Crooked Trails and Straight by William MacLeod Raine (top business books of all time .txt) 📕
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.
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J. P. Kelley of the ranger force reports
over the telephone that by unexpected good
luck he has succeeded in taking prisoner
the notorious Jack Foster of Hermosilla
and the Rincons notoriety and is now
bringing him to Saguache where he will be
locked up pending a disposition of his case.
Kelley succeeded in surprising him while
he was eating dinner at a Mexican road-house just this side of the border.
“Do you make it out?” Maloney asked, looking over their shoulders.
Curly took a pencil and an envelope from his pocket. On the latter he jotted down some words and handed the paper to his friend. This was what Maloney read:
...................................
.................... luck .........
... prisoner ....Jack....of He....a
....R......t......s now............
Saguache...locked up pending a dis-
position of his case...succeeded in
surprising him.....................
...................................
...................................
“Read that right ahead.”
Dick did not quite get the idea, but Kate, tense with excitement, took the envelope and read aloud.
“Luck——prisoner——Jack of Hearts——now Saguache——locked up pending a disposition of his case——succeeded in surprising him.” She looked up with shining eyes. “He tells us everything but the names of the people who did it. Perhaps somewhere else in the paper he may tell that too.”
But though they went over it word for word they found no more. Either he had been interrupted, or he had been afraid that his casual thumb nail pressures might arouse the suspicion of his guards if persisted in too long.
“He’s alive somewhere. We’ll save him now.” Kate cried it softly, all warm with the joy of it.
“Seems to let our friend Fendrick out,” Maloney mused.
“Lets him out of kidnapping Uncle Luck but maybe not out of the robbery,” Bob amended.
“Doesn’t let him out of either. Somebody was in this with Blackwell. If it wasn’t Cass Fendrick then who was it?” Kate wanted to know.
“Might have been Soapy Stone,” Dick guessed.
“Might have been, but now Sam has gone back into the hills to join Soapy; the gang would have to keep it from Sam. He wouldn’t stand for it.”
“No, not for a minute,” Kate said decisively.
Curly spoke to her in a low voice. “You have a talk with Mrs. Wylie alone. We’ll pull our freights. She’ll tell you what she knows.” He smiled in his gentle winning way. “She’s sure had a tough time of it if ever a woman had. I reckon a little kindness is what she needs. Let her see we’re her friends and will stand by her, that we won’t let her come to harm because she talks. Show her we know everything anyhow but want her to corroborate details.”
It was an hour before Kate joined them, and her eyes, though they were very bright, told tales, of tears that had been shed.
“That poor woman! She has told me everything. Father has been down in that cellar for days under a guard. They took him away to-night. She doesn’t know where. It was she sent the warnings to Sheriff Bolt. She wanted him to raid the place, but she dared not go to him.”
“Because of Blackwell?”
“Yes. He came straight to her as soon as he was freed from the penitentiary. He had her completely terrorized. It seems she has been afraid to draw a deep breath ever since he returned. Even while he was in the hills she was always looking for him to come. The man used to keep her in a hell and he began bullying her again. So she gave him money, and he came for more—and more.”
Curly nodded. He said nothing, but his strong jaw clamped.
“He was there that day,” the girl continued. “She plucked up courage to refuse him what little she had left because she needed it for the rent. He got hold of her arm and twisted it. Father heard her cry and came in. Blackwell was behind the door as it opened. He struck with a loaded cane and Father fell unconscious. He raised it to strike again, but she clung to his arm and called for help. Before he could shake her off another man came in. He wrenched the club away.”
“Fendrick?” breathed Curly.
“She doesn’t know. But the first thing he did was to lock the outer door and take the key. They carried Father down into the cellar. Before he came to himself his hands were tied behind his back.”
“And then?”
“They watched him day and night. Fendrick himself did not go near the place—if it was Fendrick. Blackwell swore to kill Mrs. Wylie if she told. They held him there till to-night. She thinks they were trying to get Father to sign some paper.”
“The relinquishment of course. That means the other man was Fendrick.”
Kate nodded. “Yes.”
Curly rose. The muscles stood out in his jaw; hard as steel ropes.
“We’ll rake the Rincons with a fine tooth comb. Don’t you worry. I’ve already wired for Bucky O’Connor to come and help. We’ll get your Father out of the hands of those hell hounds. Won’t we, Dick?”
The girl’s eyes admired him, a lean hard-bitten Westerner with eyes as unblinking as an Arizona sun and with muscles like wire springs. His face still held its boyishness, but it had lost forever the irresponsibility of a few months before. She saw in him an iron will, shrewdness, courage and resource. All of these his friend Maloney also had. But Curly was the prodigal son, the sinner who had repented. His engaging recklessness lent him a charm from which she could not escape. Out of ten thousand men there were none whose voice drummed on her heart strings as did that of this youth.
Two men sat in a log cabin on opposite sides of a cheap table. One of them was immersed in a newspaper. His body was relaxed, his mind apparently at ease. The other watched him malevolently. His fingers caressed the handle of a revolver that protruded from the holster at his side. He would have liked nothing better than to have drawn it and sent a bullet crashing into the unperturbed brain of his prisoner.
There were reasons of policy why it were better to curb this fascinating desire, but sometimes the impulse to kill surged up almost uncontrollably. On these occasions Luck Cullison was usually “deviling” him, the only diversion that had been open to the ranchman for some days past. Because of its danger—for he could never be quite sure that Blackwell’s lust for swift vengeance would not over-power discretion—this pastime made a peculiar appeal to the audacious temper of the owner of the Circle C.
From time to time as Luck read he commented genially on the news.
“I see Tucson is going to get the El Paso & Southwestern extension after all. I’ll bet the boys in that burg will be right tickled to hear it. They sure have worked steady for it.”
Blackwell merely scowled. He never relaxed to the give and take of casual talk with his captive. Given his way, Cullison would not be here to read the Sentinel. But the brains of the conspiracy had ruled otherwise and had insisted too upon decent treatment. With one ankle securely tied to a leg of the table there was no danger in freeing the hands of the cattleman, but his hosts saw that never for an instant were hands and feet at liberty together. For this man was not the one with whom to take chances.
“Rudd has been convicted of forgery and taken to Yuma. Seems to me you used to live there, didn’t you?” asked the cattleman with cool insolence, looking up from his paper to smile across at the furious convict.
Blackwell was livid. The man who had sent him to the territorial prison at Yuma dared to sit there bound and unarmed and taunt him with it.
“Take care,” he advised hoarsely.
Cullison laughed and went back to the paper.
“‘Lieutenant O’Connor of the Arizona Rangers left town to-day for a short trip into the hills where he expects to spend a few days hunting.’ Hunting what, do you reckon? Or hunting who, I should say. Ever meet Bucky O’Connor, Blackwell? No, I reckon not. He’s since your time. A crackerjack too! Wonder if Bucky ain’t after some friends of mine.”
“Shut up,” growled the other.
“Sure you’ll be shut up—when Bucky lands you,” retorted Luck cheerfully. Then, with a sudden whoop: “Hello, here’s a personal to your address. Fine! They’re getting ready to round you up, my friend. Listen. ‘The friends of L. C. serve notice that what occurred at the Jack of Hearts is known. Any violence hereafter done to him will be paid for to the limit. No guilty man will escape.’ So the boys are getting busy. I figured they would be. Looks like your chance of knocking me on the head has gone down Salt River. I tell you nowadays a man has to grab an opportunity by the tail when it’s there.”
The former convict leaned forward angrily. “Lemme see that paper.”
His guest handed it over, an index finger pointing out the item. “Large as life, Blackwell. No, sir. You ce’tainly didn’t ride herd proper on that opportunity.”
“Don’t be too sure it’s gone, Mr. Sheriff.”
The man’s face was twisted to an ugly sneer back of which lurked cruel menace. The gray eyes of Cullison did not waver a hair’s breadth.
“It’s gone. I’m as safe as if I were at the Circle C.”
“Don’t you think it.”
“They’ve got you dead to rights. Read that personal again. Learn it by heart. ‘The friends of L. C. give warning.’ You better believe they’re rounding up your outfit. They know I’m alive. They know all about the Jack of Hearts. Pretty soon they’ll know where you’ve got me hidden.”
“You’d better pray they won’t. For if they find the nest it will be empty.”
“Yes?” Luck spoke with ironical carelessness, but he shot an alert keen glance at the other.
“That’s what I said. Want to know where you will be?” the other triumphed.
“I see you want to tell me. Unload your mind.”
Triumph overrode discretion. “Look out of that window behind you.”
Luck turned. The cabin was built on a ledge far up on the mountain side. From the back wall sloped for a hundred feet an almost perpendicular slide of rock.
“There’s a prospect hole down there,” Blackwell explained savagely. “You’d go down the Devil’s Slide—what’s left of you, I mean—deep into that prospect hole. The timberings are rotted and the whole top of the working ready to cave in. When your body hits it there will be an avalanche—with Mr. Former-sheriff Cullison at the bottom of it. You’ll be buried without any funeral expenses, and I reckon your friends will never know where to put the headstone.”
The thing was devilishly simple and feasible. Luck, still looking out of the window, felt the blood run cold down his spine, for he knew this fellow would never stick at murder if he felt it would be safe. No doubt he was being well paid, and though in this workaday world revenge has gone out of fashion there was no denying that this ruffian would enjoy evening the score. But his confederate was of another stripe, a human being with normal passions and instincts. The cattleman wondered how he could reconcile it to his conscience to go into so vile a plot with a villain like the convict.
“So you see I’m right; you’d better pray your friends won’t find you. They can’t reach here without being heard. If they get to hunting these hills you sure want to hope they’ll stay cold, for just as soon as they get warm it will be the signal for you to shoot the chutes.”
Luck met his triumphant savagery with an impassive face. “Interesting if true. And
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