Crooked Trails and Straight by William MacLeod Raine (best large ebook reader .txt) 📖

Two men sat in a log cabin on opposite sides of a cheap table. One of them was immersed in a newspaper. His body was relaxed, his mind apparently at ease. The other watched him malevolently. His fingers caressed the handle of a revolver that protruded from the holster at his side. He would have liked nothing better than to have drawn it and sent a bullet crashing into the unperturbed brain of his prisoner.

There were reasons of policy why it were better to curb this fascinating desire, but sometimes the impulse to kill surged up almost uncontrollably. On these occasions Luck Cullison was usually “deviling” him, the only diversion that had been open to the ranchman for some days past. Because of its danger—for he could never be quite sure that Blackwell’s lust for swift vengeance would not over-power discretion—this pastime made a peculiar appeal to the audacious temper of the owner of the Circle C.

From time to time as Luck read he commented genially on the news.

“I see Tucson is going to get the El Paso & Southwestern extension after all. I’ll bet the boys in that burg will be right tickled to hear it. They sure have worked steady for it.”

Blackwell merely scowled. He never relaxed to the give and take of casual talk with his captive. Given his way, Cullison would not be here to read the Sentinel. But the brains of the conspiracy had ruled otherwise and had insisted too upon decent treatment. With one ankle securely tied to a leg of the table there was no danger in freeing the hands of the cattleman, but his hosts saw that never for an instant were hands and feet at liberty together. For this man was not the one with whom to take chances.

“Rudd has been convicted of forgery and taken to Yuma. Seems to me you used to live there, didn’t you?” asked the cattleman with cool insolence, looking up from his paper to smile across at the furious convict.

Blackwell was livid. The man who had sent him to the territorial prison at Yuma dared to sit there bound and unarmed and taunt him with it.

“Take care,” he advised hoarsely.

Cullison laughed and went back to the paper.

“‘Lieutenant O’Connor of the Arizona Rangers left town to-day for a short trip into the hills where he expects to spend a few days hunting.’ Hunting what, do you reckon? Or hunting who, I should say. Ever meet Bucky O’Connor, Blackwell? No, I reckon not. He’s since your time. A crackerjack too! Wonder if Bucky ain’t after some friends of mine.”

“Shut up,” growled the other.

“Sure you’ll be shut up—when Bucky lands you,” retorted Luck cheerfully. Then, with a sudden whoop: “Hello, here’s a personal to your address. Fine! They’re getting ready to round you up, my friend. Listen. ‘The friends of L. C. serve notice that what occurred at the Jack of Hearts is known. Any violence hereafter done to him will be paid for to the limit. No guilty man will escape.’ So the boys are getting busy. I figured they would be. Looks like your chance of knocking me on the head has gone down Salt River. I tell you nowadays a man has to grab an opportunity by the tail when it’s there.”

The former convict leaned forward angrily. “Lemme see that paper.”

His guest handed it over, an index finger pointing out the item. “Large as life, Blackwell. No, sir. You ce’tainly didn’t ride herd proper on that opportunity.”

“Don’t be too sure it’s gone, Mr. Sheriff.”

The man’s face was twisted to an ugly sneer back of which lurked cruel menace. The gray eyes of Cullison did not waver a hair’s breadth.

“It’s gone. I’m as safe as if I were at the Circle C.”

“Don’t you think it.”

“They’ve got you dead to rights. Read that personal again. Learn it by heart. ‘The friends of L. C. give warning.’ You better believe they’re rounding up your outfit. They know I’m alive. They know all about the Jack of Hearts. Pretty soon they’ll know where you’ve got me hidden.”

“You’d better pray they won’t. For if they find the nest it will be empty.”

“Yes?” Luck spoke with ironical carelessness, but he shot an alert keen glance at the other.

“That’s what I said. Want to know where you will be?” the other triumphed.

“I see you want to tell me. Unload your mind.”

Triumph overrode discretion. “Look out of that window behind you.”

Luck turned. The cabin was built on a ledge far up on the mountain side. From the back wall sloped for a hundred feet an almost perpendicular slide of rock.

“There’s a prospect hole down there,” Blackwell explained savagely. “You’d go down the Devil’s Slide—what’s left of you, I mean—deep into that prospect hole. The timberings are rotted and the whole top of the working ready to cave in. When your body hits it there will be an avalanche—with Mr. Former-sheriff Cullison at the bottom of it. You’ll be buried without any funeral expenses, and I reckon your friends will never know where to put the headstone.”

The thing was devilishly simple and feasible. Luck, still looking out of the window, felt the blood run cold down his spine, for he knew this fellow would never stick at murder if he felt it would be safe. No doubt he was being well paid, and though in this workaday world revenge has gone out of fashion there was no denying that this ruffian would enjoy evening the score. But his confederate was of another stripe, a human being with normal passions and instincts. The cattleman wondered how he could reconcile it to his conscience to go into so vile a plot with a villain like the convict.

“So you see I’m right; you’d better pray your friends won’t find you. They can’t reach here without being heard. If they get to hunting these hills you sure want to hope they’ll stay cold, for just as soon as they get warm it will be the signal for you to shoot the chutes.”

Luck met his triumphant savagery with an impassive face. “Interesting if true. And