The redheaded boy rolled another cigarette despondently. “Sho! I’ve cooked my goose. She’ll not look at me—even if they don’t send me to the pen.” In a moment he added huskily, staring into the deepening darkness: “And she’s the best ever. Her name’s Myra Anderson.”
Abruptly Mac got up and disappeared in the night, muttering something about looking after the horses. His partner understood well enough what was the matter. The redheaded puncher was in a stress of emotion, and like the boy he was he did not want Curly to know it.
Flandrau pretended to be asleep when Mac returned half an hour later.
They slept under a live oak with the soundness of healthy youth. For the time they forgot their troubles. Neither of them knew that as the hours slipped away red tragedy was galloping closer to them.
* * *
CHAPTER II
CAMPING WITH OLD MAN TROUBLE
The sun was shining in his face when Curly wakened. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Mac was nowhere in sight. Probably he had gone to get the horses.
A sound broke the stillness of the desert. It might have been the explosion of a giant firecracker, but Flandrau knew it was nothing so harmless. He leaped to his feet, and at the same instant Mac came running over the brow of the hill. A smoking revolver was in his hand.
From behind the hill a gun cracked—then a second—and a third. Mac stumbled over his feet and pitched forward full length on the ground. His friend ran toward him, forgetting the revolver that lay in its holster under the live oak. Every moment he expected to see Mac jump up, but the figure stretched beside the cholla never moved. Flandrau felt the muscles round his heart tighten. He had seen sudden death before, but never had it come so near home.
A bullet sent up a spurt of dust in front of him, another just on the left. Riders were making a half circle around the knoll and closing in on him. In his right mind Curly would have been properly frightened. But now he thought only of Mac lying there so still in the sand. Right into the fire zone he ran, knelt beside his partner, and lifted the red-thatched head. A little hole showed back of the left ear and another at the right temple. A bullet had plowed through the boy’s skull.
Softly Flandrau put the head back in the sand and rose to his feet. The revolver of the dead puncher was in his hand. The attackers had stopped shooting, but when they saw him rise a rifle puffed once more. The riders were closing in on him now. The nearest called to him to surrender. Almost at the same time a red hot pain shot through the left arm of the trapped rustler. Someone had nipped him from the rear.
Curly saw red. Surrender nothing! He would go down fighting. As fast as he could blaze he emptied Mac’s gun. When the smoke cleared the man who had ordered him to give up was slipping from his horse. Curly was surprised, but he knew he must have hit him by chance.
“We got him. His gun’s empty,” someone shouted.
Cautiously they closed in, keeping him covered all the time. Of a sudden the plain tilted up to meet the sky. Flandrau felt himself swaying on his feet. Everything went black. The boy had fainted.
When he came to himself strange faces were all around him, and there were no bodies to go with them. They seemed to float about in an odd casual sort of way. Then things cleared.
“He’s coming to all right,” one said.
“Good. I’d hate to have him cheat the rope,” another cried with an oath.
“That’s right. How is Cullison?”
This was said to another who had just come up.
“Hard hit. Looks about all in. Got him in the side.”
The rage had died out of Curly. In a flash he saw all that had come of their drunken spree: the rustling of the Bar Double M stock, the discovery, the death of his friend and maybe of Cullison, the certain punishment that would follow. He was a horse thief caught almost in the act. Perhaps he was a murderer too. And the whole thing had been entirely unpremeditated.
Flandrau made a movement to rise and they jerked him to his feet.
“You’ve played hell,” one of the men told the boy.
He was a sawed-off little fellow known as Dutch. Flandrau had seen him in the Map of Texas country try a year or two before. The rest were strangers to the boy. All of them looked at him out of hard hostile eyes. He was scarcely a human being to them; rather a wolf to be stamped out of existence as soon as it was convenient. A chill ran down Curly’s spine. He felt as if someone were walking on his grave.
At a shift in the group Flandrau’s eyes fell on his friend lying in the sand with face turned whitely to the sky he never would see again. It came over him strangely enough how Mac used to break into a little chuckling laugh when he was amused. He had quit laughing now for good and all. A lump came into the boy’s throat and he had to work it down before he spoke.
“There’s a picture in his pocket, and some letters I reckon. Send them to Miss Myra Anderson, Tombstone, care of one of the restaurants. I don’t know which one.”
“Send nothin’,” sneered Dutch, and coupled it with a remark no decent man makes of a woman on a guess.
Because of poor Mac lying there with the little hole in his temple Curry boiled over. With a jerk his right arm was free. It shot out like a pile-driver, all his weight behind the blow. Dutch went down as if a charging bull had flung him.
Almost simultaneously Curly hit the sand hard. Before he could stir three men were straddled over his anatomy. One of them ground his head into the dust.
“You would, eh? We’ll see about that. Jake, bring yore rope.”
They tied the hands of the boy, hauled him to his feet, and set him astride a horse. In the distance a windmill of the Circle C ranch was shining in the morning sun. Toward the group of buildings clustered around this two of his captors started with Flandrau. A third was already galloping toward the ranch house to telephone for a doctor.
As they rode along a fenced lane which led to the house a girl came flying down the steps. She swung herself to the saddle just vacated by the messenger and pulled the horse round for a start. At sight of those coming toward her she called out quickly.
“How is dad?” The quiver of fear broke in her voice.
“Don’ know yet, Miss Kate,” answered one of the men. “He’s right peart though. Says for to tell you not to worry. Don’t you, either. We’ve got here the mangy son of a gun that did it.”
Before he had finished she was off like an arrow shot from a bow, but not until her eyes had fallen on the youth sitting bareheaded and bloody between the guns of his guard. Curly noticed that she had given a shudder, as one might at sight of a mangled mad dog which had just bit a dear friend. Long after the pounding of her pony’s hoofs had died away the prisoner could see the startled eyes of fear and horror that had rested on him. As Curly kicked his foot out of the stirrup to dismount a light spring wagon rolled past him. In its bed were a mattress and pillows. The driver whipped up the horse and went across the prairie toward Dry Sandy Creek. Evidently he was going to bring home the wounded man.
His guards put Flandrau in the bunk house and one of them sat at the door with a rifle across his knees. The cook, the stable boy, and redheaded Bob Cullison, a nephew of the owner of the ranch, peered past the vaquero at the captive with the same awe they would have yielded to a caged panther.
“Why, he’s only a kid, Buck,” the cook whispered.
Buck chewed tobacco impassively. “Old enough to be a rustler and a killer.”
Bob’s blue eyes were wide with interest “I’ll bet he’s a regular Billy the Kid,” murmured the half-grown boy to the other lad.
“Sure. Course he is. He’s got bad eyes all right.”
“I’ll bet he’s got notches on his gun. Say, if Uncle Luck dies—” Bob left the result to the imagination.
The excitement at the Circle C increased. Horses cantered up. Men shouted to each other the news. Occasionally some one came in to have a look at the “bad man” who had shot Luck Cullison. Young Flandrau lay on a cot and stared at the ceiling, paying n
o more attention to them than if they had been blocks of wood. It took no shrewdness to see that there burned in them a still cold anger toward him that might easily find expression in lynch law.
The crunch of wagon wheels over disintegrated granite drifted to the bunk house.
“They’re bringing the boss back,” Buck announced from the door to one of his visitors.
The man joined him and looked over his shoulder. “Miss Kate there too?”
“Yep. Say, if the old man don’t pull through it will break her all up.”
The boy on the bed turned his face to the wall. He had not cried for ten years, but now he would have liked the relief of tears. The luck had broken bad for him, but it would be the worst ever if his random shot were to make Kate Cullison an orphan. A big lump rose in his throat and would not stay down. The irony of it was that he was staged for the part of a gray wolf on the howl, while he felt more like a little child that has lost its last friend.
After a time there came again the crisp roll of wheels.
“Doc Brown,” announced Buck casually to the other men in the bunk house.
There was more than one anxious heart at the Circle C waiting for the verdict of the bowlegged baldheaded little man with the satchel, but not one of them—no, not even Kate Cullison herself—was in a colder fear than Curly Flandrau. He was entitled to a deep interest, for if Cullison should die he knew that he would follow him within a few hours. These men would take no chances with the delays of the law.
The men at the bunk house had offered more than once to look at Curly’s arm, but the young man declined curtly. The bleeding had stopped, but there was a throb in it as if someone were twisting a red-hot knife in the wound. After a time Doctor Brown showed up in the doorway of the men’s quarters.
“Another patient here, they tell me,” he grunted in the brusque way that failed to conceal the kindest of hearts.
Buck nodded toward Flandrau.
“Let’s have a look at your arm, young fellow,” the doctor ordered, mopping his bald head with a big bandanna handkerchief.
“What about the boss?” asked Jake presently.
“Mighty sick man, looks like. Tell you more to-morrow morning.”
“Do you mean that he—that he may not get well?” Curly pumped out, his voice not quite steady.
Doctor Brown looked at him curiously. Somehow this boy did not fit the specifications of the desperado that had been poured into his ears.
“Don’t know yet. Won’t make any promises.” He had been examining the wound in a businesslike way. “Looks like the bullet’s still in there. Have to give you an anesthetic while I dig it out.”
“Nothin’ doing,” retorted Flandrau. “You round up the pill in there and I’ll stand the grief. When this lead hypodermic jabbed into my arm it sorter gave me one of them annie-what-d’ye-call-’em—and one’s a-plenty for me.”
“It’ll hurt,” the little man explained.
“Expect I’ll find that out. Go to it.”
Brown had not been for thirty years carrying a medicine case across the dusty deserts of the frontier without learning to know men. He made no further protest but set to work.
Twenty minutes later Curly lay back on the bunk with a sudden faintness. He was very white about the lips, but he had not once flinched from the instruments.
The doctor washed his hands and his tools, pulled on his coat, and came across to the patient.
“Feeling like a fighting cock, are you? Ready to tackle another posse?” he asked.
“Not quite.” The prisoner glanced toward his guards and his voice fell to a husky whisper. “Say, Doc. Pull Cullison through. Don’t let him die.”
“Hmp! Do my best, young fellow. Seems to me you’re thinking of that pretty late.”
Brown took up his medicine case and went back to the house.
* * *
CHAPTER III
AT 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. “Better let 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 a time 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 l
oad, 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 that this 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 and carelessly, 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.
Crooked Trails and Straight Page 2
