Brand Blotters

by Raine, William MacLeod

  Both mounted, Jack keeping the captive covered every moment of the time; and they began to retrace the way by which the young cattleman had just come.

  After they had ridden about a quarter of a mile Flatray made a readjustment of the rope. He let the loop lie loosely about the neck of the outlaw, the other end of it being tied to the horn of his own saddle. Also, he tied the hands of the man in such a way that, though they were free to handle the bridle rein, he could not raise them from the saddle as high as his neck.

  “If you make any sudden moves, you’ll be committing suicide. If you yell out, it will amount to about the same thing. It’s up to you to be good, looks like.”

  The man cursed softly. He knew that the least attempt to escape or to attract the attention of his confederates would mean his undoing. Something about this young man’s cold eye and iron jaw told him that he would not hesitate to shoot, if necessary.

  Voices came to them from the cañon. Flatray guessed that a reconnaissance of the gulch would be made, and prepared himself for it by deflecting his course from the bed of the arroyo at a point where the walls fell back to form a little valley. A little grove of aspens covered densely the shoulder of a hillock some fifty yards back, and here he took his stand. He dismounted, and made his prisoner do the same.

  “Sit down,” he ordered crisply.

  “What for?”

  “To keep me from blowing the top of your head off,” answered Jack quietly.

  Without further discussion, the man sat down. His captor stood behind him, one hand on the shoulder of his prisoner, his eyes watching the point of the gulch at which the enemy would appear.

  Two mounted men showed presently in silhouette. Almost opposite the grove they drew up.

  “Mighty queer what has become of Hank,” one of them said. “But I don’t reckon there’s any use looking any farther. You don’t figure he’s aiming to throw us down—do you, Buck?”

  “Nope. He’ll stick, Hank will. But it sure looks darned strange. Here’s him a-ridin’ along with us, and suddenly he’s missin’. We hear a yell, and go back to look for him. Nothin’ doin’. You don’t allow the devil could have come for him sudden—do you, Jeff?”

  It was said with a laugh, defiantly, but none the less Jack read uneasiness in the manner of the man. It seemed to him that both were eager to turn back. Giant boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years’ wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight. The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a lost soul.

  Jeff clutched at the arm of his companion. “Did you hear that, Buck?”

  “What—what do you reckon it was, Jeff?”

  Again Jack let his cry curdle the night.

  The outlaws took counsel of their terror. They were hardy, desperate men, afraid of nothing mortal under the sun. But the dormant superstition in them rose to their throats. Fearfully they wheeled and gave their horses the spur. Flatray could hear them crashing through the brush.

  He listened while the rapid hoofbeats died away, until even the echoes fell silent. “We’ll be moving,” he announced to his prisoner.

  For a couple of hours they followed substantially the same way that Jack had taken, descending gradually toward the foothills and the plains. The stars went out, and the moon slid behind banked clouds, so that the darkness grew with the passing hours. At length Flatray had to call a halt.

  “We’ll camp here till morning,” he announced when they reached a grassy park.

  The horses were hobbled, and the men sat down opposite each other in the darkness. Presently the prisoner relaxed and fell asleep. But there was no sleep for his captor. The cattleman leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood and smoked his pipe. The night grew chill, but he dared not light a fire. At last the first streaks of gray dawn lightened the sky. A quarter of an hour later he shook his captive from slumber.

  “Time to hit the trail.”

  The outlaw murmured sleepily, “How’s that, Dunc? Twenty-five thousand apiece!”

  “Wake up! We’ve got to vamose out of here.”

  Slowly the fellow shook the sleep from his brain. He looked at Flatray sullenly, without answering. But he climbed into the saddle which Jack had cinched for him. Dogged and wolfish as he was, the man knew his master, and was cowed.

  * * *

  CHAPTER III

  THE TABLES TURNED

  From the local eastbound a man swung to the station platform at Mesa. He was a dark, slim, little man, wiry and supple, with restless black eyes which pierced one like bullets.

  The depot loungers made him a focus of inquiring looks. But, in spite of his careless ease, a shrewd observer would have read anxiety in his bearing. It was as if behind the veil of his indifference there rested a perpetual vigilance. The wariness of a beast of prey lay close to the surface.

  “Mornin’, gentlemen,” he drawled, sweeping the group with his eyes.

  “Mornin’,” responded one of the loafers.

  “I presume some of you gentlemen can direct me to the house of Mayor Lee.”

  “The mayor ain’t to home,” volunteered a lank, unshaven native in butternut jeans and boots.

  “I think it was his house I inquired for,” suggested the stranger.

  “Fust house off the square on the yon side of the postoffice—a big two-story brick, with a gallery and po’ches all round it.”

  Having thanked his informant, the stranger passed down the street. The curious saw him pass in at the mayor’s gate and knock at the door. It opened presently, and disclosed a flash of white, which they knew to be the skirt of a girl.

  “I reckon that’s Miss ’Lissie,” the others were informed by the unshaven one. “She’s let him in and shet the door.”

  Inevitably there followed speculation as to who the arrival might be. That his coming had something to do with the affair of the West kidnapping, all were disposed to agree; but just what it might have to do with it, none of them could do more than guess. If they could have heard what passed between Melissy and the stranger, their curiosity would have been gratified.

  “Good mornin’, miss. Is Mayor Lee at home?”

  “No—he isn’t. He hasn’t got back yet. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Two rows of even white teeth flashed in a smile. “I thought maybe there was something I could do for you. You are Miss Lee, I take it?”

  “Yes. But I don’t quite understand—unless you have news.”

  “I have no news—yet.”

  “You mean——” Her eager glance swept over him. The brown eyes, which had been full of questioning, flashed to understanding. “You are not Lieutenant O’Connor?”

  “Am I not?” he smiled.

  “I mean—are you?”

  “At your service, Miss Lee.”

  She had heard for years of this lieutenant of rangers, who was the terror of all Arizona “bad men.” Her father, Jack Flatray, the range riders whom she knew—game men all—hailed Bucky O’Connor as a wonder. For coolness under fire, for acumen, for sheer, unflawed nerve, and for his skill in that deadly game he played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes.

  “Come in,” the girl invited. “Father said, if you came, I was to keep you here until he got back or sent a messenger for you. He’s hunting for the criminals in the Roaring Fork country. Of course, he didn’t know when you would get here. At the time he left we hadn’t been able to catch you on the wire. I signed Mr. Flatray’s name at his suggestion, because he was in correspondence with you once about the Roari
ng Fork outlaws. He is out in the hills, too. He started half an hour after the kidnappers. But he isn’t armed. I’m troubled about him.”

  Again the young man’s white-toothed smile flashed. “You’d better be. Anybody that goes hunting Black MacQueen unarmed ought to be right well insured.”

  She nodded, a shadow in her eyes. “Yes—but he would go. He doesn’t mean them to see him, if he can help it.”

  “Black sees a heap he isn’t expected to see. He has got eyes all over the hills, and they see by night as well as by day.”

  “Yes—I know he has spies everywhere; and he has the hill people terrorized, they say. You think this is his work?”

  “It’s a big thing—the kind of job he likes to tackle. Who else would dare do such a thing?”

  “That’s what father thinks. If he had stolen the President of the United States, it wouldn’t have stirred up a bigger fuss. Newspaper men and detectives are hurrying here from all directions. They are sure to catch him.”

  “Are they?”

  She noticed a curious, derisive contempt in the man’s voice, and laid it to his vanity. “I don’t mean that they are. I mean that you are sure to get him,” she hastened to add. “Father thinks you are wonderful.”

  “I’m much obliged to him,” said the man, with almost a sneer.

  He seemed to have so good an opinion of himself that he was above praise even. Melissy was coming to the decision that she did not like him—which was disappointing, since she had expected to like him immensely.

  “I didn’t look for you till night. You wired you would be on number seven,” she said. “I understood that was the earliest you could get here.”

  His explanation of the change was brief, and invited no further discussion. “I found I could make an earlier train.”

  “I’m glad you could. Father says it is always well to start on the trail while it is fresh.”

  “Have you ever seen this MacQueen, Miss Lee?” he asked.

  “Not unless he was there when Mr. West was kidnapped.”

  “Did you know any of the men?”

  She hesitated. “I thought one was Duncan Boone.”

  “What made you think so?”

  “He was the leader, I think, moved the way he does.” Her anger flashed for an instant. “And acted like him—detestably.”

  “Was he violent to West? Injure him?”

  “No—he didn’t do him any physical injury that I saw. I wasn’t thinking about Mr. West.”

  “Surely he didn’t lay hands on you!”

  She looked up, in time to see the flicker of amusement sponged from his face. It stirred vague anger in her. “He was insolent and ungentlemanly.”

  “As how?”

  “It doesn’t matter how.” Her manner specifically declined to particularize.

  “Would you recognize him again if you met him? Describe him, if you can.”

  “Yes. I used to know him well—before he became known as an outlaw,” she added after a perceptible hesitation. “There’s something ravenous about him.”

  “You mean that he is fierce and bloodthirsty?”

  “No—I don’t mean that; though, for that matter, I don’t think he would stick at anything. What I mean is that he is pantherine in his movements—more lithe and supple than most men are.”

  “Is he a big man?”

  “No—medium size, and dark.”

  “There were four of them, you say?”

  “Yes. Jack saw them, too, but at a distance.”

  “He reached you after they were out of sight?”

  “They had been gone about five minutes when I saw him—five or ten. I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Boone offered no personal indignity to you?”

  “Why are you so sure?” she flashed.

  “The story is that he is quite the ladies’ man.”

  Melissy laughed scornfully.

  At his request, she went over again the story of the abduction, telling everything save the matter of the ravished kisses. This she kept to herself. She did not quite know why, except that there was something she did not like about this Bucky O’Connor. He had a trick of narrowing his eyes and gloating over her, as a cat gloats over its expected kill.

  However, his confidence impressed her. Cocksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than she needed a certificate that on occasion he could be merciless. On the other hand, he fitted very badly with the character of the young lieutenant of rangers, as Jack Flatray had sketched it for her. Her friend’s description of his hero had been enthusiastic. She decided that the young cattleman was a bad judge of men—though, of course, he had never actually met O’Connor.

  “I reckon I’ll not wait for your father’s report, Miss Lee. I work independent of other men. That is how I get the wonderful results I do.”

  His conceit nettled her; also, it stung her filial loyalty. “My father was the best sheriff this county ever had,” she said stiffly.

  He smiled satirically. “Still, I reckon I’ll handle this my own way—unless your father’s daughter wants to go partners with me in it.”

  She gave him a look intended to crush his impudence. “No, thank you.”

  He ate a breakfast which she had the cook prepare hurriedly for him, and departed on the horse for which she had telephoned to the nearest livery stable. Melissy was a singularly fearless girl; yet she watched him go with a decided relief, for which she could not account. He rode, she observed, like a centaur—flat-backed, firm in the saddle with the easy negligence of a plainsman. He turned as he started, and waved a hand debonairly at her.

  “If I have any luck, I’ll bring back one of the Roaring Fork bunch with me—a present for a good girl, Miss Melissy.”

  She turned on her heel and went inside. Anger pulsed fiercely through her. He laughed at her, made fun of her, and yet called her by her first name. How dared he treat her so! Worst of all, she read admiration bold and unveiled in the eyes that mocked her.

  Half an hour later Flatray, riding toward town with his prisoner in front of him, heard a sudden sharp summons to throw up his hands. A man had risen from behind a boulder, and held him covered steadily.

  Jack looked at the fellow without complying. He needed no second glance to tell him that this man was not one to be trifled with. “Who are you?” he demanded quietly.

  “Never mind who I am. Reach for the sky.”

  The captured outlaw had given a little whoop, and was now loosening the rope from his neck. “You’re the goods, Cap! I knew the boys would pull it off for me, but I didn’t reckon on it so durn soon.”

  “Shut up!” ordered the man behind the gun, without moving his eyes from Flatray.

  “I’m a clam,” retorted the other.

  “I’m waiting for those hands to go up; but I’ll not wait long, seh.”

  Jack’s hands went up reluctantly. “You’ve got the call,” he admitted.

  They led him a couple of hundred yards from the trail and tied him hand and foot. Before they left him the outlaw whom he had captured evened his score. Three times he struck Flatray on the head with the butt of his revolver. He was lying on the ground bleeding and senseless when they rode away toward the hills.

  Jack came to himself with a blinding headache. It was some time before he realized what had happened. As soon as he did he set about freeing himself. This was a matter of a few minutes. With the handkerchief that was around his neck he tied up his wounds. Fortunately his hair was very thick and this had saved him from a fractured skull. Dizzily he got to his feet, found his horse, and started toward Mesa.

  Not many people were on the streets when the sheriff passed through the suburbs of the little town, for it was about the breakfast hour. One stout old negro mammy stopped to stare in surprise at his bloody head.
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  “Laws a mussy, Mistah Flatray, what they done be’n a-doin’ to you-all?” she asked.

  The sheriff hardly saw her. He was chewing the bitter cud of defeat and was absorbed in his thoughts. He was still young enough to have counted on the effect upon Melissy of his return to town with one of the abductors as his prisoner.

  It happened that she was on the porch watering her flower boxes when he passed the house.

  “Jack!” she cried, and on the heels of her exclamation: “What’s the matter with you? Been hurt?”

  A gray pallor had pushed through the tan of her cheeks. She knew her heart was beating fast.

  “Bumped into a piece of bad luck,” he grinned, and told her briefly what had occurred.

  She took him into the house and washed his head for him. After she saw how serious the cuts were she insisted on sending for a doctor. When his wounds were dressed she fed him and made him lie down and sleep on her father’s bed.

  The sun was sliding down the heavens to a crotch in the hills before he joined her again. She was in front of the house clipping her roses.

  “Is the invalid better?” she asked him.

  “He’s a false alarm. But he did have a mighty thumping headache that has gone now.”

  “I’ve been wondering why you didn’t meet Lieutenant O’Connor. He must have taken the road you came in on.”

  The young man’s eyes lit. “Is Bucky here already?”

  “He was. He’s gone. I was greatly disappointed in him. He’s not half the man you think he is.”

  “Oh, but he is. Everybody says so.”

  “I never saw a more conceited man, or a more hateful one. There’s something about him—oh, I don’t know. But he isn’t good. I’m sure of that.”

  “His reputation isn’t of that kind. They say he’s devoted to his wife and kids.”

  “His wife and children.” Melissy recalled the smoldering admiration in his bold eyes. She laughed shortly. “That finishes him with me. He’s married, is he? Well, I know the kind of husband he is.”

  Jack flashed a quick look at her. He guessed what she meant. But this did not square at all with what his friends had told him of O’Connor.