“I’m sheriff of Papago County. It doesn’t make any difference who worked for or against me, Billie. I was elected, and I’m going to enforce the law.”
“And you think Luck would do a fool thing like this?”
“I didn’t say I thought so, but it’s my business not to overlook any bets.”
“But you do believe it. Now, don’t you?”
“Since you’ve got to have an answer—yes, I do.”
“By heaven, I’d as lief think I did it myself.”
“You’re a good friend,” Bolt conceded. “By the way, I’ve got to pay for some supplies this morning. Can you cash a check for a hundred?”
“I reckon so.” Mackenzie drew from his pocket the roll Cullison had given him two hours before. He peeled five twenties from it. The sheriff observed that the prevailing denomination was the same.
“Get these from Luck?” he asked carelessly.
The cattleman stared at him, and the suspicion grew on him that he had been trapped again.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because it happens the bills stolen from the W. & S. were all twenties.”
“No, I didn’t get them from Cullison. This is money I had,” he answered sullenly.
“Then I dare say you can let me see the money you got from him.”
“He paid me by check.”
“Banked it yet?”
“That’s my business, Nick.”
“And mine, Billie. I can find out from the bank if you have. Besides, I happen to know that Luck’s bank account is overdrawn.”
“Some one has been at you to prejudice you, Bolt.”
“Nobody but Luck Cullison himself—and his actions.”
From the office of the sheriff, Mackenzie wandered to the club in search of Luck. He was thoroughly dispirited, both dreaded to meet Luck, and yet was anxious to do so. For he wanted to warn him, wanted to see him fall into one of his chill rages when he told him there were suspicions against him.
Cullison had left the club, but Alec Flandrau was still there. Billie drew him into a corner, and learned that Luck had just settled with him.
“Anyone see him give it to you, Alec?”
“No. He took me upstairs to the library and paid me.”
“In bills?”
“Yes—in twenties.”
“For God’s sake, don’t tell anybody that.” In a dozen jerky sentences the owner of the Fiddleback told Flandrau of the suspicions of the sheriff.
Together they went in search of Luck. But though they looked for him all day, he was not to be found. They might have concluded he had ridden out to the ranch, but his horse was still at the stable where he had left it.
The last that had been seen of him Luck was walking along the plaza toward the hotel, not a hundred and fifty yards from the latter. A dozen men had spoken to him in the distance of a block. But he had not been seen to reach his hotel. He had not called for his room key. Somehow he had vanished, and none could tell how or where.
To Bolt his disappearance was as good as a confession of guilt. He searched Luck’s room at the hotel. Among other things, he found an old envelope with interesting data penciled on it.
Before nightfall the word was whispered all over Saguache that Luck Cullison, pioneer cattleman and former sheriff, was suspected of the W. & S. Express robbery and had fled to save himself from arrest. At first men marveled that one so well known and so popular, one who had been so prominent in affairs, could be suspected of such a crime, but as they listened to the evidence and saw it fall like blocks of a building into place, the conviction grew that he was the masked bandit wanted by the sheriff.
* * *
CHAPTER IV
KATE USES HER QUIRT
Red-headed Bob Cullison finished making the diamond hitch and proudly called his cousin Kate to inspect the packhorse.
“You never saw the hitch thrown better, sis,” he bragged, boy-like. “Uncle Luck says I do it well as he can.”
“It’s fine, Bob,” his cousin agreed, with the proper enthusiasm in her dark eyes. “You’ll have to teach me how to do it one of these days.”
She was in a khaki riding skirt, and she pulled herself to the saddle of her own horse. From this position she gave him final instructions before leaving. “Stay around the house, Bob. Dad will call the ranch up this morning probably, and I want you to be where you can hear the ’phone ring. Tell him about that white-faced heifer, and to be sure to match the goods I gave him. You’ll find dinner set out for you on the dining-room table.”
It had been on Wednesday morning that Luck Cullison disappeared from the face of the earth. Before twenty-four hours the gossip was being whispered in the most distant cañons of Papago County. The riders of the Circle C knew it, but none of them had yet told either Bob or Kate.
Now it was Friday morning and Kate was beginning to wonder why her father did not call her up. Could it be that Soapy Stone was pulling off his train robbery at Tin Cup and her father so busy that he could not take time to ride to a telephone station? She did not like to leave the ranch just now, even for a few hours, but other business called her away. Sweeney was holding down the fort at the Del Oro against Fendrick’s sheepherders, and his weekly supply of provisions had to be taken to him. Since she wanted to see with her own eyes how things were getting along at the cañon, she was taking the supplies in person.
It was a beautiful morning, even for Arizona. The soft air was at its winiest best. The spring rains had carpeted the hills with an unusually fine grass, and the summer suns had not yet burnt this to the crisp brown of August. Her young heart expanded with the very joy of life. Oh, how good it was to be alive in a world of warm sunshine, of blue, unflecked sky, and of cool, light breezes. Swifts basked on the rocks or darted like arrows for safety, and lay palpitating with suspense. The clear call of the quails sounded to right and left of her. To her eager consciousness it was as if some bath of splendor had poured down overnight upon the old earth.
She rode from sunlight into shadow and from shadow to sunlight again, winding along the hill trail that took her toward the Del Oro. After hours of travel she came to the saddle from which one looked down to the gap in the cañon walls that had been the common watering place of all men’s cattle, but now was homesteaded by her father. Far below her it lay, a dwarfed picture with detail blurred to a vague impressionistic map. She could see the hut, the fence line running parallel to the stream on the other side, some grazing cattle, Sweeney’s horse in the corral.
The piteous bleating of a lamb floated to her. Kate dismounted and made her way toward the sound. A pathetic little huddle of frightened life tried to struggle free at her approach. The slim leg of the lamb had become wedged at the intersection of several rocks in such a way that it could not be withdrawn.
Kate pulled the boulder away, and released the prisoner. It looked at her and bleated without attempting to move. She took the soft, woolly creature in her arms, and examined the wounded limb, all torn and raw from its efforts to escape. A wound, she recalled, ought to be washed with cold water and bound. Returning to her horse, she put the little animal in front of the saddle and continued on the trail that led down to the river.
Sweeney came out from the cabin and hailed her. He was a squat, weather-beaten man, who had ridden for her father ever since she could remember.
“What in Mexico you got there?” he asked in surprise.
She explained the circumstances under which she had found the lamb.
“And what you aiming to do with it?”
“I’m going to tie up its leg and take it across the river. Some of the C. F. herders are sure to find it before night.”
“Sho! What are you fooling with Cass Fendrick’s sheep for?” he grumbled.
“It isn’t a sheep, but a lamb. And I’m not going to see it suffer, no matter who owns it.”
She was already walking toward the river. Protestingly he followed, and lent a hand at tying up the leg with the girl’s handkerchief.
“I’ll just ride across and leave it outside the fence,” she said.
“Lemme go. I know the river better.”
Sweeney did not wait for her assent, but swung to the saddle. She handed him the lamb, and he forded the stream. At no place did the water come above the fetlocks of the horse.
“I’m so glad you know the dangerous places. Be careful you don’t drown,” she mocked.
The rider’s laughter rang back to her. One of her jokes went a long way with Sweeney. The danger of the river had been the flimsiest of excuses. What he had been afraid of was that one of Fendrick’s herders might be lurking in some arroyo beyond the fence. There was little chance that he would dare hurt her, but he might shout something unpleasant.
In point of fact, Sweeney saw some one disappear into a wash as he reached the fence. The rider held up the lamb, jabbered a sentence of broncho Spanish at the spot where the man had been, put down his bleating burden, and cantered back to his own side of the river without unnecessary delay. No bullets had yet been fired in the Cullison-Fendrick feud, but a “greaser” was liable to do anything, according to the old puncher’s notion. Anyhow, he did not want to be a temptation to anyone with a gun in his hand.
An hour later, Kate, on the return trip, topped the rise where she had found the lamb. Pulling up her pony, to rest the horse from its climb, she gazed back across the river to the rolling ridges among which lay the C. F. ranch. Oddly enough, she had never seen Cass Fendrick. He had come to Papago County a few years before, and had bought the place from an earlier settler. In the disagreement that had fallen between the two men, she was wholly on the side of her father. Sometimes she had wondered what manner of man this Cass Fendrick might be; disagreeable, of course, but after precisely what fashion.
“Your property, I believe, Miss Cullison.”
She turned at sound of the suave, amused drawl, and looked upon a dark, slim young man of picturesque appearance. He was bowing to her with an obvious intention of overdoing it. Voice and manner had the habit of the South rather than of the West. A kind of indolent irony sat easily upon the swarthy face crowned with a black sleek head of hair.
Her instinct told the girl who he was. She did not need to ask herself any longer what Cass Fendrick looked like.
He was holding out to her the bloodstained kerchief that had been tied to the lamb’s leg.
“I didn’t care to have it returned,” she told him with cold civility.
“Now, if you’d only left a note to say so, it would have saved me a quite considerable climb,” he suggested.
In spite of herself a flicker of amusement lit her eyes. She had a sense of humor, “I did not think of that, and since you have troubled to return it to me, I can only say thank you.”
She held out her hand for the kerchief, but he did not move. “I don’t know but what I’ll keep it, after all, for a souvenir. Just to remind me that Luck Cullison’s daughter went out of her way to help one of Cass Fendrick’s sheep.”
She ignored his sardonic mockery. “I don’t let live creatures suffer when I can help it. Are you going to give me my handkerchief?”
“Haven’t made up my mind yet. Perhaps I’ll have it washed and bring it home to you.”
She decided that he was trying to flirt with her, and turned the head of her horse to start.
“Now your father has pulled his freight, I expect it will be safe to call,” he added.
The bridle rein tightened. “What nonsense are you saying about my father?”
“No news, Miss Cullison; just what everybody is saying, that he has gone to cover on account of the hold-up.”
A chill fear drenched her heart. “Do you mean the hold-up of the Limited at Tin Cup?”
“No, I don’t.” He looked at her sharply. “Mean to say you haven’t heard of the hold-up of the W.& S. Express Company at Saguache?”
“No. When was it?”
“Tuesday night. The man got away with twenty thousand dollars.”
“And what has my father to do with that?” she demanded haughtily.
A satisfied spleen purred in his voice. “My dear young lady, that is what everyone is asking.”
“What do you mean? Say it.” There was fear as well as anger in her voice. Had her father somehow got into trouble trying to save Sam?
“Oh, I’m saying nothing. But what Sheriff Bolt means is that when he gets his handcuffs on Luck Cullison, he’ll have the man that can tell him where that twenty thousand is.”
“It’s a lie.”
He waved his hand airily, as one who declined responsibility in the matter, but his dark, saturnine face sparkled with malice.
“Maybe so. Seems to be some evidence, but I reckon he can explain that away—when he comes back. The hold-up dropped a hat with the initials L. C. in the band, since identified as his. He had lost a lot of money at poker. Next day he paid it. He had no money in the bank, but maybe he found it growing on a cactus bush.”
“You liar!” she panted, eyes blazing.
“I’ll take that from you, my dear, because you look so blamed pretty when you’re mad; but I wouldn’t take it from him—from your father, who is hiding out in the hills somewhere.”
Anger uncurbed welled from her in an inarticulate cry. He had come close to her, and was standing beside the stirrup, one bold hand upon the rein. Her quirt went swiftly up and down, cut like a thin bar of red-hot iron across his uplifted face. He stumbled back, half blind with the pain. Before he could realize what had happened the spur on her little boot touched the side of the pony, and it was off with a bound. She was galloping wildly down the trail toward home.
He looked after her, fingers caressing the welt that burned his cheek.
“You’ll pay for that, Kate Cullison,” he said aloud to himself.
Anger stung him, but deeper than his rage was a growing admiration. How she had lashed out at him because he had taunted her of her father. By Jove, a girl like that would be worth taming! His cold eyes glittered as he put the bloodstained kerchief in his pocket. She was not through with him yet—not by a good deal.
* * *
CHAPTER V
“AIN’T SHE THE GAMEST LITTLE THOROUGHBRED?”
Kate galloped into the ranch plaza around which the buildings were set, slipped from her pony, and ran at once to the telephone. Bob was on a side porch mending a bridle.
“Have you heard anything from dad?” she cried through the open door.
“Nope,” he answered, hammering down a rivet.
Kate called up the hotel where Maloney was staying at Saguache, but could not get him. She tried the Del Mar, where her father and his friends always put up when in town. She asked in turn for Mackenzie, for Yesler, for Alec Flandrau.
While she waited for an answer, the girl moved nervously about the room. She could not sit down or settle herself at anything. For some instinct told her that Fendrick’s taunt was not a lie cut out of whole cloth.
The bell rang. Instantly she was at the telephone. Mackenzie was at the other end of the line.
“Oh, Uncle Mac.” She had called him uncle ever since she could remember. “What is it they are saying about dad? Tell me it isn’t true,” she begged.
“A pack of lees, lassie.” His Scotch idiom and accent had succumbed to thirty years on the plains, but when he became excited it rose triumphant through the acquired speech of the Southwest.
“Then is he there—in Saguache, I mean.”
“No-o. He’s not in town.”
“Where is he?”
“Hoots! He’ll just have gone somewhere on business.”
He did not bluff well. Through the hearty assurance she pierced to the note of trouble in his voice.
“You’re hiding something from me, Uncle Mac. I won’t have it. You tell me the truth—the whole truth.”
In three sentences he sketched it for her, and when he had finished he knew by the sound of her voice that she was greatly frightened.
“Something has hap
pened to him. I’m coming to town.”
“If you feel you’d rather. Take the stage in to-morrow.”
“No. I’m coming to-night. I’ll bring Bob. Save us two rooms at the hotel.”
“Better wait till to-morrow. Forty miles is a long ride, lass.”
“No, I can’t wait. Have Curly Flandrau come to the Del Mar if he’s in town—and Dick Maloney, too. That’s all. Good-by.”
She turned to her cousin, who was standing big-eyed at her elbow.
“What is it, Kate? Has anything happened to Uncle Luck?”
She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Dad’s gone, Bob. Nobody knows where. They say—the liars—that he robbed the W. & S. Express Company.”
Suddenly her face went down into her forearm on the table and sobs began to rack her body. The boy, staggered at this preposterous charge, could only lay his hand on her shoulder and beg her not to cry.
“It’ll be all right, Kate. Wait till Uncle Luck comes back. He’ll make ’em sick for talking about him.”
“But suppose he—suppose he——” She dared not complete what was in her mind, that perhaps he had been ambushed by some of his enemies and killed.
“You bet they’ll drop into a hole and pull it in after them when Uncle Luck shows up,” the boy bragged with supreme confidence.
His cousin nodded, choking down her sobs. “Of course. It—it’ll come out all right—as soon as he finds out what they’re saying. Saddle two horses right away, Bob.”
“Sure. We’ll soon find where he is, I bet you.”
The setting sun found their journey less than half done. The brilliant rainbow afterglow of sunset faded to colder tints, and then disappeared. The purple saw-toothed range softened to a violet hue. With the coming of the moon the hard, dry desert lost detail, took on a loveliness of tone and outline that made it an idealized painting of itself. Myriads of stars were out, so that the heavens seemed sown with them as an Arizona hillside is in spring with yellow poppies.
Kate was tortured with anxiety, but the surpassing beauty that encompassed them was somehow a comfort to her. Deep within her something denied that her father could be gone out of a world so good. And if he were alive, Curly Flandrau would find him—Curly and Dick between them. Luck Cullison had plenty of good friends who would not stand by and see him wronged.
Crooked Trails and Straight Page 11
