Crooked Trails and Straight Part 35

Then, with a sudden whoop: "h.e.l.lo, 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 fas.h.i.+on there was no denying that this ruffian would enjoy evening the score. But his confederate was of another stripe, a human being with normal pa.s.sions 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 impa.s.sive 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 hors.e.m.e.n must pa.s.s to reach the cabin.

"Sit down," he ordered.

Cullison's eyes were like finely-tempered steel. "I'd rather stand."

"By G.o.d, 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 canon. 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, Ca.s.s."

Fendrick mumbled a surly answer. The manner of ironical comrades.h.i.+p 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 circ.u.mstances 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. Ca.s.s 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.

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, Ca.s.s 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 _impa.s.se_ 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, Ca.s.s. Thought I mentioned that before."

"You'd better." The sheepman's hara.s.sed face looked ugly enough for anything.

"Can't figure it out that way."