by Unknown
Darkness came, and the lamps were lit. Again Curly ate and smoked and chatted a little with his captors. But as he sat there hour after hour, feeling death creep closer every minute, cold shivers ran up and down his spine.
They began to question him, at first casually and carelessly, so it seemed to Curly. But presently he discerned a drift in the talk. They were trying to find out who had been his partners in the rustling.
"And I reckon Soapy and Bad Bill left you lads at Saguache to hold the sack," Buck suggested sympathetically.
Curly grew wary. He did not intend to betray his accomplices. "Wrong guess. Soapy and Bad Bill weren't in this deal," he answered easily.
"We know there were two others in it with you. I guess they were Soapy and Bad Bill all right."
"There's no law against guessing."
The foreman of the Bar Double M interrupted impatiently, tired of trying to pump out the information by finesse. "You've got to speak, Flandrau. You've got to tell us who was engineering this theft. Understand?"
The young rustler looked at the grim frowning face and his heart sank. "Got to tell you, have I?"
"That's what?"
"Out with it," ordered Buck.
"Oh, I expect I'll keep that under my hat," Curly told them lightly.
They were crowded about him in a half circle, nearly a score of hard leather-faced plainsmen. Some of them were riders of the Circle C outfit. Others had ridden over from neighboring ranches. All of them plainly meant business. They meant to stamp out rustling, and their determination had been given an edge by the wounding of Luck Cullison, the most popular man in the county.
"Think again, Curly," advised Sweeney quietly. "The boys ain't trifling about this thing. They mean to find out who was in the rustling of the Bar Double M stock."
"Not through me, they won't."
"Through you. And right now."
A dozen times during the evening Curly had crushed down the desire to beg for mercy, to cry out desperately for them to let him off. He had kept telling himself not to show yellow, that it would not last long. Now the fear of breaking down sloughed from his soul. He rose from the bed and looked round at the brown faces circled about him in the shine of the lamps.
"I'll not tell you a thing--not a thing."
He stood there chalk-faced, his lips so dry that he had to keep moistening them with the tip of his tongue. Two thoughts hammered in his head. One was that he had come to the end of his trail, the other that he would game it out without weakening.
Dutch had a new rope in his hand with a loop at one end. He tossed it over the boy's head and drew it taut. Two or three of the faces in the circle were almost as bloodless as that of the prisoner, but they were set to see the thing out.
"Will you tell now?" Bonfils asked.
Curly met him eye to eye. "No."
"Come along then."
One of the men caught his arm at the place where he had been wounded. The rustler flinched.
"Careful, Buck. Don't you see you're hurting his bad arm?" Sweeney said sharply.
"Sure. Take him right under the shoulder."
"There's no call to be rough with him."
"I didn't aim to hurt him," Buck defended himself.
His grip was loose and easy now. Like the others he was making it up to his conscience for what he meant to do by doing it in the kindest way possible.
Curly's senses had never been more alert. He noticed that Buck had on a red necktie that had got loose from his shirt and climbed up his neck. It had black polka dots and was badly frayed. Sweeney was chewing tobacco. He would have that chew in his mouth after they had finished what they were going to do.
"Ain't he the gamest ever?" someone whispered.
The rustler heard the words and they braced him as a drink of whiskey does a man who has been on a bad spree. His heart was chill with fear, but he had strung his will not to let him give way.
"Better do it at the cottonwoods down by the creek," Buck told Bonfils in a low voice.
The foreman of the Bar Double M moved his head in assent. "All right. Let's get it over quick as we can."
A sound of flying feet came from outside. Someone smothered an oath of surprise. Kate Cullison stood in the doorway, all out of breath and panting.
She took the situation in before she spoke, guessed exactly what they intended to do. Yet she flung her imperious question at them.
"What is it?"
They had not a word to say for themselves. In that room were some of the most callous hearts in the territory. Not one man in a million could have phased them, but this slender girl dumfounded them. Her gaze settled on Buck. His wandered for help to Sweeney, to Jake, to Kite Bonfils.
"Now look-a-here, Miss Kate," Sweeney began to explain.
But she swept his remonstrance aside.
"No--No--No!" Her voice gathered strength with each repetition of the word. "I won't have it. What are you thinking about?"
To the boy with the rope around his neck she was an angel from heaven as she stood there so slim and straight, her dark eyes shining like stars. Some of these men were old enough to be her father. Any of them could have crushed her with one hand. But if a thunderbolt had crashed in their midst it could not have disturbed the vigilantes more.
"He's a rustler, Miss Kate; belongs to Soapy Stone's outfit," Sweeney answered the girl.
"Can you prove it?"
"We got him double cinched."
"Then let the law put him in prison."
"He shot yore paw," Buck reminded her.
"Is that why you're doing it?"
"Yes'm," and "That's why," they nodded.
Like a flash she took advantage of their admission. "Then I've got more against him than you have, and I say turn him over to the law."
"He'd get a good lawyer and wiggle out," Dutch objected.
She whirled on the little puncher. "You know how that is, do you?"
Somebody laughed. It was known that Dutch had once been tried for stealing a sheep and had been acquitted.
Kite pushed forward, rough and overbearing. "Now see here. We know what we're doing and we know why we're doing it. This ain't any business for a girl to mix in. You go back to the house and nurse your father that this man shot."
"So it isn't the kind of business for a girl," she answered scornfully. "It's work for a man, isn't it? No, not for one. For nine--eleven--thirteen--seventeen big brave strong men to hang one poor wounded boy."
Again that amused laugh rippled out. It came from Maloney. He was leaning against the door jamb with his hands in his pockets. Nobody had noticed him before. He had come in after the girl. When Curly came to think it over later, if he had been given three guesses as to who had told Kate Cullison what was on the program he would have guessed Maloney each time.
"Now that you've relieved your mind proper, Miss Cullison, I expect any of the boys will be glad to escort you back to the house," Kite suggested with an acid smile.
"What have you got to do with this?" she flamed. "Our boys took him. They brought him here as their prisoner. Do you think we'll let you come over into this county and dictate everything we do?"
"I've got a notion tucked away that you're trying to do the dictating your own self," the Bar Double M man contradicted.
"I'm not. But I won't stand by while you get these boys to do murder. If they haven't sense enough to keep them from it I've got to stop it myself."
Kite laughed sarcastically. "You hear your boss, boys."
"You've had yore say now, Miss Kate. I reckon you better say good-night," advised Buck.
She handed Buck and his friends her compliments in a swift flow of feminine ferocity.
Maloney pushed into the circle. "She's dead right, boys. There's nothing to this lynching game. He's only a kid."
"He's not such a kid but what he can do murder," Dutch spat out.
Kate read him the riot act so sharply that the little puncher had not another word to say. The tide of opinion was
shifting. Those who had been worked up to the lynching by the arguments of Bonfils began to resent his activity. Flandrau was their prisoner, wasn't he? No use going off half cocked. Some of them were discovering that they were not half so anxious to hang him as they had supposed.
The girl turned to her friends and neighbors. "I oughtn't to have talked to you that way, but you know how worried I am about Dad," she apologized with a catch in her breath. "I'm sure you didn't think or you would never have done anything to trouble me more just now. You know I didn't half mean it." She looked from one to another, her eyes shiny with tears. "I know that no braver or kinder men live than you. Why, you're my folks. I've been brought up among you. And so you've got to forgive me."
Some said "Sure," others told her to forget it, and one grass widower drew a laugh by saying that her little spiel reminded him of happier days.
For the first time a smile lit her face. The boy for whose life she was pleading thought it was like sunshine after a storm.
"I'm so glad you've changed your minds. I knew you would when you thought it over," she told them chattily and confidentially.
She was taking their assent for granted. Now she waited and gave them a chance to chorus their agreement. None of them spoke except Maloney. Most of them were with her in sympathy but none wanted to be first in giving way. Each wanted to save his face, so that the others could not later blame him for quitting first.
She looked around from one to another, still cheerful and sure of her ground apparently. Two steps brought her directly in front of one. She caught him by the lapels of his coat and looked straight into his eyes. "You have changed your mind, haven't you, Jake?"
The big Missourian twisted his hat in embarrassment. "I reckon I have, Miss Kate. Whatever the other boys say," he got out at last.
"Haven't you a mind of your own, Jake?"
"Sure. Whatever's right suits me."
"Well, you know what is right, don't you?"
"I expect."
"Then you won't hurt this man, our prisoner?"
"I haven't a thing against him if you haven't."
"Then you won't hurt him? You won't stand by and let the other boys do it?"
"Now, Miss Kate--"
She burst into sudden tears. "I thought you were my friend, but now I'm in trouble you--you think only of making it worse. I'm worried to death about Dad--and you--you make me stay here--away from him--and torment me."
Jake gave in immediately and the rest followed like a flock of sheep. Two or three of the promises came hard, but she did not stop till each one individually had pledged himself. And all the time she was cajoling them, explaining how good it was of them to think of avenging her father, how in one way she did not blame them at all, though of course they had seen it would not do as soon as they gave the matter a second thought. Dad would be so pleased at them when he heard about it, and she wanted them to know how much she liked and admired them. It was quite a love feast.
The young man she had saved could not keep his eyes from her. He would have liked to kneel down and kiss the edge of her dress and put his curly head in the dust before her. The ice in his heart had melted in the warmth of a great emotion. She was standing close to him talking to Buck when he spoke in a low voice.
"I reckon I can't tell you--how much I'm obliged to you, Miss."
She drew back quickly as if he had been a snake about to strike, her hand instinctively gathering her skirts so that they would not brush against him.
"I don't want your thanks," she told him, and her voice was like the drench of an icy wave.
But when she saw the hurt in his eyes she hesitated. Perhaps she guessed that he was human after all, for an impulse carried her forward to take the rope from his neck. While his heart beat twice her soft fingers touched his throat and grazed his cheek. Then she turned and was gone from the room.
It was a long time before the bunk house quieted. Curly, faint with weariness, lay down and tried to sleep. His arm was paining a good deal and he felt feverish. The men of the Circle C and their guests sat down and argued the whole thing over. But after a time the doctor came in and had the patient carried to the house. He was put in a good clean bed and his arm dressed again.
The doctor brought him good news. "Cullison is doing fine. He has dropped into a good sleep. He'd ought to make it all right."
Curly thought about the girl who had fought for his life.
"You'll not let him die, Doc," he begged.
"He's too tough for that, Luck Cullison is."
Presently Doctor Brown gave him a sleeping powder and left him. Soon after that Curly fell asleep and dreamed about a slim dark girl with fine longlashed eyes that could be both tender and ferocious.
CHAPTER IV
THE CULLISONS
Curly was awakened by the sound of the cook beating the call to breakfast on a triangle. Buck was standing beside the bed.
"How're they coming this glad mo'ning, son?" he inquired with a grin.
"Fine and dandy," grinned back Flandrau.
So he was, comparatively speaking. The pain in his arm had subsided. He had had a good sleep. And he was lying comfortably in a clean bed instead of hanging by the neck from the limb of one of the big cottonwoods on the edge of the creek.
A memory smote him and instantly he was grave again.
"How is Cullison?"
"Good as the wheat, doc says. Mighty lucky for Mr. C. Flandrau that he is. Say, I'm to be yore valley and help you into them clothes. Git a wiggle on you."
Buck escorted his prisoner over to the ranch mess house. The others had finished breakfast but Maloney was still eating. His mouth was full of hot cakes, but he nodded across at Curly in a casual friendly way.
"How's the villain in the play this mo'ning?" he inquired.
Twenty-one usually looks on the cheerful side of life. Curly had forgotten for the moment about what had happened to his friend Mac. He did not remember that he was in the shadow of a penitentiary sentence. The sun was shining out of a deep blue sky. The vigor of youth flowed through his veins. He was hungry and a good breakfast was before him. For the present these were enough.
"Me, I'm feeling a heap better than I was last night," he admitted.
"Came pretty near losing him out of the cast, didn't we?"
"Might a-turned out that way if the stage manager had not remembered the right cue in time."
Curly was looking straight into the eyes twinkling across the table at him. Maloney knew that the young fellow was thanking him for having saved his life. He nodded lightly, but his words still seemed to make a jest of the situation.
"Enter the heroine. Spotlight. Sa-a-ved," he drawled.
The heart of the prisoner went out to this man who was reaching a hand to him in his trouble. He had always known that Maloney was true and steady as a snubbing post, but he had not looked for any kindness from him.
"Kite just got a telephone message from Saguache," the Bar Double M man went on easily. "Your friends that bought the rustled stock didn't get away with the goods. Seems they stumbled into a bunch of rurales unexpected and had to pull their freight sudden. The boys from the ranch happened along about then, claimed ownership and got possession."
"If the men bought the stock why didn't they stop and explain?" asked Buck.
"That game of buying stolen cattle is worn threadbare. The rurales and the rangers have had their eye on those border flitters for quite some time. So they figured it was safer to dust."
"Make their getaway?" Curly inquired as indifferently as he could. But in spite of himself a note of eagerness crept into his voice. For if the men had escaped that would be two less witnesses against him.
"Yep."
"Too bad. If they hadn't I could have proved by them I was not one of the men who sold them the stock," Flandrau replied.
"Like hell you could," Buck snorted, then grinned at his prisoner in a shamefaced way: "You're a good one, son."
"Luck has been breaking bad for m
e, but when things are explained----"
"It sure will take a lot of explaining to keep you out of the pen. You'll have to be slicker than Dutch was."
Jake stuck his head in at the door. "Buck, you're needed to help with them two-year-olds. The old man wants to have a talk with the rustler. Doc says he may. Maloney, will you take him up to the house? I'll arrange to have you relieved soon as I can."