by Unknown
"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 ha
d finished he knew by the sound of her voice that she was greatly frightened.
"Something has happened 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.
Any theory of his disappearance that accepted his guilt did not occur to her mind for an instant. The two had been very close to each other. Luck had been in the habit of saying smilingly that she was his majordomo, his right bower. Some share of his lawless temperament she inherited, enough to feel sure that this particular kind of wrongdoing was impossible for him. He was reckless, sometimes passionate, but she did not need to reassure herself that he was scrupulously honest.
This brought her back to the only other tenable hypothesis--foul play. And from this she shrank with a quaking heart. For surely if his enemies wished to harm him they would destroy him, and this was a conclusion against which she fought desperately.
The plaza clock boomed ten strokes as they rode into Saguache. Mackenzie was waiting for them on the steps of the hotel.
"Have they--has anything been----?"
The owner of the Fiddleback shook his grizzled head. "Not yet. Didn't you meet Curly?"
"No."
"He rode out to come in with you, but if he didn't meet you by ten he was to come back. You took the north road, I reckon?"
"Yes."
His warm heart was wrung for the young woman whose fine eyes stared with dumb agony from a face that looked very white in the shining moonlight. He put an arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the hotel with cheerful talk.
"Come along, Bob. We're going to tuck away a good supper first off. While you're eating, I'll tell you all there is to be told."
Kate opened her lips to say that she was not hungry and could not possibly eat a bite, but she thought better of it. Bob had tasted nothing since noon, and of course he must be fed.
The lad fell to with an appetite grief had not dulled. His cousin could at first only pick at what was set before her. It seemed heartless to be sitting down in comfort to so good a supper while her father was in she knew not how great distress. Grief swelled in her throat, and forced back the food she was trying to eat.
Mackenzie broke off his story to remonstrate. "This won't do at all, Kate. If you're going to help find Luck, you've got to keep yourself fit. Now, you try this chicken, honey."
"I--just can't, Uncle Mac."
"But you need it."
"I know," the girl confessed, and as she said it broke down again into soft weeping.
Mac let her have her cry out, petting her awkwardly. Presently she dried her eyes, set at her supper in a businesslike way, heard the story to an end quietly, and volunteered one heartbroken comment.
"As if father could do such a thing."
The cattleman agreed eagerly. There were times when he was full of doubt on that point, but he was not going to let her know it.
Curly came into the room, and the girl rose to meet him. He took her little hand in his tanned, muscular one, and somehow from his grip she gathered strength. He would do all that could be done to find her father, just as he had done so much to save her brother.
"I'm so glad you've come," she said simply.
"I'm glad you're glad," he smiled cheerfully.
He knew she had been crying, that she was suffering cruelly, but he offered her courage rather than maudlin sympathy. Hope seemed to flow through her veins at the meeting of the eyes. Whatever a man could do for her would be done by Curly.
They talked the situation over together.
"As it looks to me, we've got to find out two things--first, what has become of your father, and, second, who did steal that money."
"Now you're talking," Mackenzie agreed. "I always did say you had a good head, Curly."
"I don't see it yet, but there's some link between the two things. I mean between the robbery and his disappearance."
"How do you mean?" Kate asked.
"We'll say the robbers were his enemies--some of the Soapy Stone outfit maybe. They have got him out of the way to satisfy their grudge and to make people think he did it. Unfortunately there is evidence that makes it look as if he might have done it--what they call corroborating testimony."
Billie Mackenzie scratched his gray poll. "Hold on, Curly. This notion of a link between the hold-up and Luck's leaving is what the other side is tying to. Don't we want to think different from them?"
"We do. They think he is guilty. We know he isn't."
"What does Sheriff Bolt think?"
Curly waved the sheriff aside. "It don't matter what he thinks, Miss Kate. He says he thinks Luck was mixed up in the hold-up. Maybe that's what he thinks, but we don't want to forget that Cass Fendrick made him sheriff and your father fought him to a fare-you-well."
"Then we can't expect any help from him."
"Not much. He ain't a bad fellow, Bolt ain't. He'll be square, but his notions are liable to be warped."
"I'd like to talk with him," the young woman announced.
"All right," Mackenzie assented. "To-morrow mo'ning----"
"No, to-night, Uncle Mac."
The cattleman looked at her in surprise. Her voice rang with decision. Her slight figure seemed compact of energy and resolution. Was this the girl who had been in helpless tears not ten minutes before?
"I'll see if he's at his office. Maybe he'll come up," Curly said.
"No. I'll go down to the courthouse if he's there."
Flandrau got Bolt on the telephone at his room. After a little grumbling he consented to meet Miss Cullison at his office.
"Bob, you must go to bed. You're tired out," his cousin told him.
"I ain't, either," he denied indignantly. "Tired nothing. I'm going with you."
Curly caught Kate's glance, and she left the boy to him.
"Look here, Bob. We're at the beginning
of a big job. Some of us have to keep fresh all the time. We'll work in relays. To-night you sleep so as to be ready to-morrow."
This way of putting it satisfied the boy. He reluctantly consented to go to bed, and was sound asleep almost as soon as his head struck the pillow.
At the office of the sheriff, Kate cut to essentials as soon as introductions were over.
"Do you think my father robbed the W. & S. Express Company, Mr. Bolt?" she asked.
