Mrs. Wylie went with them quietly enough. She was shaken with fears but still resolute not to speak. They might send her to prison. She would tell them nothing—nothing at all. For someone who had made terror the habit of her life had put the fear of death into her soul.
* * *
CHAPTER VIII
A MESSAGE IN CIPHER
While Kate listened to what Curly had to tell her the dark eyes of the girl were fastened upon the trembling little woman standing near the door.
“Do you mean that she is going to let my father be killed rather than tell what she knows?” Her voice was sharply incredulous, touched with a horror scarcely realized.
“So she says.”
Mrs. Wylie wrung her hands in agitation. Her lined face was a mirror of distress.
“But that’s impossible. She must tell. What has Father ever done to hurt her?”
“I—I don’t know anything about it,” the harassed woman iterated.
“What’s the use of saying that when we know you do? And you’ll not get out of it by sobbing. You’ve got to talk.”
Kate had not moved. None the less her force, the upblaze of feminine energy in her, crowded the little storekeeper to the wall. “You’ve got to tell—you’ve just got to,” she insisted.
The little woman shrank before the energy of a passion so vital. No strength was in her to fight. But she could and did offer the passive resistance of obstinate silence.
Curly had drawn from his pocket the newspaper found in the cellar. His eyes had searched for the date line to use as cumulative evidence, but they had remained fastened to one story. Now he spoke imperatively.
“Come here, Miss Kate.”
She was beside him in an instant. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure yet, but—— Look here. I believe this is a message to us.”
“A message?”
“From your father perhaps.”
“How could it be?”
“I found the paper in the cellar where he was. See how some of these words are scored. Done with a finger nail, looks like.”
“But how could he know we would see the paper, and if we did see it would understand?”
“He couldn’t. It would be one chance in a million, but all his life he’s been taking chances. This couldn’t do any harm.”
Her dark head bent beside his fair one with the crisp sun-reddened curls.
“I don’t see any message. Where is it?”
“I don’t see it myself—not much of it. Gimme time.”
This was the paragraph upon which his gaze had fastened, and the words and letters were scored sharply as shown below, though in the case of single letters the mark ran through them instead of underneath, evidently that no mistake might be made as to which was meant.
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.
* * *
CHAPTER IX
“THE FRIENDS OF L. C. SERVE NOTICE”
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 where will you be when my friends arrive. I reckon it won’t be a pleasant meeting for Mr. Blackwell.”
“I’ll be headed for Mexico. I tell you because you ain’t liable to go around spreading the news. There’s a horse saddled in the dip back of the hill crest. Get it?”
“Fine,” Cullison came back. “And you’ll ride right into some of Bucky O’Connor’s rangers. He’s got the border patroled. You’d never make it.”
“Don’t worry. I’d slip through. I’m no tenderfoot.”
“What if you did? Bucky would drag you back by the scruff of the neck in two weeks. Remember Chavez.”
He referred to a murderer whom the lieutenant of rangers had captured and brought back to be hanged later.
“Chavez was a fool.”
“Was he? You don’t get the point. The old days are gone. Law is in the saddle. Murder is no longer a pleasant pastime.” And Cullison stretched his arms and yawned.
From far below there came through the open window the faint click of a horse’s hoofs ringing against the stones in the dry bed of a river wash. Swiftly Blackwell moved to the door, taking down a rifle from its rack as he did so. Cullison rose noiselessly in his chair. If it came to the worst he meant to shout aloud his presence and close with this fellow. Hampered as he was by the table, the man would get him without question. But if he could only sink his fingers into that hairy throat while there was still life in him he could promise that the Mexican trip would never take place.
Blackwell, from his place by the door, could keep an eye both on his prisoner and on a point of the trail far below where
horsemen must pass to reach the cabin.
“Sit down,” he ordered.
Cullison’s eyes were like finely-tempered steel. “I’d rather stand.”
“By God, if you move from there——” The man did not finish his sentence, but the rifle was already half lifted. More words would have been superfluous.
A rider came into sight and entered the mouth of the cañon. He was waving a white handkerchief. The man in the doorway answered the signal.
“Not your friends this time, Mr. Sheriff,” Blackwell jeered.
“I get a stay of execution, do I?” The cool drawling voice of the cattleman showed nothing of the tense feeling within.
He resumed his seat and the reading of the newspaper. Presently, to the man that came over the threshold he spoke with a casual nod.
“Morning, Cass.”
Fendrick mumbled a surly answer. The manner of ironical comradeship his captive chose to employ was more than an annoyance. To serve his ends it was necessary to put the fear of death into this man’s heart, which was a thing he had found impossible to do. His foe would deride him, joke with him, discuss politics with him, play cards with him, do anything but fear him. In the meantime the logic of circumstances was driving the sheepman into a corner. He had on impulse made the owner of the Circle C his prisoner. Seeing him lie there unconscious on the floor of the Jack of Hearts, it had come to him in a flash that he might hold him and force a relinquishment of the Del Oro claim. His disappearance would explain itself if the rumor spread that he was the W. & S. express robber. Cass had done it to save himself from the ruin of his business, but already he had regretted it fifty times. Threats could not move Luck in the least. He was as hard as iron.
So the sheepman found himself between the upper and the nether millstones. He could not drive his prisoner to terms and he dared not release him. For if Cullison went away unpledged he would surely send him to the penitentiary. Nor could he hold him a prisoner indefinitely. He had seen the “personal” warning in both the morning and the afternoon papers. He guessed that the presence of the ranger Bucky O’Connor in Saguache was not a chance. The law was closing in on him. Somehow Cullison must be made to come through with a relinquishment and a pledge not to prosecute. The only other way out would be to let Blackwell wreak his hate on the former sheriff. From this he shrank with every instinct. Fendrick was a hard man. He would have fought it out to a finish if necessary. But murder was a thing he could not do.
Crooked Trails and Straight Page 14