He had never discussed the matter with Blackwell. The latter had told him of this retreat in the mountains and they had brought their prisoner here. But the existence of the prospect hole at the foot of the Devil’s Slide was unknown to him. From the convict’s revenge he had hitherto saved Luck. Blackwell was his tool rather than his confederate, but he was uneasily aware that if the man yielded to the elemental desire to kill his enemy the law, would hold him, Cass Fendrick, guilty of the crime.
“Price of sheep good this week?” Cullison asked amiably.
“I didn’t come here to discuss the price of sheep with you.” Fendrick spoke harshly. A dull anger against the scheme of things burned in him. For somehow he had reached an impasse from which there was neither advance nor retreat.
“No. Well, you’re right there. What I don’t know about sheep would fill several government reports. Of course I’ve got ideas. One of them is——”
“I don’t care anything about your ideas. Are you going to sign this relinquishment?”
Luck’s face showed a placid surprise. “Why no, Cass. Thought I mentioned that before.”
“You’d better.” The sheepman’s harassed face looked ugly enough for anything.
“Can’t figure it out that way.”
“You’ve got to sign it. By God, you’ve no option.”
“No?” Still with pleasant incredulity.
“Think I’m going to let you get away from here now. You’ll sign and you’ll promise to tell nothing you know against us.”
“No, I don’t reckon I will.”
Cullison was looking straight at him with his fearless level gaze. Fendrick realized with a sinking heart that he could not drive him that way to surrender. He knew that in the other man’s place he would have given way, that his enemy was gamer than he was.
He threw up his hand in a sullen gesture that disclaimed responsibility. “All right. It’s on your own head. I’ve done all I can for you.”
“What’s on my head?”
“Your life. Damn you, don’t you see you’re driving me too far?”
“How far?”
“I’m not going to let you get away to send us to prison. What do you expect?”
Luck’s frosty eyes did not release the other for a moment. “How are you going to prevent it, Cass?”
“I’ll find a way.”
“Blackwell’s way—the Devil’s Slide?”
The puzzled look of the sheepman told Cullison that Blackwell’s plan of exit for him had not been submitted to the other.
“Your friend from Yuma has been explaining how he has arranged for me to cross the divide,” he went on. “I’m to be plugged full of lead, shot down that rock, and landed in a prospect hole at the bottom.”
“First I’ve heard of it.” Fendrick wheeled upon his accomplice with angry eyes. He was in general a dominant man, and not one who would stand much initiative from his assistants.
“He’s always deviling me,” complained the convict surlily. Then, with a flash of anger: “But I stand pat. He’ll get his before I take chances of getting caught. I’m nobody’s fool.”
Cass snapped him up. “You’ll do as I say. You’ll not lift a finger against him unless he tries to escape.”
“Have you seen the Sentinel? I tell you his friends know everything. Someone’s peached. They’re hot on our trail. Bucky O’Connor is in the hills. Think I’m going to be caught like a rat in a trap?”
“We’ll talk of that later. Now you go look after my horse while I keep guard here.”
Blackwell went, protesting that he was no “nigger” to be ordered about on errands. As soon, as he was out of hearing Fendrick turned his thin lip-smile on the prisoner.
“It’s up to you, Cullison. I saved your life once. I’m protecting you now. But if your friends show up he’ll do as he says. I won’t be here to stop him. Sign up and don’t be a fool.”
Luck’s answer came easily and lightly. “My friend, we’ve already discussed that point.”
“You won’t change your mind?”
“Your arguments don’t justify it, Cass.”
The sheepman looked at him with a sinister significance. “Good enough. I’ll bring you one that will justify it muy pronto.”
“It will have to be a mighty powerful one. Sorry I can’t oblige you and your friend, the convict.”
“It’ll be powerful enough.” Fendrick went to the door and called Blackwell. “Bring back that horse. I’m going down to the valley.”
* * *
CHAPTER X
CASS FENDRICK MAKES A CALL
Kate was in her rose garden superintending the stable boy as he loosened the dirt around the roots of some of the bushes. She had returned to the Circle C for a day or two to give some directions in the absence of her father. Buck and the other riders came to her for orders and took them without contempt. She knew the cattle business, and they knew she knew it. To a man they were proud of her, of her spirit, her energy, and her good looks.
This rose garden was one evidence of her enterprise. No ranch in the county could show such a riot of bloom as the Circle C. The American Beauty, the Duchess, the La France bowed gracefully to neighbors of a dozen other choice varieties. Kate had brought this glimpse of Eden into the desert. She knew her catalogues by heart and she had the loving instinct that teaches all gardeners much about growing things.
The rider who cantered up to the fence, seeing her in her well-hung corduroy skirt, her close-fitting blouse, and the broad-rimmed straw hat that shielded her dark head from the sun, appreciated the fitness of her surroundings. She too was a flower of the desert, delicately fashioned, yet vital with the bloom of health.
At the clatter of hoofs she looked up from the bush she was trimming and at once rose to her feet. With the change in position she showed slim and tall, straight as a young poplar. Beneath their long lashes her eyes grew dark and hard. For the man who had drawn to a halt was Cass Fendrick.
From the pocket of his shirt he drew a crumpled piece of stained linen.
“I’ve brought back your handkerchief, Miss Cullison.”
“What have you done with my father?”
He nodded toward the Mexican boy and Kate dismissed the lad. When he had gone she asked her question again in exactly the same words.
“If we’re going to discuss your father you had better get your quirt again,” the sheepman suggested, touching a scar on his face.
A flush swept over her cheeks, but she held her voice quiet and even. “Where is Father? What have you done with him?”
He swung from the horse and threw the rein to the ground. Then, sauntering to the gate, he let himself in.
“You’ve surely got a nice posy garden here. Didn’t know there was one like it in all sunbaked Arizona.”
She stood rigid. Her unfaltering eyes, sloe-black in the pale face, never lifted from him.
“There’s only one thing you can talk to me about Where have you hidden my father?”
“I’ve heard folks say he did himself all the hiding that was done.”
“You know that isn’t true. That convict and you have hidden him somewhere. We have evidence enough to convict you both.”
“Imagination, most of it, I expect.” He was inspecting the roses and inhaling their bloom.
“Fact enough to send you to the penitentiary.”
“I ought to be scared. This is a La France, ain’t it?”
“I want you to tell me what you have done with my father.”
He laughed a little and looked at her with eyes that narrowed like those of a cat basking in the sun. He had something the look of the larger members of the cat family—the soft long tread, the compact rippling muscles of a tame panther, and with these the threat that always lies behind its sleepy wariness.
“You’re a young lady of one idea. No use arguing with you, I reckon.”
“Not the least use. I’ve talked with Mrs. Wylie.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Do I k
now the lady?”
“She will know you. That is more to the point.”
“Did she say she knew me?” he purred.
“She will say it in court—if it ever comes to that.”
“Just what will she say, if you please.”
Kate told him in four sentences with a stinging directness that was the outstanding note of her, that and a fine self-forgetful courage.
“Is that all? Comes to this then, that she says I heard her scream, ran in, and saved your father’s life. Is that a penitentiary offense? I don’t say it oughtn’t to be, but is it?”
“You helped the villain take his body into the cellar. You plotted with him to hold Father a prisoner there.”
“Says that, does she—that she overheard us plotting?”
“Of course she did not overhear what you said. You took good care of that. But she knew you were conspiring.”
“Just naturally knew it without overhearing,” he derided. “And of course if I was in a plot I must have been Johnny-on-the-spot a good deal of the time. Hung round there a-plenty, I expect?”
He had touched on the weak spot of Mrs. Wylie’s testimony. The man who had saved Cullison’s life, after a long talk with Blackwell, had gone out of the Jack of Hearts and had not returned so far as she knew. For her former husband had sent her on an errand just before the prisoner was taken away and she did not know who had helped him.
Kate was silent.
“How would this do for an explanation?” he suggested lazily. “We’ll say just for the sake of argument that Mrs. Wylie’s story is true, that I did save your father’s life. We’ll put it that I did help carry him downstairs where it was cooler and that I did have a long talk with the fellow Blackwell. What would I be talking to him about, if I wasn’t reading the riot act to him? Ain’t it likely too that he would be sorry for what he did while he was angry at your father for butting in as he was having trouble with his wife? And after he had said he was sorry why shouldn’t I hit the road out of there? There’s no love lost between me and Luck Cullison. I wasn’t under any obligations to wrap him up in cotton and bring him back this side up with care to his anxious friends. If he chose later to take a hike out of town on p.d.q. hurry up business I ain’t to blame. And I reckon you’ll find a jury will agree with me.”
She had to admit to herself that he made out a plausible case. Not that she believed it for a moment. But very likely a jury would. As for his subsequent silence that could be explained by his desire not to mix himself in the affairs of one with whom he was upon unfriendly terms. The irrefutable fact that he had saved the life of Cullison would go a long way as presumptive proof of his innocence.
“I see you are wearing your gray hat again? What have you done with the brown one?”
She had flashed the question at him so unexpectedly that he was startled, but the wary mask fell again over the sardonic face.
“You take a right friendly interest in my hats, seems to me.”
“I know this much. Father took your hat by mistake from the club. You bought a brown one half an hour later. You used Father’s to manufacture evidence against him. If it isn’t true that he is your prisoner how does it come that you have your gray hat again? You must have taken it from him.”
He laughed uneasily. She had guessed the exact truth.
“In Arizona there are about forty thousand gray hats like this. Do you figure you can identify this one, Miss Cullison? And suppose your fairy tale of the Jack of Hearts is true, couldn’t I have swapped hats again while he lay there unconscious?”
She brushed his explanation aside with a woman’s superb indifference to logic.
“You can talk of course. I don’t care. It is all lies—lies. You have kidnapped Father and are holding him somewhere. Don’t you dare to hurt him. If you should—Oh, if you should—you will wish you had never been born.” The fierceness of her passion beat upon him like sudden summer hail.
He laughed slowly, well pleased. A lazy smoldering admiration shone in his half shuttered eyes.
“So you’re going to take it out of me, are you?”
A creature of moods, there came over her now a swift change. Every feature of her, the tense pose, the manner of defiant courage, softened indescribably. She was no longer an enemy bent on his destruction but a girl pleading for the father she loved.
“Why do you do it? You are a man. You want to fight fair. Tell me he is well. Tell me you will set him free.”
He forgot for the moment that he was a man with the toils of the law closing upon him, forgot that his success and even his liberty were at stake. He saw only a girl with the hunger of love in her wistful eyes, and knew that it lay in his power to bring back the laughter and the light into them.
“Suppose I can’t fight fair any longer. Suppose I’ve let myself get trapped and it isn’t up to me but to somebody else.”
“How do you mean?”
“Up to your father, say.”
“My father?”
“Yes. How could I turn him loose when the first thing he did would be to swear out a warrant for my arrest?”
“But he wouldn’t—not if you freed him.”
He laughed harshly. “I thought you knew him. He’s hard as nails.”
She recognized the justice of this appraisal. “But he is generous too. He stands by his friends.”
“I’m not his friend, not so you could notice it.” He laughed again, bitterly. “Not that it matters. Of course I was just putting a case. Nothing to it really.”
He was hedging because he thought he had gone too far, but she appeared not to notice it. Her eyes had the faraway look of one who communes with herself.
“If I could only see him and have a talk with him.”
“What good would that do?” he pretended to scoff.
But he watched her closely nevertheless.
“I think I could get him to do as I ask. He nearly always does.” Her gaze went swiftly back to him. “Let me talk with him. There’s a reason why he ought to be free now, one that would appeal to him.”
This was what he had come for, but now that she had met him half way he hesitated. If she should not succeed he would be worse off than before. He could neither hold her a prisoner nor free her to lead the pack of the law to his hiding place. On the other hand if Cullison thought they intended to keep her prisoner he would have to compromise. He dared not leave her in the hands of Lute Blackwell. Fendrick decided to take a chance. At the worst he could turn them both free and leave for Sonora.
“All right. I’ll take you to him. But you’ll have to do as I say.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“I’m taking you to back my play. I tell you straight that Blackwell would like nothing better than to put a bullet through your father. But I’ve got a hold on the fellow that ties him. He’s got to do as I say. But if I’m not there and it comes to a showdown—if Bucky O’Connor for instance happens to stumble in—then it’s all off with Luck Cullison. Blackwell won’t hesitate a second. He’ll kill your father and make a bolt for it. That’s one reason why I’m taking you. I want to pile up witnesses against the fellow so as to make him go slow. But that’s not my main object. You’ve got to persuade Luck to come through with an agreement to let go of that Del Oro homestead and to promise not to prosecute us. He won’t do it to save his own life. He’s got to think you come there as my prisoner. See? He’s got to wrestle with the notion that you’re in the power of the damnedest villain that ever went unhung. I mean Blackwell. Let him chew on that proposition a while and see what he makes of it.”
She nodded, white to the lips. “Let us go at once, please. I don’t want to leave Father alone with that man.” She called across to the corral. “Manuel, saddle the pinto for me. Hurry!”
They rode together through the wind-swept sunlit land. From time to time his lazy glance embraced her, a supple graceful creature at perfect ease in the saddle. What was it about her that drew the eye so irresistibly? Prettier girls h
e had often seen. Her features were irregular, mouth and nose too large, face a little thin. Her contour lacked the softness, the allure that in some women was an unconscious invitation to cuddle. Tough as whipcord she might be, but in her there flowed a life vital and strong; dwelt a spirit brave and unconquerable. She seemed to him as little subtle as any woman he had ever met. This directness came no doubt from living so far from feminine influences. But he had a feeling that if a man once wakened her to love, the instinct of sex would spring full-grown into being.
They talked of the interests common to the country, of how the spring rains had helped the range, of Shorty McCabe’s broken leg, of the new school district that was being formed. Before she knew it Kate was listening to his defense of himself in the campaign between him and her father. He found her a partisan beyond chance of conversion. Yet she heard patiently his justification.
“I didn’t make the conditions that are here. I have to accept them. The government establishes forest reserves on the range. No use ramming my head against a stone wall. Uncle Sam is bigger than we are. Your father and his friends got stubborn. I didn’t.”
“No, you were very wise,” she admitted dryly.
“You mean because I adapted myself to the conditions and made the best of them. Why shouldn’t I?” he flushed.
“Father’s cattle had run over that range thirty years almost. What right had you to take it from him?”
“Conditions change. He wouldn’t see it. I did. As for the right of it—well, Luck ain’t king of the valley just because he thinks he is.”
She began to grow angry. A dull flush burned through the tan of her cheeks.
“So you bought sheep and brought them in to ruin the range, knowing that they would cut the feeding ground to pieces, kill the roots of vegetation with their sharp hoofs, and finally fill the country with little gullies to carry off the water that ought to sink into the ground.”
Crooked Trails and Straight Page 15