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

Fendrick bowed rather extravagantly and flashed at the girl a smiling double-row of strong white teeth. “He’s qualifying for a moving-picture show actor, Miss Cullison. I hadn’t the heart to disappoint him when he got that cannon trained on me. So here I am.”

Kate looked at him and then let her gaze travel to her cousin. She somehow gave the effect of judging him of negligible value.

“I think he’s in his office, Bob. I’ll go see.”

She went swiftly, and presently her father came out. Kate did not return.

Luck looked straight at Cass with the uncompromising hostility so characteristic of him. Neither of the men spoke. It was Bob who made the necessary explanations. The sheepman heard them with a polite derision that suggested an impersonal amusement at the situation.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Luck said bluntly, after his nephew had finished.

“So I gathered from young Jesse James. He intimated it over the long blue barrel of his cannon. Anything particular, or just a pleasant social call?”

“You’re in bad on this W. & S. robbery. I reckoned you would be safer in jail till it’s cleared up.”

“You still sheriff, Mr. Cullison? Somehow I had got a notion you had quit the job.”

“I’m an interested party. There’s new evidence, not manufactured, either.”

“Well, well!”

“We’ll take the stage into town and see what O’Connor says—that is, if you’ve got time to go.” Luck could be as formal in his sarcasm as his neighbor.

“With such good company on the way I’ll have to make time.”

The stage did not usually leave till about half past one. Presently Kate announced dinner. A little awkwardly Luck invited the sheepman to join them. Fendrick declined. He was a Fletcherite, he informed Cullison ironically, and was in the habit of missing meals occasionally. This would be one of the times.

His host hung in the doorway. Seldom at a loss to express himself, he did not quite know how to put into words what he was thinking. His enemy understood.

“That’s all right. You’ve satisfied the demands of hospitality. Go eat your dinner. I’ll be right here on the porch when you get through.”

Kate, who was standing beside her father, spoke quietly.

“There’s a place for you, Mr. Fendrick. We should be very pleased to have you join us. People who happen to be at the Circle C at dinner time are expected to eat here.”

“Come and eat, man. You’ll be under no obligations. I reckon you can hate us, just as thorough after a square meal as before. Besides, I was your guest for several days.”

Fendrick looked at the young mistress of the ranch. He meant to decline once more, but unaccountably found himself accepting instead. Something in her face told him she would rather have it so.

Wherefore Cass found himself with his feet under the table of his foe discussing various topics that had nothing to do with sheep, homestead claims, abductions, or express robberies. He looked at Kate but rarely, yet he was aware of her all the time. At his ranch a Mexican did the cooking in haphazard fashion. The food was ill prepared and worse served. He ate only because it was a necessity, and he made as short a business of it as he could. Here were cut roses on a snowy tablecloth, an air of leisure that implied the object of dinner to be something more than to devour a given quantity of food. Moreover, the food had a flavor that made it palatable. The rib roast was done to a turn, the mashed potatoes whipped to a flaky lightness. The vegetable salad was a triumph, and the rice custard melted in his mouth.

Presently a young man came into the dining room and sat down beside Kate. He looked the least in the world surprised at sight of the sheepman.

“Mornin’, Cass,” he nodded

“Morning, Curly,” answered Fendrick. “Didn’t know you were riding for the Circle C.”

“He’s my foreman,” Luck explained.

Cass observed that he was quite one of the family. Bob admired him openly and without shame, because he was the best rider in Arizona; Kate seemed to be on the best of terms with him, and Luck treated him with the offhand bluffness he might have used toward a grown son.

If Cass had, in his bitter, sardonic fashion, been interested in Kate before he sat down, the feeling had quickened to something different before he rose. It was not only that she was competent to devise such a meal in the desert. There was something else. She had made a home for her father and cousin at the Circle C. The place radiated love, domesticity, kindly good fellowship. The casual give and take of the friendly talk went straight to the heart of the sheepman. This was living. It came to him poignantly that in his scramble for wealth he had missed that which was of far greater importance.

The stage brought the two men to town shortly after sundown. Luck called up O’Connor, and made an appointment to meet him after supper.

“Back again, Bucky,” Fendrick grinned at sight of the ranger. “I hear I’m suspected of being a bad hold-up.”

“There’s a matter that needs explaining, Cass. According to Blackwell’s story, you caught him with the goods at the time of the robbery, and in making his getaway he left the loot with you. What have you done with it?”

“Blackwell told you that, did he?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t doubt your word for a moment, Bucky, but before I do any talking I’d like to hear him say so. I’ll not round on him until I know he’s given himself away.”

The convict was sent for. He substantiated the ranger reluctantly. He was so hemmed in that he did not know how to play his cards so as to make the most of them. He hated Fendrick. But much as he desired to convict him, he could not escape an uneasy feeling that he was going to be made the victim. For Cass took it with that sarcastic smile of his that mocked them all in turn. The convict trusted none of them. Already he felt the penitentiary walls closing on him. He was like a trapped coyote, ready to snarl and bite at the first hand he could reach. Just now this happened to belong to Fendrick, who had cheated him out of the money he had stolen and had brought this upon him.

Cass heard him out with a lifted upper lip and his most somnolent tiger-cat expression. After Blackwell had finished and been withdrawn from circulation he rolled and lit a cigarette.

“By Mr. Blackwell’s say-so I’m the goat. By the way, has it ever occurred to you gentlemen that one can’t be convicted on the testimony of a single accomplice?” He asked it casually, his chair tipped back, smoke wreaths drifting lazily ceilingward.

“We’ve got a little circumstantial evidence to add, Cass.” Bucky suggested pleasantly.

“Not enough—not nearly enough.”

“That will be for a jury to decide,” Cullison chipped in.

Fendrick shrugged. “I’ve a notion to let it go to that. But what’s the use? Understand this. I wasn’t going to give Blackwell away, but since he has talked, I may tell what I know. It’s true enough what he says. I did relieve him of the plunder.”

“Sorry to hear that, Cass,” Bucky commented gravely. “What did you do with it?”

The sheep owner flicked his cigarette ash into the tray, and looked at the lieutenant out of half-shuttered, indolent eyes. “Gave it to you, Bucky.”

O’Connor sat up. His blue Irish eyes were dancing. “You’re a cool customer, Cass.”

“Fact, just the same. Got that letter I handed you the other day?”

The officer produced it from his safe.

“Open it.”

With a paper knife Bucky ripped the flap and took out a sheet of paper.

“There’s something else in there,” Fendrick suggested.

The something else proved to be a piece of paper folded tightly, which being opened disclosed a key.

O’Connor read aloud the letter: