Crooked Trails and Straight Part 7

"And so you naturally defended yourself. That's how we understand it.

Father wants it made clear that he feels you could have done nothing else."

"Much obliged. I've been sorry ever since I hit him, and not only on my own account."

"Then none of us need to hold hard feelings." The girl looked at her father, who answered her appeal with a grim nod, and then she turned again to the young rustler a little timidly. "I wonder if you would mind if I asked you a question."

"You've earned the right to ask as many as you like."

"It's about---- We have been told you know the man they call Soapy Stone.

Is that true?"

Flandrau's eyes took on a stony look. It was as if something had sponged all the boyishness from his face. Still trying to get him to give away his partners in the rustling, were they? Well, he would show them he could take his medicine without squealing.

"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't."

"Oh, but you don't see what we mean. It isn't that we want to hurt you."

She spoke in a quick eager voice of protest.

"No, you just want me to squeal on my friends to save my own hide. Nothing doing, Miss Cullison."

"No. You're wrong. Why are you so suspicious?"

Curly laughed bitterly. "Your boys were asking that question about Soapy last night. They had a rope round my neck at the time. Nothing unfriendly in the matter, of course. Just a casual interest in my doings."

Cullison was looking at him with the steel eyes that bored into him like a gimlet. Now he spoke sharply.

"I've got an account running with Soapy Stone. Some day I'll settle it likely. But that ain't the point now. Do you know his friends--the bunch he trails with?"

Wariness still seemed to crouch in the cool eyes of Flandrau.

"And if I say yes, I'll bet your next question will be about the time and the place I last saw them."

Kate picked up a photograph from the table and handed it to the prisoner.

"We're not interested in his friends--except one of them. Did you ever see the boy that sat for that picture?"

The print was a snapshot of a boy about nineteen, a good looking handsome fellow, a little sulky around the mouth but with a pair of straight honest eyes.

Curly shook his head slowly. Yet he was vaguely reminded of someone he knew. Glancing up, he found instantly the clew to what had puzzled him.

The young man in the picture was like Kate Cullison, like her father too for that matter.

"He's your brother." The words were out before Flandrau could stop them.

"Yes. You've never met him?"

"No."

Cullison had been watching the young man steadily. "Never saw him with Soapy Stone?"

"No."

"Never heard Stone speak of Sam Cullison?"

"No. Soapy doesn't talk much about who his friends are."

The ex-sheriff nodded. "I've met him."

Of course he had met him. Curly knew the story of how in one drive he had made a gather of outlaws that had brought fame to him. Soapy had broken through the net, but the sheriff had followed him into the hills alone and run him to earth. What pa.s.sed between the men n.o.body ever found out. Stone had repeatedly given it out that he could not be taken alive. But Cullison had brought him down to the valley bound and cowed. In due season the bandits had gone over the road to Yuma. Soapy and the others had sworn to get their revenge some day. Now they were back in the hills at their old tricks. Was it possible that Cullison's son was with them, caught in a trap during some drunken frolic just as Curly had been? In what way could Stone pay more fully the debt of hate he owed the former sheriff than by making his son a villain?

The little doctor came briskly into the room.

"Everybody out but the nurse. You've had company enough for one day, Luck," he announced cheerily.

Kate followed Maloney and his prisoner to the porch.

"About the letters of your friend that was shot," she said to Curly.

"Doctor Brown was telling me what you said. I'll see they reach Miss Anderson. Do you know in what restaurant she works?"

"No. Mac didn't tell me." The boy gulped to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. "They was expecting to get married soon."

"I--I'll write to her," Kate promised, her eyes misty.

"I'd be obliged, Miss. Mac was a good boy. Anyone will tell you that. And he was awful fond of her. He talked about her that last night before the camp fire. I led him into this."

"I'll tell her what you say."

"Do. Tell her he felt bad about what he had done. Bad companions got him going wrong, but he sure would have settled down into a good man. That's straight goods, too. You write it strong."

The girl's eyes were s.h.i.+ny with tears. "Yes," she answered softly.

"I ain't any Harvard A. B. Writing letters ain't my long suit. I'm always disremembering whether a man had ought to say have went and have knew.

Verbs are the beatingest things. But I know you'll fix it up right so as to let that little girl down easy."

"I've changed my mind. I'll not write but go to see her."

Curly could only look his thanks. Words seemed strangely inadequate. But Kate understood the boy's unspoken wish and nodded her head rea.s.suringly as he left the room.

CHAPTER V

LAURA LONDON

Kite Bonfils and Maloney took Curly back to Saguache and turned him over to Sheriff Bolt.

"How about bail?" Maloney asked.