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 all the boyishness from his face. Still trying to get him to give away his partners in the rustling, were they? Well, he would show them he could take his medicine without squealing.
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.”
“Oh, but you don’t see what we mean. It isn’t that we want to hurt you.” She spoke in a quick eager voice of protest.
“No, you just want me to squeal on my friends to save my own hide. Nothing doing, Miss Cullison.”
“No. You’re wrong. Why are you so suspicious?”
Curly laughed bitterly. “Your boys were asking that question about Soapy last night. They had a rope round my neck at the time. Nothing unfriendly in the matter, of course. Just a casual interest in my doings.”
Cullison was looking at him with the steel eyes that bored into him like a gimlet. Now he spoke sharply.
“I’ve got an account running with Soapy Stone. Some day I’ll settle it likely. But that ain’t the point now. Do you know his friends—the bunch he trails with?”
Wariness still seemed to crouch in the cool eyes of Flandrau.
“And if I say yes, I’ll bet your next question will be about the time and the place I last saw them.”
Kate picked up a photograph from the table and handed it to the prisoner. “We’re not interested in his friends—except one of them. Did you ever see the boy that sat for that picture?”
The print was a snapshot of a boy about nineteen, a good looking handsome fellow, a little sulky around the mouth but with a pair of straight honest eyes.
Curly shook his head slowly. Yet he was vaguely reminded of someone he knew. Glancing up, he found instantly the clew to what had puzzled him. The young man in the picture was like Kate Cullison, like her father too for that matter.
“He’s your brother.” The words were out before Flandrau could stop them.
“Yes. You’ve never met him?”
“No.”
Cullison had been watching the young man steadily. “Never saw him with Soapy Stone?”
“No.”
“Never heard Stone speak of Sam Cullison?”
“No. Soapy doesn’t talk much about who his friends are.”
The ex-sheriff nodded. “I’ve met him.”
Of course he had met him. Curly knew the story of how in one drive he had made a gather of outlaws that had brought fame to him. Soapy had broken through the net, but the sheriff had followed him into the hills alone and run him to earth. What passed between the men nobody ever found out. Stone had repeatedly given it out that he could not be taken alive. But Cullison had brought him down to the valley bound and cowed. In due season the bandits had gone over the road to Yuma. Soapy and the others had sworn to get their revenge some day. Now they were back in the hills at their old tricks. Was it possible that Cullison’s son was with them, caught in a trap during some drunken frolic just as Curly had been? In what way could Stone pay more fully the debt of hate he owed the former sheriff than by making his son a villain?
The little doctor came briskly into the room.
“Everybody out but the nurse. You’ve had company enough for one day, Luck,” he announced cheerily.
Kate followed Maloney and his prisoner to the porch.
“About the letters of your friend that was shot,” she said to Curly. “Doctor Brown was telling me what you said. I’ll see they reach Miss Anderson. Do you know in what restaurant she works?”
“No. Mac didn’t tell me.” The boy gulped to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. “They was expecting to get married soon.”
“I—I’ll write to her,” Kate promised, her eyes misty.
“I’d be obliged, Miss. Mac was a good boy. Anyone will tell you that. And he was awful fond of her. He talked about her that last night before the camp fire. I led him into this.”
“I’ll tell her what you say.”
“Do. Tell her he felt bad about what he had done. Bad companions got him going wrong, but he sure would have settled down into a good man. That’s straight goods, too. You write it strong.”
The girl’s eyes were shiny with tears. “Yes,” she answered softly.
“I ain’t any Harvard A. B. Writing letters ain’t my long suit. I’m always disremembering whether a man had ought to say have went and have knew. Verbs are the beatingest things. But I know you’ll fix it up right so as to let that little girl down easy.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll not write but go to see her.”
Curly could only look his thanks. Words seemed strangely inadequate. But Kate understood the boy’s unspoken wish and nodded her head reassuringly as he left the room.
* * *
CHAPTER V
LAURA LONDON
Kite Bonfils and Maloney took Curly back to Saguache and turned him over to Sheriff Bolt.
“How about bail?” Maloney asked.
The sheriff smiled. He was a long lean leather-faced man with friendly eyes from which humorous wrinkles radiated.
“You honing to go bail for him, Dick?”
“How much?”
“Oh, say two thousand.”
“You’re on.”
“What!”
A cowpuncher with fifty dollars two weeks after pay day was a rarity. No wonder Bolt was surprised.
“It’s not my money. Luck Cullison is going bail for him,” Maloney explained.
“Luck Cullison!” Maloney’s words had surprised the exclamation from Curly. Why should the owner of the Circle C of all men go bail for him?
The sheriff commented dryly on the fact. “I thought this kid was the one that shot him.”
“That was just a happenstance. Curly shot to save his bacon. Luck don’t hold any grudge.”
“So I should judge. Luck gave you his check, did he?”
Bolt belonged to the political party opposed to Cullison. He had been backed by Cass Fendrick, a sheepman in feud with the cattle interests and in particular with the Circle C outfit. But he could not go back on his word. He and Maloney called together on the district attorney. An hour later Dick returned to the jail.
“It’s all right, kid,” he told Curly. “You can shake off the dust of Saguache from your hoofs till court meets in September.”
To Flandrau the news seemed too good for the truth. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been waiting for the end of the road with a rope around his neck. Now he was free to slip a saddle on his pony Keno and gallop off as soon as he pleased. How such a change had been brought about he did not yet understand.
While he and Maloney were sitting opposite each other at the New Orleans Hash House waiting for a big steak with onions he asked questions.
“I don’t savvy Cullison’s play. Whyfor is he digging up two thousand for me? How does he know I won’t cut my stick for Mexico?”
“How do I know it?”
“Well, do you?”
Maloney helped himself to the oyster crackers to pass the time. “Sure I do.”
“How?”
“Search me. But I know you’ll be here in September if you’re alive and kicking.”
Flandrau persisted. “But Luck don’t owe me anything, except one pill sent promiscuous to his address. What’s he going down into his jeans for? Will you tell me that? And shove them crackers north by east. Got to fill up on something.”
“Ain’t you as good a guesser as I am, Curly?”
“Well then, here’s my guess. Miss Kate made him.”
“I reckon maybe she influenced him. But why did she? You don’t figure that curly topknot of yours is disturbing her dreams any, do you?”
“Quit your joshing and tell me why.”
“I can’t tell you for sure. But here’s my guess. Don’t cost you a cent if you ain’t satisfied with it. First off, there was poor Mac shot by the Circle C boys. Course Mac was a horse thief, but then he was a kid too. That worried the little girl some. She got to thinking about brother Sam and how he might be in the same fix one of these days as you are now. He’s on her mind a good deal, Sam is. Same way with the old man too, I reckon, though he don’t say much. Well, she decided Soapy Stone had led you astray like he’s doing with Sam. It got to worrying her for fear her brother might need a friend some time. So she handed over her worry to the old man and made him dig up for you.”
“That’s about it. Tell me what you know of Sam. Is he as white as the rest of the family?”
“Sam is all right, but he has got off wrong foot first. He and the old man got to kind of disagreeing, for the kid was a wild colt. Come by it honestly from the old man too. Well, they had a row one time when Sam got into trouble. Luck told him he never wanted to see him again. Sam lit out, and next folks knew he was trailing with Soapy’s gang. Consequence is, Sam’s hitting the toboggan for Tophet by all accounts.”
“Looks like some one ought to be able to pry him loose from that bunch,” Curly mused aloud.
Maloney grinned across at him. “You try it, son. You’ve always led a good pious life. He sure would listen to you.”
He had said it as a jest, but Curly did not laugh. Why not? Why shouldn’t he hunt up Sam and let him know how his folks were worrying about him? What was to hinder him from trying to wipe out some of the big debt he owed the Cullison family? He was footloose till September and out of a job. For he could not go back to the Map of Texas with his hat in his hand and a repentant whine on his lips. Why not take a hike into the hills and round up the boy? Of course Sam might not listen to him, but he could not tell that till he had tried. It had taken him scarcely a moment to make up his mind. The smile had not yet died out of Maloney’s eyes when he spoke.
“Damn if I don’t take a crack at it.”
The man on the other side of the table stared at him.
“Meaning that, are you?”
“Yep.”
“Might be some lively if Soapy gets wise to your intentions,” he said in a casual sort of way.
“I don’t aim to declare them out loud.”
That was all they said about it at the time. The rest of the evening was devoted to pleasure. After dinner they took in a moving picture show. The first film was a Western melodrama and it pleased them both immensely.
“I’d be afraid to live in a country where guns popped like they do in moving picture land,” Curly drawled. “Where is it anyhow? It ain’t Texas, nor Oklahoma, nor Wyoming, nor Montana, nor any of the spots in between, because I’ve been in all of them.”
Maloney laughed. “Day before yesterday that’s the way I’d a-talked my own self, but now I know better. What about your little stunt? Wasn’t that warm enough for you? Didn’t guns pop enough? Don’t you talk about moving pictures!”
After the picture show there were other things. But both of them trod the narrow path, Maloney because he was used to doing so and Flandrau because his experiences had sobered him.
“I’m on the water wagon, Dick.” He grinned ruefully at his friend. “Nothing like locking the stable after your bronc’s been stole. I’d a-been a heap better off if I’d got on the wagon a week ago.”
Since their way was one for several miles Maloney and Curly took the road together next morning at daybreak. Their ponies ambled along side by side at the easy gait characteristic of the Southwest. Steadily they pushed into the brown baked desert. Little dust whirls in the shape of inverted cones raced across the sand wastes. The heat danced along the road in front of them in shimmering waves.
Your plainsman is a taciturn individual. These two rode for an hour without exchanging a syllable. Then Curly was moved to talk.
“Can you tell me how it is a man can get fond of so Godforsaken a country? Cactus and greasewood and mesquite, and for a change mesquite and greasewood and cactus! Nothing but sand washes and sand hills, except the naked mountains ’way off with their bones sticking through. But in the mo’ning like this, when the world’s kind o’ smiley with the sunshine, or after dark when things are sorter violet soft and the mountains lose their edges—say, would you swap it for any other country on earth?”
Maloney nodded. He had felt that emotion a hundred times, though he had never put it into words.
At Willow Wash their ways diverged. They parted with a casual “So-long; see you later.” Curly was striking for the headwaters of Dead Cow Creek, where Soapy Stone had a horse ranch.
He put up that night at the place of a nester in the foothills. His host looked at him curiously when he mentioned his destination, but he did not say anything. It was none of his business how many young fellows rode to Soapy’s ranch.
Flandrau took the trail again next morning after breakfast. About two o’clock he reached a little park in the hills, in the middle of which, by a dry creek, lay a ranch.
The young man at first thought the place was deserted for the day, but when he called a girl appeared at the door. She smiled up at him with the lively interest any ranch girl may be expected to feel in a stranger who happens to be both young and good looking.
She was a young person of soft curves and engaging dimples. Beneath the brown cheeks of Arizona was a pink that came and went very attractively.
Curly took off his dusty gray hat. “Buenos tardes; senorita! I’ll bet I’m too late to draw any dinner.”
“Buenos, senor,” she answered promptly. “I’ll bet you’d lose your money.”
He swung from the saddle. “That’s good hearing. When a fellow has had his knees clamped to the side of a bronch for seven hours he’s sure ready for the dinner bell.”
“You can wash over there by the pump. There’s a towel on the fence.”
She disappeared into the house, and Curly took care of his horse, washed, and sauntered back to the porch. He could smell potatoes frying and could hear the sizzling of ham and eggs.
While he ate the girl flitted in and out, soft-footed and graceful, replenishing his plate from time to time.
Presently he discovered that her father was away hunting strays on Sunk Creek, that the nearest neighbor was seven miles distant, and that Stone’s ranch was ten miles farther up Dead Cow.
“Ever meet a lad called Sam Cullison?” the guest asked carelessly.
Curly was hardly prepared to see the color whip into her cheeks or to meet the quick stabbing look she fastened on him.
“You’re looking for him, are you?” she said.
“Thought while I was here I’d look him up. I know his folks a little.”
“Do you know him?”
He shook his head. She looked at him very steadily before she spoke.
&
nbsp; “You haven’t met him yet but you want to. Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Will you have another egg?”
Flandrau laughed. “No, thanks. Staying up at Stone’s, is he?”
“How should I know who’s staying at Stone’s?”
It was quite plain she did not intend to tell anything that would hurt young Cullison.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I ain’t lost him any to speak of,” the young man drawled.
“Are you expecting to stop in the hills long—or just visiting?”
“Yes,” Curly answered, with his most innocent blank wall look.
“Yes which?”
“Why, whichever you like, Miss London. What’s worrying you? If you’ll ask me plain out I’ll know how to answer you.”
“So you know my name?”
“Anything strange about that? The Bar 99 is the London brand. I saw your calves in the corral with their flanks still sore. Naturally I assume the young lady I meet here is Miss Laura London.”
She defended her suspicions. “Folks come up here with their mysterious questions. A person would think nobody lived on Dead Cow but outlaws and such, to hear some of you valley people tell it.”
“There’s nothing mysterious about me and my questions. I’m just a lunkheaded cowpuncher out of a job. What did you think I was?”
“What do you want with Sam Cullison? Are you friendly to him? Or aren’t you?”
“Ladies first. Are you friendly to him? Or aren’t you?”
Curly smiled gaily across the table at her. A faint echo of his pleasantry began to dimple the corners of her mouth. It lit her eyes and spread from them till the prettiest face on the creek wrinkled with mirth. Both of them relaxed to peals of laughter, and neither of them quite knew the cause of their hilarity.
“Oh, you!” she reproved when she had sufficiently recovered.
“So you thought I was a detective or a deputy sheriff. That’s certainly funny.”
Crooked Trails and Straight Page 4
