Crooked Trails and Straight by William MacLeod Raine (best large ebook reader .txt) đź“–
- Author: William MacLeod Raine
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“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. “You have changed 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, and she 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 their guests 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.
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 of hot 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 and steady 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 of rurales unexpected 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. The rurales and 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, wiry and 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’s little 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 her appeal 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
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