felt now that he had been unsuspectingly helping to certify the suspicions of the sheriff. Like an idiot, he had let out much that told heavily against his friend.
“I hope so.”
“Cass Fendrick is not on good terms with him. We all know that. Luck has got him in a hole. I wouldn’t put it a bit above Cass to lie if he thought it would hurt Luck. Tell you it’s a damned conspiracy. Man, can’t you see that?”
“What about this hat, with the two holes shot through the rim?”
“Sho! We all wear hats just like that. Look at mine.” Billie held it out eagerly.
“Has yours an L. C. stamped in the sweat band?” Bolt asked with a smile.
“I know you ain’t his friend, Nick. But you want to be fair to him even if he did oppose your election.” Mackenzie laid an appealing hand on the knee of the man seated opposite him.
“I’m sheriff of Papago County. It doesn’t make any difference who worked for or against me, Billie. I was elected, and I’m going to enforce the law.”
“And you think Luck would do a fool thing like this?”
“I didn’t say I thought so, but it’s my business not to overlook any bets.”
“But you do believe it. Now, don’t you?”
“Since you’ve got to have an answer—yes, I do.”
“By heaven, I’d as lief think I did it myself.”
“You’re a good friend,” Bolt conceded. “By the way, I’ve got to pay for some supplies this morning. Can you cash a check for a hundred?”
“I reckon so.” Mackenzie drew from his pocket the roll Cullison had given him two hours before. He peeled five twenties from it. The sheriff observed that the prevailing denomination was the same.
“Get these from Luck?” he asked carelessly.
The cattleman stared at him, and the suspicion grew on him that he had been trapped again.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because it happens the bills stolen from the W. & S. were all twenties.”
“No, I didn’t get them from Cullison. This is money I had,” he answered sullenly.
“Then I dare say you can let me see the money you got from him.”
“He paid me by check.”
“Banked it yet?”
“That’s my business, Nick.”
“And mine, Billie. I can find out from the bank if you have. Besides, I happen to know that Luck’s bank account is overdrawn.”
“Some one has been at you to prejudice you, Bolt.”
“Nobody but Luck Cullison himself—and his actions.”
From the office of the sheriff, Mackenzie wandered to the club in search of Luck. He was thoroughly dispirited, both dreaded to meet Luck, and yet was anxious to do so. For he wanted to warn him, wanted to see him fall into one of his chill rages when he told him there were suspicions against him.
Cullison had left the club, but Alec Flandrau was still there. Billie drew him into a corner, and learned that Luck had just settled with him.
“Anyone see him give it to you, Alec?”
“No. He took me upstairs to the library and paid me.”
“In bills?”
“Yes—in twenties.”
“For God’s sake, don’t tell anybody that.” In a dozen jerky sentences the owner of the Fiddleback told Flandrau of the suspicions of the sheriff.
Together they went in search of Luck. But though they looked for him all day, he was not to be found. They might have concluded he had ridden out to the ranch, but his horse was still at the stable where he had left it.
The last that had been seen of him Luck was walking along the plaza toward the hotel, not a hundred and fifty yards from the latter. A dozen men had spoken to him in the distance of a block. But he had not been seen to reach his hotel. He had not called for his room key. Somehow he had vanished, and none could tell how or where.
To Bolt his disappearance was as good as a confession of guilt. He searched Luck’s room at the hotel. Among other things, he found an old envelope with interesting data penciled on it.
Before nightfall the word was whispered all over Saguache that Luck Cullison, pioneer cattleman and former sheriff, was suspected of the W. & S. Express robbery and had fled to save himself from arrest. At first men marveled that one so wellknown and so popular, one who had been so prominent in affairs, could be suspected of such a crime, but as they listened to the evidence and saw it fall like blocks of a building into place, the conviction grew that he was the masked bandit wanted by the sheriff.
CHAPTER IVKATE USES HER QUIRT
Red-headed Bob Cullison finished making the diamond hitch and proudly called his cousin Kate to inspect the packhorse.
“You never saw the hitch thrown better, sis,” he bragged, boy-like. “Uncle Luck says I do it well as he can.”
“It’s fine, Bob,” his cousin agreed, with the proper enthusiasm in her dark eyes. “You’ll have to teach me how to do it one of these days.”
She was in a khaki riding skirt, and she pulled herself to the saddle of her own horse. From this position she gave him final instructions before leaving. “Stay around the house, Bob. Dad will call the ranch up this morning probably, and I want you to be where you can hear the ’phone ring. Tell him about that white-faced heifer, and to be sure to match the goods I gave him. You’ll find dinner set out for you on the dining-room table.”
It had been on Wednesday morning that Luck Cullison disappeared from the face of the earth. Before twenty-four hours the gossip was beingwhispered in the most distant cañons of Papago County. The riders of the Circle C knew it, but none of them had yet told either Bob or Kate.
Now it was Friday morning and Kate was beginning to wonder why her father did not call her up. Could it be that Soapy Stone was pulling off his train robbery at Tin Cup and her father so busy that he could not take time to ride to a telephone station? She did not like to leave the ranch just now, even for a few hours, but other business called her away. Sweeney was holding down the fort at the Del Oro against Fendrick’s sheepherders, and his weekly supply of provisions had to be taken to him. Since she wanted to see with her own eyes how things were getting along at the cañon, she was taking the supplies in person.
It was a beautiful morning, even for Arizona. The soft air was at its winiest best. The spring rains had carpeted the hills with an unusually fine grass, and the summer suns had not yet burnt this to the crisp brown of August. Her young heart expanded with the very joy of life. Oh, how good it was to be alive in a world of warm sunshine, of blue, unflecked sky, and of cool, light breezes. Swifts basked on the rocks or darted like arrows for safety, and lay palpitating with suspense. The clear call of the quails sounded to right and left of her. To her eager consciousness it was as if somebath of splendor had poured down overnight upon the old earth.
She rode from sunlight into shadow and from shadow to sunlight again, winding along the hill trail that took her toward the Del Oro. After hours of travel she came to the saddle from which one looked down to the gap in the cañon walls that had been the common watering place of all men’s cattle, but now was homesteaded by her father. Far below her it lay, a dwarfed picture with detail blurred to a vague impressionistic map. She could see the hut, the fence line running parallel to the stream on the other side, some grazing cattle, Sweeney’s horse in the corral.
The piteous bleating of a lamb floated to her. Kate dismounted and made her way toward the sound. A pathetic little huddle of frightened life tried to struggle free at her approach. The slim leg of the lamb had become wedged at the intersection of several rocks in such a way that it could not be withdrawn.
Kate pulled the boulder away, and released the prisoner. It looked at her and bleated without attempting to move. She took the soft, woolly creature in her arms, and examined the wounded limb, all torn and raw from its efforts to escape. A wound, she recalled, ought to be washed with cold water and bound. Returning to her horse, she putthe little animal in front of the saddle and continued on the trail that led down to the river.
Sweeney came out from the cabin and hailed her. He was a squat, weather-beaten man, who had ridden for her father ever since she could remember.
“What in Mexico you got there?” he asked in surprise.
She explained the circumstances under which she had found the lamb.
“And what you aiming to do with it?”
“I’m going to tie up its leg and take it across the river. Some of the C. F. herders are sure to find it before night.”
“Sho! What are you fooling with Cass Fendrick’s sheep for?” he grumbled.
“It isn’t a sheep, but a lamb. And I’m not going to see it suffer, no matter who owns it.”
She was already walking toward the river. Protestingly he followed, and lent a hand at tying up the leg with the girl’s handkerchief.
“I’ll just ride across and leave it outside the fence,” she said.
“Lemme go. I know the river better.”
Sweeney did not wait for her assent, but swung to the saddle. She handed him the lamb, and he forded the stream. At no place did the water come above the fetlocks of the horse.
“I’m so glad you know the dangerous places. Be careful you don’t drown,” she mocked.
The rider’s laughter rang back to her. One of her jokes went a long way with Sweeney. The danger of the river had been the flimsiest of excuses. What he had been afraid of was that one of Fendrick’s herders might be lurking in some arroyo beyond the fence. There was little chance that he would dare hurt her, but he might shout something unpleasant.
In point of fact, Sweeney saw some one disappear into a wash as he reached the fence. The rider held up the lamb, jabbered a sentence of broncho Spanish at the spot where the man had been, put down his bleating burden, and cantered back to his own side of the river without unnecessary delay. No bullets had yet been fired in the Cullison-Fendrick feud, but a “greaser” was liable to do anything, according to the old puncher’s notion. Anyhow, he did not want to be a temptation to anyone with a gun in his hand.
An hour later, Kate, on the return trip, topped the rise where she had found the lamb. Pulling up her pony, to rest the horse from its climb, she gazed back across the river to the rolling ridges among which lay the C. F. ranch. Oddly enough, she had never seen Cass Fendrick. He had cometo Papago County a few years before, and had bought the place from an earlier settler. In the disagreement that had fallen between the two men, she was wholly on the side of her father. Sometimes she had wondered what manner of man this Cass Fendrick might be; disagreeable, of course, but after precisely what fashion.
“Your property, I believe, Miss Cullison.”
She turned at sound of the suave, amused drawl, and looked upon a dark, slim young man of picturesque appearance. He was bowing to her with an obvious intention of overdoing it. Voice and manner had the habit of the South rather than of the West. A kind of indolent irony sat easily upon the swarthy face crowned with a black sleek head of hair.
Her instinct told the girl who he was. She did not need to ask herself any longer what Cass Fendrick looked like.
He was holding out to her the bloodstained kerchief that had been tied to the lamb’s leg.
“I didn’t care to have it returned,” she told him with cold civility.
“Now, if you’d only left a note to say so, it would have saved me a quite considerable climb,” he suggested.
In spite of herself a flicker of amusement lit her eyes. She had a sense of humor, “I did not thinkof that, and since you have troubled to return it to me, I can only say thank you.”
She held out her hand for the kerchief, but he did not move. “I don’t know but what I’ll keep it, after all, for a souvenir. Just to remind me that Luck Cullison’s daughter went out of her way to help one of Cass Fendrick’s sheep.”
She ignored his sardonic mockery. “I don’t let live creatures suffer when I can help it. Are you going to give me my handkerchief?”
“Haven’t made up my mind yet. Perhaps I’ll have it washed and bring it home to you.”
She decided that he was trying to flirt with her, and turned the head of her horse to start.
“Now your father has pulled his freight, I expect it will be safe to call,” he added.
The bridle rein tightened. “What nonsense are you saying about my father?”
“No news, Miss Cullison; just what everybody is saying, that he has gone to cover on account of the hold-up.”
A chill fear drenched her heart. “Do you mean the hold-up of the Limited at Tin Cup?”
“No, I don’t.” He looked at her sharply. “Mean to say you haven’t heard of the hold-up of the W.& S. Express Company at Saguache?”
“No. When was it?”
“Tuesday night. The man got away with twenty thousand dollars.”
“And what has my father to do with that?” she demanded haughtily.
A satisfied spleen purred in his voice. “My dear young lady, that is what everyone is asking.”
“What do you mean? Say it.” There was fear as well as anger in her voice. Had her father somehow got into trouble trying to save Sam?
“Oh, I’m saying nothing. But what Sheriff Bolt means is that when he gets his handcuffs on Luck Cullison, he’ll have the man that can tell him where that twenty thousand is.”
“It’s a lie.”
He waved his hand airily, as one who declined responsibility in the matter, but his dark, saturnine face sparkled with malice.
“Maybe so. Seems to be some evidence, but I reckon he can explain that away—when he comes back. The hold-up dropped a hat with the initials L. C. in the band, since identified as his. He had lost a lot of money at poker. Next day he paid it. He had no money in the bank, but maybe he found it growing on a cactus bush.”
“You liar!” she panted, eyes blazing.
“I’ll take that from you, my dear, because you look so blamed pretty when you’re mad; but Iwouldn’t take it from him—from your father, who is hiding out in the hills somewhere.”
Anger uncurbed welled from her in an inarticulate cry. He had come close to her, and was standing beside the stirrup, one bold hand upon the rein. Her quirt went swiftly up and down, cut like a thin bar of red-hot iron across his uplifted face. He stumbled back, half blind with the pain. Before he could realize what had happened the spur on her little boot touched the side of the pony, and it was off with a bound. She was galloping wildly down the trail toward home.
He looked after her, fingers caressing the welt that burned his cheek.
“You’ll pay for that, Kate Cullison,” he said aloud to himself.
Anger stung him, but deeper than his rage was a growing admiration. How she had lashed out at him because he had taunted her of her father. By Jove, a girl like that would be worth taming! His cold eyes glittered as he put the bloodstained kerchief in his pocket. She was not through with him yet—not by a good deal.