Crooked Trails and Straight Part 53

"You're not hurt," he implored.

"No."

"He didn't--mistreat you?" His voice was trembling as he whispered it.

"No--No."

And at that she broke down. A deep sob shook her body--and another. She buried her head on his shoulder and wept.

Without losing an instant the convict set himself at the climb. His haste, the swift glances shot behind him, the appalling dread that made his nerves ragged, delayed his speed by dissipating the singleness of his energy. His face and hands were torn with catclaw, his knee bruised by a slip against a sharp jut of quartz.

When he reached the top he was panting and shaken. Before he had moved a dozen steps a man came out of the brush scarce seventy-five yards away and called to him to surrender. He flung his rifle to place and fired twice.

The man staggered and steadied himself. A sh.e.l.l had jammed and Blackwell could not throw it out. He turned to run as the other fired. But he was too late. He stumbled, tripped, and went down full length.

The man that had shot him waited for him to rise. The convict did not move. Cautiously the wounded hunter came forward, his eyes never lifting from the inert sprawling figure. Even now he half expected him to spring up, life and energy in every tense muscle. Not till he stood over him, till he saw the carelessly flung limbs, the uncouth twist to the neck, could he believe that so slight a crook of the finger had sent swift death across the plateau.

The wounded man felt suddenly sick. Leaning against a rock, he steadied himself till the nausea was past. Voices called to him from the plain below. He answered, and presently circled down into the gulch which led to the open.

At the gulch mouth he came on a little group of people. One glance told him all he needed to know. Kate Cullison was crying in the arms of Curly Flandrau. Simultaneously a man galloped up, flung himself from his horse, and took the young woman from her lover.

"My little girl," he cried in a voice that rang with love.

Luck had found his ewe lamb that was lost.

It was Curly who first saw the man approaching from the gulch. "h.e.l.lo, Ca.s.s! Did you get him?"

Fendrick nodded wearily.

"Dead sure?"

"Yep. He's up there." The sheepman's hand swept toward the bluff.

"You're wounded."

"Got me in the shoulder. Nothing serious, I judge."

Cullison swung around. "Sure about that, Ca.s.s?" It was the first time for years that he had called the other by his first name except in irony.

"Sure."

"Let's have a look at the shoulder."

After he had done what he could for it Luck spoke bluffly. "This dashed feud is off, Ca.s.s. You've wiped the slate clean. When you killed Blackwell you put me out of a hostile camp."

"I'm glad--so glad. Now we'll all be friends, won't we?" Kate cried.

Ca.s.s looked at her and at Curly, both of them radiant with happiness, and his heart ached for what he had missed. But he smiled none the less.

"Suits me if it does you."

He gave one hand to Luck and the other to his daughter.

Curly laughed gaily. "Everybody satisfied, I reckon,"

CHAPTER XX

LOOSE THREADS

Curly was right when he said that those who knew about Sam's share in the planning of the Tin Cup hold-up would keep their mouths closed. All of the men implicated in the robbery were dead except Dutch. Cullison used his influence to get the man a light sentence, for he knew that he was not a criminal at heart. In return Dutch went down the line without so much as breathing Sam's name.

Luck saw to it that Curly got all the credit of frustrating the outlaws in their attempt on the Flyer and of capturing them afterward. In the story of the rescue of Kate he played up Flandrau's part in the pursuit at the expense of the other riders. For September was at hand and the young man needed all the prestige he could get. The district attorney had no choice but to go on with the case of the State versus Flandrau on a charge of rustling horses from the Bar Double M. But public sentiment was almost a unit in favor of the defendant.

The evidence of the prosecution was not so strong as it had been. All of his accomplices were dead and one of the men implicated had given it out in his last moments that the young man was not a party to the crime. The man who had owned the feed corral had sold out and gone to Colorado. The hotel clerk would not swear positively that the prisoner was the man he had seen with the other rustlers.

Curly had one important a.s.set no jury could forget. It counted for a good deal that Alec Flandrau, Billy Mackenzie, and Luck Cullison were known to be backing him, but it was worth much more that his wife of a week sat beside him in the courtroom. Every time they looked at the prisoner the jurymen saw too her dusky gallant little head and slender figure. They remembered the terrible experience through which she had so recently pa.s.sed. She had come through it to happiness. Every look and motion of the girl wife radiated love for the young scamp who had won her. And since they were tender-hearted old frontiersmen they did not intend to spoil her joy. Moreover, society could afford to take chances with this young fellow Flandrau. He had been wild no doubt, but he had shown since the real stuff that was in him. Long before they left the box each member of the jury knew that he was going to vote for acquittal.

It took the jury only one ballot to find a verdict of not guilty. The judge did not attempt to stop the uproar of glad cheers that shook the building when the decision was read. He knew it was not the prisoner so much they were cheering as the brave girl who had sat so pluckily for three days beside the husband she had made a man.

From the courtroom Curly walked out under the blue sky of Arizona a free man. But he knew that the best of his good fortune was that he did not go alone. For all the rest of their lives her firm little steps would move beside him to keep him true and steady. He could not go wrong now, for he was anch.o.r.ed to a responsibility that was a continual joy and wonder to him.

The End