CHAPTER IIIAT THE END OF THE ROAD
Curly’s wooden face told nothing of what he was thinking. The first article of the creed of the frontier is to be game. Good or bad, the last test of a man is the way he takes his medicine. So now young Flandrau ate his dinner with a hearty appetite, smoked cigarettes impassively, and occasionally chatted with his guards casually and as a matter of course. Deep within him was a terrible feeling of sickness at the disaster that had overwhelmed him, but he did not intend to play the quitter.
Dutch and an old fellow named Sweeney relieved the other watchers about noon. The squat puncher came up and looked down angrily at the boy lying on the bunk.
“I’ll serve notice right now that if you make any breaks I’ll fill your carcass full of lead,” he growled.
The prisoner knew that he was nursing a grudge for the blow that had floored him. Not to be bluffed, Curly came back with a jeer. “Much obliged, my sawed-off and hammered-down friend. But what’s the matter with your face? It looks some lopsided. Did a mule kick you?”
Sweeney gave his companion the laugh. “Betterlet him alone, Dutch. If he lands on you again like he did before your beauty ce’tainly will be spoiled complete.”
The little puncher’s eyes snapped rage. “You’ll get yours pretty soon, Mr. Curly Flandrau. The boys are fixin’ to hang yore hide up to dry.”
“Does look that way, doesn’t it?” the boy agreed quietly.
As the day began to wear out it looked so more than ever. Two riders from the Bar Double M reached the ranch and were brought in to identify him as the horse thief. The two were Maloney and Kite Bonfils, neither of them friends of the young rustler. The foreman in particular was a wet blanket to his chances. The man’s black eyes were the sort that never soften toward the follies and mistakes of youth.
“You’ve got the right man all right,” he said to Buck without answering Flandrau’s cool nod of recognition.
“What sort of a reputation has he got?” Buck asked, lowering his voice a little.
Kite did not take the trouble to lower his. “Bad. Always been a tough character. Friend of Bad Bill Cranston and Soapy Stone.”
Dutch chipped in. “Shot up the Silver Dollar saloon onct. Pretty near beat Pete Schiff’s head off another time.”
Curly laughed rather wildly. “That’s right. Keep a-coming, boys. Your turn now, Maloney.”
“All right. Might as well have it all,” Buck agreed.
“I don’t know anything against the kid, barring that he’s been a little wild,” Maloney testified. “And I reckon we ain’t any of us prize Sunday school winners for that matter.”
“Are we all friends of Soapy Stone and Bad Bill? Do we all rustle stock and shoot up good citizens?” Dutch shrilled.
Maloney’s blue Irish eyes rested on the little puncher for a moment, then passed on as if he had been weighed and found wanting.
“I’ve noticed,” he said to nobody in particular, “that them hollering loudest for justice are most generally the ones that would hate to have it done to them.”
Dutch bristled like a turkey rooster. “What do you mean by that?”
The Irishman smiled derisively. “I reckon you can guess if you try real hard.”
Dutch fumed, but did no guessing out loud. His reputation was a whitewashed one. Queer stories had been whispered about him. He had been a nester, and it was claimed that calves certainly not his had been found carrying his brand. The man had been full of explanations, but there came atime when explanations no longer were accepted. He was invited to become an absentee at his earliest convenience. This was when he had been living across the mountains. Curly had been one of those who had given the invitation. He had taken the hint and left without delay. Now he was paying the debt he owed young Flandrau.
Though the role Curly had been given was that of the hardened desperado he could not quite live up to the part. As Buck turned to leave the bunk house the boy touched him on the arm.
“How about Cullison?” he asked, very low.
But Buck would not have it that way. “What about him?” he demanded out load, his voice grating like steel when it grinds.
“Is he—how is he doing?”
“What’s eatin’ you? Ain’t he dying fast enough to suit you?”
Flandrau shrank from the cruel words, as a schoolboy does from his teacher when he jumps at him with a cane. He understood how the men were feeling, but to have it put into words like this cut him deeply.
It was then that Maloney made a friend of the young man for life. He let a hand drop carelessly on Curly’s shoulder and looked at him with a friendly smile in his eyes, just as if he knew thatthis was no wolf but a poor lost dog up against it hard.
“Doc thinks he’ll make it all right.”
But there were times when Curly wondered whether it would make any difference to him whether Cullison got well or not. Something immediate was in the air. Public opinion was sifting down to a decision. There were wise nods, and whisperings, and men riding up and going off again in a hurry. There had been a good deal of lawlessness of late, for which Soapy Stone’s band of followers was held responsible. Just as plainly as if he had heard the arguments of Dutch and Kite Bonfils he knew that they were urging the others to make an example of him. Most of these men were well up to the average for the milk of human kindness. They were the squarest citizens in Arizona. But Flandrau knew they would snuff out his life just the same if they decided it was best. Afterward they might regret it, but that would not help him.
Darkness came, and the lamps were lit. Again Curly ate and smoked and chatted a little with his captors. But as he sat there hour after hour, feeling death creep closer every minute, cold shivers ran up and down his spine.
They began to question him, at first casually andcarelessly, so it seemed to Curly. But presently he discerned a drift in the talk. They were trying to find out who had been his partners in the rustling.
“And I reckon Soapy and Bad Bill left you lads at Saguache to hold the sack,” Buck suggested sympathetically.
Curly grew wary. He did not intend to betray his accomplices. “Wrong guess. Soapy and Bad Bill weren’t in this deal,” he answered easily.
“We know there were two others in it with you. I guess they were Soapy and Bad Bill all right.”
“There’s no law against guessing.”
The foreman of the Bar Double M interrupted impatiently, tired of trying to pump out the information by finesse. “You’ve got to speak, Flandrau. You’ve got to tell us who was engineering this theft. Understand?”
The young rustler looked at the grim frowning face and his heart sank. “Got to tell you, have I?”
“That’s what?”
“Out with it,” ordered Buck.
“Oh, I expect I’ll keep that under my hat,” Curly told them lightly.
They were crowded about him in a half circle, nearly a score of hard leather-faced plainsmen. Some of them were riders of the Circle C outfit. Others had ridden over from neighboring ranches.All of them plainly meant business. They meant to stamp out rustling, and their determination had been given an edge by the wounding of Luck Cullison, the most popular man in the county.
“Think again, Curly,” advised Sweeney quietly. “The boys ain’t trifling about this thing. They mean to find out who was in the rustling of the Bar Double M stock.”
“Not through me, they won’t.”
“Through you. And right now.”
A dozen times during the evening Curly had crushed down the desire to beg for mercy, to cry out desperately for them to let him off. He had kept telling himself not to show yellow, that it would not last long. Now the fear of breaking down sloughed from his soul. He rose from the bed and looked round at the brown faces circled about him in the shine of the lamps.
“I’ll not tell you a thing—not a thing.”
He stood there chalk-faced, his lips so dry that he had to keep moistening them with the tip of his tongue. Two thoughts hammered in his head. One was that he had come to the end of his trail, the other that he would game it out without weakening.
Dutch had a new rope in his hand with a loop at one end. He tossed it over the boy’s head anddrew it taut. Two or three of the faces in the circle were almost as bloodless as that of the prisoner, but they were set to see the thing out.
“Will you tell now?” Bonfils asked.
Curly met him eye to eye. “No.”
“Come along then.”
One of the men caught his arm at the place where he had been wounded. The rustler flinched.
“Careful, Buck. Don’t you see you’re hurting his bad arm?” Sweeney said sharply.
“Sure. Take him right under the shoulder.”
“There’s no call to be rough with him.”
“I didn’t aim to hurt him,” Buck defended himself.
His grip was loose and easy now. Like the others he was making it up to his conscience for what he meant to do by doing it in the kindest way possible.
Curly’s senses had never been more alert. He noticed that Buck had on a red necktie that had got loose from his shirt and climbed up his neck. It had black polka dots and was badly frayed. Sweeney was chewing tobacco. He would have that chew in his mouth after they had finished what they were going to do.
“Ain’t he the gamest ever?” someone whispered.
The rustler heard the words and they braced himas a drink of whiskey does a man who has been on a bad spree. His heart was chill with fear, but he had strung his will not to let him give way.
“Better do it at the cottonwoods down by the creek,” Buck told Bonfils in a low voice.
The foreman of the Bar Double M moved his head in assent. “All right. Let’s get it over quick as we can.”
A sound of flying feet came from outside. Someone smothered an oath of surprise. Kate Cullison stood in the doorway, all out of breath and panting.
She took the situation in before she spoke, guessed exactly what they intended to do. Yet she flung her imperious question at them.
“What is it?”
They had not a word to say for themselves. In that room were some of the most callous hearts in the territory. Not one man in a million could have phased them, but this slender girl dumfounded them. Her gaze settled on Buck. His wandered for help to Sweeney, to Jake, to Kite Bonfils.
“Now look-a-here, Miss Kate,” Sweeney began to explain.
But she swept his remonstrance aside.
“No—No—No!” Her voice gathered strength with each repetition of the word. “I won’t have it. What are you thinking about?”
To the boy with the rope around his neck she was an angel from heaven as she stood there so slim and straight, her dark eyes shining like stars. Some of these men were old enough to be her father. Any of them could have crushed her with one hand. But if a thunderbolt had crashed in their midst it could not have disturbed the vigilantes more.
“He’s a rustler, Miss Kate; belongs to Soapy Stone’s outfit,” Sweeney answered the girl.
“Can you prove it?”
“We got him double cinched.”
“Then let the law put him in prison.”
“He shot yore paw,” Buck reminded her.
“Is that why you’re doing it?”
“Yes’m,” and “That’s why,” they nodded.
Like a flash she took advantage of their admission. “Then I’ve got more against him than you have, and I say turn him over to the law.”
“He’d get a good lawyer and wiggle out,” Dutch objected.
She whirled on the little puncher. “You know how that is, do you?”
Somebody laughed. It was known that Dutch had once been tried for stealing a sheep and had been acquitted.
Kite pushed forward, rough and overbearing. “Now see here. We know what we’re doing and we know why we’re doing it. This ain’t any businessfor a girl to mix in. You go back to the house and nurse your father that this man shot.”
“So it isn’t the kind of business for a girl,” she answered scornfully. “It’s work for a man, isn’t it? No, not for one. For nine—eleven—thirteen—seventeen big brave strong men to hang one poor wounded boy.”
Again that amused laugh rippled out. It came from Maloney. He was leaning against the door jamb with his hands in his pockets. Nobody had noticed him before. He had come in after the girl. When Curly came to think it over later, if he had been given three guesses as to who had told Kate Cullison what was on the program he would have guessed Maloney each time.
“Now that you’ve relieved your mind proper, Miss Cullison, I expect any of the boys will be glad to escort you back to the house,” Kite suggested with an acid smile.
“What have you got to do with this?” she flamed. “Our boys took him. They brought him here as their prisoner. Do you think we’ll let you come over into this county and dictate everything we do?”
“I’ve got a notion tucked away that you’re trying to do the dictating your own self,” the Bar Double M man contradicted.
“I’m not. But I won’t stand by while you getthese boys to do murder. If they haven’t sense enough to keep them from it I’ve got to stop it myself.”
Kite laughed sarcastically. “You hear your boss, boys.”
“You’ve had yore say now, Miss Kate. I reckon you better say good-night,” advised Buck.
She handed Buck and his friends her compliments in a swift flow of feminine ferocity.
Maloney pushed into the circle. “She’s dead right, boys. There’s nothing to this lynching game. He’s only a kid.”
“He’s not such a kid but what he can do murder,” Dutch spat out.
Kate read him the riot act so sharply that the little puncher had not another word to say. The tide of opinion was shifting. Those who had been worked up to the lynching by the arguments of Bonfils began to resent his activity. Flandrau was their prisoner, wasn’t he? No use going off half cocked. Some of them were discovering that they were not half so anxious to hang him as they had supposed.
The girl turned to her friends and neighbors. “I oughtn’t to have talked to you that way, but you know how worried I am about Dad,” she apologized with a catch in her breath. “I’m sure you didn’t think or you would never have done anything totrouble me more just now. You know I didn’t half mean it.” She looked from one to another, her eyes shiny with tears. “I know that no braver or kinder men live than you. Why, you’re my folks. I’ve been brought up among you. And so you’ve got to forgive me.”
Some said “Sure,” others told her to forget it, and one grass widower drew a laugh by saying that her little spiel reminded him of happier days.
For the first time a smile lit her face. The boy for whose life she was pleading thought it was like sunshine after a storm.
“I’m so glad you’ve changed your minds. I knew you would when you thought it over,” she told them chattily and confidentially.
She was taking their assent for granted. Now she waited and gave them a chance to chorus their agreement. None of them spoke except Maloney. Most of them were with her in sympathy but none wanted to be first in giving way. Each wanted to save his face, so that the others could not later blame him for quitting first.
She looked around from one to another, still cheerful and sure of her ground apparently. Two steps brought her directly in front of one. She caught him by the lapels of his coat and looked straight into his eyes. “Youhavechanged your mind, haven’t you, Jake?”
The big Missourian twisted his hat in embarrassment. “I reckon I have, Miss Kate. Whatever the other boys say,” he got out at last.
“Haven’t you a mind of your own, Jake?”
“Sure. Whatever’s right suits me.”
“Well, you know what is right, don’t you?”
“I expect.”
“Then you won’t hurt this man, our prisoner?”
“I haven’t a thing against him if you haven’t.”
“Then you won’t hurt him? You won’t stand by and let the other boys do it?”
“Now, Miss Kate—”
She burst into sudden tears. “I thought you were my friend, but now I’m in trouble you—you think only of making it worse. I’m worried to death about Dad—and you—you make me stay here—away from him—and torment me.”
Jake gave in immediately and the rest followed like a flock of sheep. Two or three of the promises came hard, but she did not stop till each one individually had pledged himself. And all the time she was cajoling them, explaining how good it was of them to think of avenging her father, how in one way she did not blame them at all, though of course they had seen it would not do as soon as they gave the matter a second thought. Dad would be so pleased at them when he heard about it, andshe wanted them to know how much she liked and admired them. It was quite a love feast.
The young man she had saved could not keep his eyes from her. He would have liked to kneel down and kiss the edge of her dress and put his curly head in the dust before her. The ice in his heart had melted in the warmth of a great emotion. She was standing close to him talking to Buck when he spoke in a low voice.
“I reckon I can’t tell you—how much I’m obliged to you, Miss.”
She drew back quickly as if he had been a snake about to strike, her hand instinctively gathering her skirts so that they would not brush against him.
“I don’t want your thanks,” she told him, and her voice was like the drench of an icy wave.
But when she saw the hurt in his eyes she hesitated. Perhaps she guessed that he was human after all, for an impulse carried her forward to take the rope from his neck. While his heart beat twice her soft fingers touched his throat and grazed his cheek. Then she turned and was gone from the room.
It was a long time before the bunk house quieted. Curly, faint with weariness, lay down and tried to sleep. His arm was paining a good deal and he felt feverish. The men of the Circle C and theirguests sat down and argued the whole thing over. But after a time the doctor came in and had the patient carried to the house. He was put in a good clean bed and his arm dressed again.
The doctor brought him good news. “Cullison is doing fine. He has dropped into a good sleep. He’d ought to make it all right.”
Curly thought about the girl who had fought for his life.
“You’ll not let him die, Doc,” he begged.
“He’s too tough for that, Luck Cullison is.”
Presently Doctor Brown gave him a sleeping powder and left him. Soon after that Curly fell asleep and dreamed about a slim dark girl with fine longlashed eyes that could be both tender and ferocious.
CHAPTER IVTHE CULLISONS
Curly was awakened by the sound of the cook beating the call to breakfast on a triangle. Buck was standing beside the bed.
“How’re they coming this glad mo’ning, son?” he inquired with a grin.
“Fine and dandy,” grinned back Flandrau.
So he was, comparatively speaking. The pain in his arm had subsided. He had had a good sleep. And he was lying comfortably in a clean bed instead of hanging by the neck from the limb of one of the big cottonwoods on the edge of the creek.
A memory smote him and instantly he was grave again.
“How is Cullison?”
“Good as the wheat, doc says. Mighty lucky for Mr. C. Flandrau that he is. Say, I’m to be yore valley and help you into them clothes. Git a wiggle on you.”
Buck escorted his prisoner over to the ranch mess house. The others had finished breakfast but Maloney was still eating. His mouth was full ofhot cakes, but he nodded across at Curly in a casual friendly way.
“How’s the villain in the play this mo’ning?” he inquired.
Twenty-one usually looks on the cheerful side of life. Curly had forgotten for the moment about what had happened to his friend Mac. He did not remember that he was in the shadow of a penitentiary sentence. The sun was shining out of a deep blue sky. The vigor of youth flowed through his veins. He was hungry and a good breakfast was before him. For the present these were enough.
“Me, I’m feeling a heap better than I was last night,” he admitted.
“Came pretty near losing him out of the cast, didn’t we?”
“Might a-turned out that way if the stage manager had not remembered the right cue in time.”
Curly was looking straight into the eyes twinkling across the table at him. Maloney knew that the young fellow was thanking him for having saved his life. He nodded lightly, but his words still seemed to make a jest of the situation.
“Enter the heroine. Spotlight. Sa-a-ved,” he drawled.
The heart of the prisoner went out to this man who was reaching a hand to him in his trouble. He had always known that Maloney was true andsteady as a snubbing post, but he had not looked for any kindness from him.
“Kite just got a telephone message from Saguache,” the Bar Double M man went on easily. “Your friends that bought the rustled stock didn’t get away with the goods. Seems they stumbled into a bunch ofruralesunexpected and had to pull their freight sudden. The boys from the ranch happened along about then, claimed ownership and got possession.”
“If the men bought the stock why didn’t they stop and explain?” asked Buck.
“That game of buying stolen cattle is worn threadbare. Theruralesand the rangers have had their eye on those border flitters for quite some time. So they figured it was safer to dust.”
“Make their getaway?” Curly inquired as indifferently as he could. But in spite of himself a note of eagerness crept into his voice. For if the men had escaped that would be two less witnesses against him.
“Yep.”
“Too bad. If they hadn’t I could have proved by them I was not one of the men who sold them the stock,” Flandrau replied.
“Like hell you could,” Buck snorted, then grinned at his prisoner in a shamefaced way: “You’re a good one, son.”
“Luck has been breaking bad for me, but when things are explained——”
“It sure will take a lot of explaining to keep you out of the pen. You’ll have to be slicker than Dutch was.”
Jake stuck his head in at the door. “Buck, you’re needed to help with them two-year-olds. The old man wants to have a talk with the rustler. Doc says he may. Maloney, will you take him up to the house? I’ll arrange to have you relieved soon as I can.”
Maloney had once ridden for the Circle C and was friendly with all the men on the place. He nodded. “Sure.”
A Mexican woman let them into the chamber where the wounded man lay. It was a large sunny southeast room with French windows opening upon a long porch. Kate was bending over the bed rearranging the pillows, but she looked up quickly when the two men entered. Her eyes were still gentle with the love that had been shining down from them upon her father.
Cullison spoke. “Sit down, Dick.” And to his prisoner: “You too.”
Flandrau saw close at hand for the first time the man who had been Arizona’s most famous fighting sheriff. Luck Cullison was well-built and of medium height, of a dark complexion, clean shaven, wiryand muscular. Already past fifty, he looked not a day more than forty. One glance was enough to tell Curly the kind of man this was. The power of him found expression in the gray steel-chilled eyes that bored into the young outlaw. A child could have told he was not one to trifle with.
“You have begun early, young fellow,” he said quietly.
“Begun what?” Curly asked, having nothing better to say.
“You know what. But never mind that. I don’t ask you to convict yourself. I sent for you to tell you I don’t blame you for this.” He touched the wound in his side.
“Different with your boys, sir.”
“So the boys are a little excited, are they?”
“They were last night anyhow,” Curly answered, with a glimmer of a smile.
Cullison looked quickly at Maloney and then at his daughter.
“I’ll listen to what you’ve been hiding from me,” he told them.
“Oh, the boys had notions. Miss Kate argued with them and they saw things different,” the Bar Double M rider explained.
But Cullison would not let it go at that. He made them tell him the whole story. When Curly and Maloney had finished he buried his daughter’slittle hand in his big brown fist. His eyes were dancing with pride, but he gave her not a word of spoken praise.
Kate, somewhat embarrassed, changed the subject briskly. “Now you’re talking too much, Dad. Doctor Brown said you might see him for just a few minutes. But you’re not to tire yourself, so I’ll do the talking for you.”
He took his orders with the smiling submission of the man who knows his mistress.
Kate spoke to Curly. “Father wants me to tell you that we don’t blame you for shooting at him. We understand just how it was. Your friend got excited and shot as soon as he saw he was surrounded. We are both very sorry he was killed. Father could not stop the boys in time. Perhaps you remember that he tried to get you to surrender.”
The rustler nodded. “Yes, I heard him holler to me to put my gun down, but the others blazed away at me.”
“And so you naturally defended yourself. That’s how we understand it. Father wants it made clear that he feels you could have done nothing else.”
“Much obliged. I’ve been sorry ever since I hit him, and not only on my own account.”
“Then none of us need to hold hard feelings.” The girl looked at her father, who answered herappeal with a grim nod, and then she turned again to the young rustler a little timidly. “I wonder if you would mind if I asked you a question.”
“You’ve earned the right to ask as many as you like.”
“It’s about—— We have been told you know the man they call Soapy Stone. Is that true?”
Flandrau’s eyes took on a stony look. It was as if something had sponged all the boyishness from his face. Still trying to get him to give away his partners in the rustling, were they? Well, he would show them he could take his medicine without squealing.
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.”
“Oh, but you don’t see what we mean. It isn’t that we want to hurt you.” She spoke in a quick eager voice of protest.
“No, you just want me to squeal on my friends to save my own hide. Nothing doing, Miss Cullison.”
“No. You’re wrong. Why are you so suspicious?”
Curly laughed bitterly. “Your boys were asking that question about Soapy last night. They had a rope round my neck at the time. Nothing unfriendly in the matter, of course. Just a casual interest in my doings.”
Cullison was looking at him with the steel eyesthat bored into him like a gimlet. Now he spoke sharply.
“I’ve got an account running with Soapy Stone. Some day I’ll settle it likely. But that ain’t the point now. Do you know his friends—the bunch he trails with?”
Wariness still seemed to crouch in the cool eyes of Flandrau.
“And if I say yes, I’ll bet your next question will be about the time and the place I last saw them.”
Kate picked up a photograph from the table and handed it to the prisoner. “We’re not interested in his friends—except one of them. Did you ever see the boy that sat for that picture?”
The print was a snapshot of a boy about nineteen, a good looking handsome fellow, a little sulky around the mouth but with a pair of straight honest eyes.
Curly shook his head slowly. Yet he was vaguely reminded of someone he knew. Glancing up, he found instantly the clew to what had puzzled him. The young man in the picture was like Kate Cullison, like her father too for that matter.
“He’s your brother.” The words were out before Flandrau could stop them.
“Yes. You’ve never met him?”
“No.”
Cullison had been watching the young man steadily. “Never saw him with Soapy Stone?”
“No.”
“Never heard Stone speak of Sam Cullison?”
“No. Soapy doesn’t talk much about who his friends are.”
The ex-sheriff nodded. “I’ve met him.”
Of course he had met him. Curly knew the story of how in one drive he had made a gather of outlaws that had brought fame to him. Soapy had broken through the net, but the sheriff had followed him into the hills alone and run him to earth. What passed between the men nobody ever found out. Stone had repeatedly given it out that he could not be taken alive. But Cullison had brought him down to the valley bound and cowed. In due season the bandits had gone over the road to Yuma. Soapy and the others had sworn to get their revenge some day. Now they were back in the hills at their old tricks. Was it possible that Cullison’s son was with them, caught in a trap during some drunken frolic just as Curly had been? In what way could Stone pay more fully the debt of hate he owed the former sheriff than by making his son a villain?
The little doctor came briskly into the room.
“Everybody out but the nurse. You’ve had company enough for one day, Luck,” he announced cheerily.
Kate followed Maloney and his prisoner to the porch.
“About the letters of your friend that was shot,” she said to Curly. “Doctor Brown was telling me what you said. I’ll see they reach Miss Anderson. Do you know in what restaurant she works?”
“No. Mac didn’t tell me.” The boy gulped to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. “They was expecting to get married soon.”
“I—I’ll write to her,” Kate promised, her eyes misty.
“I’d be obliged, Miss. Mac was a good boy. Anyone will tell you that. And he was awful fond of her. He talked about her that last night before the camp fire. I led him into this.”
“I’ll tell her what you say.”
“Do. Tell her he felt bad about what he had done. Bad companions got him going wrong, but he sure would have settled down into a good man. That’s straight goods, too. You write it strong.”
The girl’s eyes were shiny with tears. “Yes,” she answered softly.
“I ain’t any Harvard A. B. Writing letters ain’t my long suit. I’m always disremembering whether a man had ought to say have went and have knew. Verbs are the beatingest things. But I know you’ll fix it up right so as to let that little girl down easy.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll not write but go to see her.”
Curly could only look his thanks. Words seemed strangely inadequate. But Kate understood the boy’s unspoken wish and nodded her head reassuringly as he left the room.
CHAPTER VLAURA LONDON
Kite Bonfils and Maloney took Curly back to Saguache and turned him over to Sheriff Bolt.
“How about bail?” Maloney asked.
The sheriff smiled. He was a long lean leather-faced man with friendly eyes from which humorous wrinkles radiated.
“You honing to go bail for him, Dick?”
“How much?”
“Oh, say two thousand.”
“You’re on.”
“What!”
A cowpuncher with fifty dollars two weeks after pay day was a rarity. No wonder Bolt was surprised.
“It’s not my money. Luck Cullison is going bail for him,” Maloney explained.
“Luck Cullison!” Maloney’s words had surprised the exclamation from Curly. Why should the owner of the Circle C of all men go bail for him?
The sheriff commented dryly on the fact. “I thought this kid was the one that shot him.”
“That was just a happenstance. Curly shot to save his bacon. Luck don’t hold any grudge.”
“So I should judge. Luck gave you his check, did he?”
Bolt belonged to the political party opposed to Cullison. He had been backed by Cass Fendrick, a sheepman in feud with the cattle interests and in particular with the Circle C outfit. But he could not go back on his word. He and Maloney called together on the district attorney. An hour later Dick returned to the jail.
“It’s all right, kid,” he told Curly. “You can shake off the dust of Saguache from your hoofs till court meets in September.”
To Flandrau the news seemed too good for the truth. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been waiting for the end of the road with a rope around his neck. Now he was free to slip a saddle on his pony Keno and gallop off as soon as he pleased. How such a change had been brought about he did not yet understand.
While he and Maloney were sitting opposite each other at the New Orleans Hash House waiting for a big steak with onions he asked questions.
“I don’t savvy Cullison’s play. Whyfor is he digging up two thousand for me? How does he know I won’t cut my stick for Mexico?”
“How do I know it?”
“Well, do you?”
Maloney helped himself to the oyster crackers to pass the time. “Sure I do.”
“How?”
“Search me. But I know you’ll be here in September if you’re alive and kicking.”
Flandrau persisted. “But Luck don’t owe me anything, except one pill sent promiscuous to his address. What’s he going down into his jeans for? Will you tell me that? And shove them crackers north by east. Got to fill up on something.”
“Ain’t you as good a guesser as I am, Curly?”
“Well then, here’s my guess. Miss Kate made him.”
“I reckon maybe she influenced him. But why did she? You don’t figure that curly topknot of yours is disturbing her dreams any, do you?”
“Quit your joshing and tell me why.”
“I can’t tell you for sure. But here’s my guess. Don’t cost you a cent if you ain’t satisfied with it. First off, there was poor Mac shot by the Circle C boys. Course Mac was a horse thief, but then he was a kid too. That worried the little girl some. She got to thinking about brother Sam and how he might be in the same fix one of these days as you are now. He’s on her mind a good deal, Sam is. Same way with the old man too, I reckon, though he don’t say much. Well, she decided Soapy Stone had led you astray like he’s doing with Sam.It got to worrying her for fear her brother might need a friend some time. So she handed over her worry to the old man and made him dig up for you.”
“That’s about it. Tell me what you know of Sam. Is he as white as the rest of the family?”
“Sam is all right, but he has got off wrong foot first. He and the old man got to kind of disagreeing, for the kid was a wild colt. Come by it honestly from the old man too. Well, they had a row one time when Sam got into trouble. Luck told him he never wanted to see him again. Sam lit out, and next folks knew he was trailing with Soapy’s gang. Consequence is, Sam’s hitting the toboggan for Tophet by all accounts.”
“Looks like some one ought to be able to pry him loose from that bunch,” Curly mused aloud.
Maloney grinned across at him. “You try it, son. You’ve always led a good pious life. He sure would listen to you.”
He had said it as a jest, but Curly did not laugh. Why not? Why shouldn’t he hunt up Sam and let him know how his folks were worrying about him? What was to hinder him from trying to wipe out some of the big debt he owed the Cullison family? He was footloose till September and out of a job. For he could not go back to the Map of Texas with his hat in his hand and a repentantwhine on his lips. Why not take a hike into the hills and round up the boy? Of course Sam might not listen to him, but he could not tell that till he had tried. It had taken him scarcely a moment to make up his mind. The smile had not yet died out of Maloney’s eyes when he spoke.
“Damn if I don’t take a crack at it.”
The man on the other side of the table stared at him.
“Meaning that, are you?”
“Yep.”
“Might be some lively if Soapy gets wise to your intentions,” he said in a casual sort of way.
“I don’t aim to declare them out loud.”
That was all they said about it at the time. The rest of the evening was devoted to pleasure. After dinner they took in a moving picture show. The first film was a Western melodrama and it pleased them both immensely.
“I’d be afraid to live in a country where guns popped like they do in moving picture land,” Curly drawled. “Where is it anyhow? It ain’t Texas, nor Oklahoma, nor Wyoming, nor Montana, nor any of the spots in between, because I’ve been in all of them.”
Maloney laughed. “Day before yesterday that’s the way I’d a-talked my own self, but now I know better. What about your little stunt? Wasn’t thatwarm enough for you? Didn’t guns pop enough? Don’t you talk about moving pictures!”
After the picture show there were other things. But both of them trod the narrow path, Maloney because he was used to doing so and Flandrau because his experiences had sobered him.
“I’m on the water wagon, Dick.” He grinned ruefully at his friend. “Nothing like locking the stable after your bronc’s been stole. I’d a-been a heap better off if I’d got on the wagon a week ago.”
Since their way was one for several miles Maloney and Curly took the road together next morning at daybreak. Their ponies ambled along side by side at the easy gait characteristic of the Southwest. Steadily they pushed into the brown baked desert. Little dust whirls in the shape of inverted cones raced across the sand wastes. The heat danced along the road in front of them in shimmering waves.
Your plainsman is a taciturn individual. These two rode for an hour without exchanging a syllable. Then Curly was moved to talk.
“Can you tell me how it is a man can get fond of so Godforsaken a country? Cactus and greasewood and mesquite, and for a change mesquite and greasewood and cactus! Nothing but sand washes and sand hills, except the naked mountains ’wayoff with their bones sticking through. But in the mo’ning like this, when the world’s kind o’ smiley with the sunshine, or after dark when things are sorter violet soft and the mountains lose their edges—say, would you swap it for any other country on earth?”
Maloney nodded. He had felt that emotion a hundred times, though he had never put it into words.
At Willow Wash their ways diverged. They parted with a casual “So-long; see you later.” Curly was striking for the headwaters of Dead Cow Creek, where Soapy Stone had a horse ranch.
He put up that night at the place of a nester in the foothills. His host looked at him curiously when he mentioned his destination, but he did not say anything. It was none of his business how many young fellows rode to Soapy’s ranch.
Flandrau took the trail again next morning after breakfast. About two o’clock he reached a little park in the hills, in the middle of which, by a dry creek, lay a ranch.
The young man at first thought the place was deserted for the day, but when he called a girl appeared at the door. She smiled up at him with the lively interest any ranch girl may be expected to feel in a stranger who happens to be both young and good looking.
She was a young person of soft curves and engaging dimples. Beneath the brown cheeks of Arizona was a pink that came and went very attractively.
Curly took off his dusty gray hat. “Buenos tardes; senorita!I’ll bet I’m too late to draw any dinner.”
“Buenos, senor,” she answered promptly. “I’ll bet you’d lose your money.”
He swung from the saddle. “That’s good hearing. When a fellow has had his knees clamped to the side of a bronch for seven hours he’s sure ready for the dinner bell.”
“You can wash over there by the pump. There’s a towel on the fence.”
She disappeared into the house, and Curly took care of his horse, washed, and sauntered back to the porch. He could smell potatoes frying and could hear the sizzling of ham and eggs.
While he ate the girl flitted in and out, soft-footed and graceful, replenishing his plate from time to time.
Presently he discovered that her father was away hunting strays on Sunk Creek, that the nearest neighbor was seven miles distant, and that Stone’s ranch was ten miles farther up Dead Cow.
“Ever meet a lad called Sam Cullison?” the guest asked carelessly.
Curly was hardly prepared to see the color whip into her cheeks or to meet the quick stabbing look she fastened on him.
“You’re looking for him, are you?” she said.
“Thought while I was here I’d look him up. I know his folks a little.”
“Do you know him?”
He shook his head. She looked at him very steadily before she spoke.
“You haven’t met him yet but you want to. Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Will you have another egg?”
Flandrau laughed. “No, thanks. Staying up at Stone’s, is he?”
“How should I know who’s staying at Stone’s?”
It was quite plain she did not intend to tell anything that would hurt young Cullison.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I ain’t lost him any to speak of,” the young man drawled.
“Are you expecting to stop in the hills long—or just visiting?”
“Yes,” Curly answered, with his most innocent blank wall look.
“Yes which?”
“Why, whichever you like, Miss London. What’s worrying you? If you’ll ask me plain out I’ll know how to answer you.”
“So you know my name?”
“Anything strange about that? The Bar 99 is the London brand. I saw your calves in the corral with their flanks still sore. Naturally I assume the young lady I meet here is Miss Laura London.”
She defended her suspicions. “Folks come up here with their mysterious questions. A person would think nobody lived on Dead Cow but outlaws and such, to hear some of you valley people tell it.”
“There’s nothing mysterious about me and my questions. I’m just a lunkheaded cowpuncher out of a job. What did you think I was?”
“What do you want with Sam Cullison? Are you friendly to him? Or aren’t you?”
“Ladies first. Areyoufriendly to him? Or aren’t you?”
Curly smiled gaily across the table at her. A faint echo of his pleasantry began to dimple the corners of her mouth. It lit her eyes and spread from them till the prettiest face on the creek wrinkled with mirth. Both of them relaxed to peals of laughter, and neither of them quite knew the cause of their hilarity.
“Oh, you!” she reproved when she had sufficiently recovered.
“So you thought I was a detective or a deputy sheriff. That’s certainly funny.”
“For all I know yet you may be one.”
“I never did see anyone with a disposition so dark-complected as yours. If you won’t put them suspicions to sleep I’ll have to table my cards.” From his pocket he drew a copy of the Saguache Sentinel and showed her a marked story. “Maybe that will explain what I’m doing up on Dead Cow.”
This was what Laura London read: