Crooked Trails and Straight Part 18

Seemingly you don't. I hear you've been up at Stone's horse ranch. I want to tell you that won't do you any good if it gets out."

"Never was satisfied till I had rounded up all the trouble in sight.

That's why I mentioned this train robbery. Some of my friends are aiming to hold up one shortly. If you'd like to get in I'll say a good word for you."

Davis threw at him a look that drenched like ice water. "I expect you and me are traveling different trails these days, Curly. You don't mean it of course, but the point is I'm not going to joke with you along that line.

Understand?"

"Wrong guess, old hoss. I do mean it."

Davis stopped in his tracks. "Then you've said too much to me. We'll part right here."

"It takes two to agree to that, Slats."

"That's where you're wrong. One is enough. We used to be good friends, but those days are past. None of us can keep a man from being a durned fool if he wants to be one. Nor a scoundrel. You've got the bit in your teeth and I reckon you'll go till there is a smash. But you better understand this.

When you choose Soapy Stone's, crowd to run with that cuts out me and other decent folks. If they have sent you here to get me mixed up in their deviltry you go back and tell them there's nothing doing."

"Won't have a thing to do with them. Is that it?"

"Not till the call comes for citizens to get together and run them out of the country. Or to put them behind bars. Or to string them to a cottonwood. Then I'll be on the job."

He stood there quiet and easy, the look in his steady eyes piercing Curly's ironic smile as a summer sun does mackerel clouds in a clear sky.

Not many men would have had the courage to send that message to Soapy and his outfit. For Stone was not only a man killer, but a mean one at that.

Since he had come back from the penitentiary he had been lying pretty low, but he brought down from the old days a record that chilled the blood.

Curly sloughed his foolishness and came to the point.

"You're on, Slats. I'm making that call to you now."

The eyes of the two men fastened. Those of Flandrau had quit dancing and were steady as the sun in a blue sky. Surprise, doubt, wonder, relief filled in turn the face of the other man.

"I'm listening, Curly."

His friend told him the whole story from the beginning, just as he had been used to do in the old days. And Davis heard it without a word, taking the tale in quietly with a grim look settling, on his face.

"So he aims to play traitor to young Cullison. The thing is d.a.m.nable."

"He means to shut Sam's mouth for good and all. That is what he has been playing for from the start, to get even with Luck. He and his gang will get away with the haul and they will leave Sam dead on the scene of the hold-up. There will be some shooting, and it will be figured the boy was. .h.i.t by one of the train crew. Nothing could be easier."

"If it worked out right."

"Couldn't help working out right. That's why Soapy didn't let me in on the proposition. To get rid of one would be no great trouble, but two--well, that's different. Besides, I could tell he was not sure of me. Now he aims to put me on the stand and prove by me that Sam and he had a quarrel and parted company mighty sore at each other hardly a week before the hold-up.

He'll have an alibi too to show he couldn't have been in it. You'll see."

"You wouldn't think a white man could take a revenge like that on his enemy. It's an awful thing to do in cold blood."

"Soapy is no white man. He's a wolf. See how slick his scheme is. At one flip of the cards he kills the kid and d.a.m.ns his reputation. He scores Cullison and he snuffs out Sam, who had had the luck to win the girl Soapy fancies. The boy gets his and the girl is shown she can't love another man than Stone."

"Ever hear the story of French Dan?" asked Slats.

"Not to know the right of it."

"Soapy and Dan trained together in them days and went through a lot of meanness as side pardners. One day the Arivaca stage was held up by two men and the driver killed. In the sc.r.a.p one of the men had his mask torn off. It was French Dan. Well, the outlaws had been too d.a.m.ned busy. Folks woke up and the hills were sprinkled with posses. They ran the fellows down and hunted them from place to place. Two--three times they almost nailed them. Shots were exchanged. A horse of one of the fugitives was killed and they could not get another. Finally one dark night the outlaws were surrounded. The posse lay down in the zacaton and waited for morning.

In the night one of them heard a faint sound like the popping of a cork.

When mo'ning broke the hunters crept forward through the thick gra.s.s.

Guess what they found."

Curly's answer was prompt. "Gimme a harder one. There were two men and only one horse. The only chance was to slip through the line before day arrived. My guess is that they found French Dan with a little round hole in his skull--_and that the bullet making it had gone in from behind_. My guess also is that the posse didn't find the horse and the other man, just a trail through the zacaton back into the hills."

"Go to the head of the cla.s.s. There was one man too many in that thicket for the horse. French Dan's pardner was afraid they might not agree about who was to have the bronch for a swift getaway. So he took no chances.

There's only one man alive to-day can swear that Soapy was the man with French Dan lying in the zacaton. And he'll never tell, because he pumped the bullet into his friend. But one thing is sure. Soapy disappeared from Arizona for nearly two years. You can pick any reason you like for his going. That is the one I choose."

"Same here. And the man that would shoot one partner in the back would shoot another if he had good reasons. By his way of it Soapy has reasons a-plenty."

"I'm satisfied that is his game. Question is how to block it. Will you go to the sheriff?"

"No. Bolt would fall down on it. First off, he would not believe the story because I'm a rustler myself. Soapy and his friends voted for Bolt. He would go to them, listen to their story, prove part of it by me, and turn them loose for lack of evidence. Sam would go back to Dead Cow with them, and Stone would weave another web for the kid."

"You've got it about right," Slats admitted. "How about warning Sam?"

"No use. He would go straight to Soapy with it, and his dear friend would persuade him it was just a yarn cooked up to get him to throw down the only genuwine straight-up pal he ever had."

"Cullison then?"

"You're getting warm. I've had that notion myself. The point is, would he be willing to wait and let Soapy play his hand out till we called?"

"You would have to guarantee his boy would be safe meanwhile."

"Two of us would have to watch him day and night without Sam knowing it."

"Count me in."

"This is where we hit heavy traveling, Slats. For we don't know when the thing is going to be pulled off."

"We'll have to be ready. That's all."

"Happen to know whether d.i.c.k Maloney is here for the show?"

"Saw him this mo'ning. Luck is here too, him and his girl."

"Good. We've got to have a talk with them, and it has to be on the q.t.

You go back to town and find d.i.c.k. Tell him to meet us at the Del Mar, where Luck always puts up. Find out the number of Cullison's room and make an appointment. I'll be on El Molino street all mo'ning off and on. When you find out pa.s.s me without stopping, but tell me when we are to meet and just where."

Curly gave Slats a quarter of an hour before sauntering back to town. As he was pa.s.sing the Silver Dollar saloon a voice called him. Stone and Blackwell were standing in the door. Flandrau stopped.

Soapy's deep-set eyes blazed at him. "You didn't tell me it was Luck Cullison went bail for you, Curly."

"You didn't ask me."

"So you and him are thick, are you?"