Crooked Trails and Straight by William MacLeod Raine (best large ebook reader .txt) đź“–
- Author: William MacLeod Raine
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“I’ll be headed for Mexico. I tell you because you ain’t liable to go around spreading the news. There’s a horse saddled in the dip back of the hill crest. Get it?”
“Fine,” Cullison came back. “And you’ll ride right into some of Bucky O’Connor’s rangers. He’s got the border patroled. You’d never make it.”
“Don’t worry. I’d slip through. I’m no tenderfoot.”
“What if you did? Bucky would drag you back by the scruff of the neck in two weeks. Remember Chavez.”
He referred to a murderer whom the lieutenant of rangers had captured and brought back to be hanged later.
“Chavez was a fool.”
“Was he? You don’t get the point. The old days are gone. Law is in the saddle. Murder is no longer a pleasant pastime.” And Cullison stretched his arms and yawned.
From far below there came through the open window the faint click of a horse’s hoofs ringing against the stones in the dry bed of a river wash. Swiftly Blackwell moved to the door, taking down a rifle from its rack as he did so. Cullison rose noiselessly in his chair. If it came to the worst he meant to shout aloud his presence and close with this fellow. Hampered as he was by the table, the man would get him without question. But if he could only sink his fingers into that hairy throat while there was still life in him he could promise that the Mexican trip would never take place.
Blackwell, from his place by the door, could keep an eye both on his prisoner and on a point of the trail far below where horsemen must pass to reach the cabin.
“Sit down,” he ordered.
Cullison’s eyes were like finely-tempered steel. “I’d rather stand.”
“By God, if you move from there——” The man did not finish his sentence, but the rifle was already half lifted. More words would have been superfluous.
A rider came into sight and entered the mouth of the cañon. He was waving a white handkerchief. The man in the doorway answered the signal.
“Not your friends this time, Mr. Sheriff,” Blackwell jeered.
“I get a stay of execution, do I?” The cool drawling voice of the cattleman showed nothing of the tense feeling within.
He resumed his seat and the reading of the newspaper. Presently, to the man that came over the threshold he spoke with a casual nod.
“Morning, Cass.”
Fendrick mumbled a surly answer. The manner of ironical comradeship his captive chose to employ was more than an annoyance. To serve his ends it was necessary to put the fear of death into this man’s heart, which was a thing he had found impossible to do. His foe would deride him, joke with him, discuss politics with him, play cards with him, do anything but fear him. In the meantime the logic of circumstances was driving the sheepman into a corner. He had on impulse made the owner of the Circle C his prisoner. Seeing him lie there unconscious on the floor of the Jack of Hearts, it had come to him in a flash that he might hold him and force a relinquishment of the Del Oro claim. His disappearance would explain itself if the rumor spread that he was the W. & S. express robber. Cass had done it to save himself from the ruin of his business, but already he had regretted it fifty times. Threats could not move Luck in the least. He was as hard as iron.
So the sheepman found himself between the upper and the nether millstones. He could not drive his prisoner to terms and he dared not release him. For if Cullison went away unpledged he would surely send him to the penitentiary. Nor could he hold him a prisoner indefinitely. He had seen the “personal” warning in both the morning and the afternoon papers. He guessed that the presence of the ranger Bucky O’Connor in Saguache was not a chance. The law was closing in on him. Somehow Cullison must be made to come through with a relinquishment and a pledge not to prosecute. The only other way out would be to let Blackwell wreak his hate on the former sheriff. From this he shrank with every instinct. Fendrick was a hard man. He would have fought it out to a finish if necessary. But murder was a thing he could not do.
He had never discussed the matter with Blackwell. The latter had told him of this retreat in the mountains and they had brought their prisoner here. But the existence of the prospect hole at the foot of the Devil’s Slide was unknown to him. From the convict’s revenge he had hitherto saved Luck. Blackwell was his tool rather than his confederate, but he was uneasily aware that if the man yielded to the elemental desire to kill his enemy the law, would hold him, Cass Fendrick, guilty of the crime.
“Price of sheep good this week?” Cullison asked amiably.
“I didn’t come here to discuss the price of sheep with you.” Fendrick spoke harshly. A dull anger against the scheme of things burned in him. For somehow he had reached an impasse from which there was neither advance nor retreat.
“No. Well, you’re right there. What I don’t know about sheep would fill several government reports. Of course I’ve got ideas. One of them is——”
“I don’t care anything about your ideas. Are you going to sign this relinquishment?”
Luck’s face showed a placid surprise. “Why no, Cass. Thought I mentioned that before.”
“You’d better.” The sheepman’s harassed face looked ugly enough for anything.
“Can’t figure it out that way.”
“You’ve got to sign it. By God, you’ve no option.”
“No?” Still with pleasant incredulity.
“Think I’m going to let you get away from here now. You’ll sign and you’ll promise to tell nothing you know against us.”
“No, I don’t reckon I will.”
Cullison was looking straight at him with his fearless level gaze. Fendrick realized with a sinking heart that he could not drive him that way to surrender. He knew that in the other man’s place he would have given way, that his enemy was gamer than he was.
He threw up his hand in a sullen gesture that disclaimed responsibility. “All right. It’s on your own head. I’ve done all I can for you.”
“What’s on my head?”
“Your life. Damn you, don’t you see you’re driving me too far?”
“How far?”
“I’m not going to let you get away to send us to prison. What do you expect?”
Luck’s frosty eyes did not release the other for a moment. “How are you going to prevent it, Cass?”
“I’ll find a way.”
“Blackwell’s way—the Devil’s Slide?”
The puzzled look of the sheepman told Cullison that Blackwell’s plan of exit for him had not been submitted to the other.
“Your friend from Yuma has been explaining how he has arranged for me to cross the divide,” he went on. “I’m to be plugged full of lead, shot down that rock, and landed in a prospect hole at the bottom.”
“First I’ve heard of it.” Fendrick wheeled upon his accomplice with angry eyes. He was in general a dominant man, and not one who would stand much initiative from his assistants.
“He’s always deviling me,” complained the convict surlily. Then, with a flash of anger: “But I stand pat. He’ll get his before I take chances of getting caught. I’m nobody’s fool.”
Cass snapped him up. “You’ll do as I say. You’ll not lift a finger against him unless he tries to escape.”
“Have you seen the Sentinel? I tell you his friends know everything. Someone’s peached. They’re hot on our trail. Bucky O’Connor is in the hills. Think I’m going to be caught like a rat in a trap?”
“We’ll talk of that later. Now you go look after my horse while I keep guard here.”
Blackwell went, protesting that he was no “nigger” to be ordered about on errands. As soon, as he was out of hearing Fendrick turned his thin lip-smile on the prisoner.
“It’s up to you, Cullison. I saved your life once. I’m protecting you now. But if your friends show up he’ll do as he says. I won’t be here to stop him. Sign up and don’t be a fool.”
Luck’s answer came easily and lightly. “My friend, we’ve already discussed that point.”
“You won’t change your mind?”
“Your arguments don’t justify it, Cass.”
The sheepman looked at him with a sinister significance. “Good enough. I’ll bring you one that will justify it muy pronto.”
“It will have to be a mighty powerful one. Sorry I can’t oblige you and your friend, the convict.”
“It’ll be powerful enough.” Fendrick went to the door and called Blackwell. “Bring back that horse. I’m going down to the valley.”
Kate was in her rose garden superintending the stable boy as he loosened the dirt around the roots of some of the bushes. She had returned to the Circle C for a day or two to give some directions in the absence of her father. Buck and the other riders came to her for orders and took them without contempt. She knew the cattle business, and they knew she knew it. To a man they were proud of her, of her spirit, her energy, and her good looks.
This rose garden was one evidence of her enterprise. No ranch in the county could show such a riot of bloom as the Circle C. The American Beauty, the Duchess, the La France bowed gracefully to neighbors of a dozen other choice varieties. Kate had brought this glimpse of Eden into the desert. She knew her catalogues by heart and she had the loving instinct that teaches all gardeners much about growing things.
The rider who cantered up to the fence, seeing her in her well-hung corduroy skirt, her close-fitting blouse, and the broad-rimmed straw hat that shielded her dark head from the sun, appreciated the fitness of her surroundings. She too was a flower of the desert, delicately fashioned, yet vital with the bloom of health.
At the clatter of hoofs she looked up from the bush she was trimming and at once rose to her feet. With the change in position she showed slim and tall, straight as a young poplar. Beneath their long lashes her eyes grew dark and hard. For the man who had drawn to a halt was Cass Fendrick.
From the pocket of his shirt he drew a crumpled piece of stained linen.
“I’ve brought back your handkerchief, Miss Cullison.”
“What have you done with my father?”
He nodded toward the Mexican boy and Kate dismissed the lad. When he had gone she asked her question again in exactly the same words.
“If we’re going to discuss your father you had better get your quirt again,” the sheepman suggested, touching a scar on his face.
A flush swept over her cheeks, but she held her voice quiet and even. “Where is Father? What have you done with him?”
He swung from the horse and threw the rein to the ground. Then, sauntering to the gate, he let himself in.
“You’ve surely got a nice posy garden here. Didn’t know there was one like it in all sunbaked Arizona.”
She stood rigid. Her unfaltering eyes, sloe-black in the pale face, never lifted from him.
“There’s only one thing you can talk to me about Where have you hidden my father?”
“I’ve heard folks say he did himself all the hiding that was done.”
“You know that isn’t true. That convict and you have hidden him somewhere. We have evidence enough to convict you both.”
“Imagination, most of it, I expect.” He was inspecting the roses and inhaling their bloom.
“Fact enough to send you to the penitentiary.”
“I ought to be scared. This is a La France, ain’t it?”
“I want you to tell me what you
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