Crooked Trails and Straight

CROOKED TRAILS

AND STRAIGHT

BY

WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

AUTHOR OF

BRAND BLOTTERS, BUCKY O’CONNOR,

MAVERICKS, WYOMING, RIDGWAY OF

MONTANA, A TEXAS RANGER, etc.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

D. C. HUTCHISON

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS                        NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1913, by

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

PART I

CURLY

Across Dry Valley a dust cloud had been moving for hours. It rolled into Saguache at the brisk heels of a bunch of horses just about the time the town was settling itself to supper. At the intersection of Main and La Junta streets the cloud was churned to a greater volume and density. From out of the heart of it cantered a rider, who swung his pony as on a half dollar, and deflected the remuda toward Chunn’s corral.

The rider was in the broad-rimmed felt hat, the gray shirt, the plain leather chaps of a vaquero. The alkali dust of Arizona lay thick on every exposed inch of him, but youth bloomed inextinguishably through the grime. As he swept forward with a whoop to turn the lead horses it rang in his voice, announced itself in his carriage, was apparent in the modeling of his slim, hard body. Under other conditions he might have been a college freshman for age, but the competent confidence of manhood sat easily on his broad shoulders. He was already a graduate of that school of experience which always holds open session on the baked desert. Curly Flandrau had more than once looked into the chill eyes of death.

The leaders of the herd dribbled into the corral through the open gate, and the others crowded on their heels. Three more riders followed Curly into the enclosure. Upon them, too, the desert had sifted its white coat. The stained withers of the animals they rode told of long, steady travel. One of them, a red-haired young fellow of about the same age as Curly, swung stiffly from the saddle.

“Me for a square meal first off,” he gave out promptly.

“Not till we’ve finished this business, Mac. We’ll put a deal right through if Warren’s here,” decided a third member of the party. He was a tough-looking customer of nearly fifty. From out of his leathery sun-and-wind beaten face, hard eyes looked without expression. “Bad Bill” Cranston he was called, and the man looked as if he had earned his sobriquet.

“And what if he ain’t here?” snarled the fourth. “Are you aiming to sit down and wait for him?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Bad Bill answered. “Curly, want to ride up to the hotel and ask if Mr. Dave Warren is there? Bring him right down if he is.”

“And say, young fellow, don’t shout all over the place what your business is with him,” ordered the previous speaker sulkily. Lute Blackwell, a squat heavily muscled man of forty, had the manner of a bully. Unless his shifty eyes lied he was both cruel and vindictive.

Curly’s gaze traveled over him leisurely. Not a muscle in the boyish face moved, but in the voice one might have guessed an amused contempt. “All right. I won’t, since you mention it, Lute.”

The young man cantered up the dusty street toward the hotel. Blackwell trailed toward the windmill pump.

“Thought you’d fixed it with this Warren to be right on the spot so’s we could unload on him prompt,” he grumbled at Cranston without looking toward the latter.

“I didn’t promise he’d be hanging round your neck soon as you hit town,” Cranston retorted coolly. “Keep your shirt on, Lute. No use getting in a sweat.”

The owner of the corral sauntered from the stable and glanced over the bunch of horses milling around.

“Been traveling some,” he suggested to Bad Bill.

“A few. Seen anything of a man named Warren about town to-day?”

“He’s been down here se-ve-re-al times. Said he was looking for a party with stock to sell. Might you be the outfit he’s expecting?”

“We might.” Bad Bill took the drinking cup from Blackwell and drained it. “I reckon the dust was caked in my throat an inch deep.”

“Drive all the way from the Bar Double M?” asked the keeper of the corral, his eyes on the brand stamped on the flank of a pony circling past.

“Yep.”

Bad Bill turned away and began to unsaddle. He did not intend to volunteer any information, though on the other hand he did not want to stir suspicion by making a mystery for gossips to chew on.

“Looks like you been hitting the road at a right lively gait.”

Mac cut in. “Shoulder of my bronc’s chafed from the saddle. Got anything that’ll heal it?”

“You bet I have.” The man hurried into the stable and the redheaded cowpuncher winked across the back of his horse at Bill.

The keeper of the stable and the young man were still busy doctoring the sore when Curly arrived with Warren. The buyer was a roundbodied man with black gimlet eyes that saw much he never told. The bargain he drove was a hard one, but it did not take long to come to terms at about one-third the value of the string he was purchasing. Very likely he had his suspicions, but he did not voice them. No doubt they cut a figure in the price. He let it be understood that he was a supply agent for the rebels in Mexico. Before the bills were warm in the pockets of the sellers, his vaqueros were mounted and were moving the remuda toward the border.

Curly and Mac helped them get started. As they rode back to the corral a young man came out from the stable. Flandrau forgot that there were reasons why he wanted just now to be a stranger in the land with his identity not advertised. He let out a shout.

“Oh you, Slats Davis!”

“Hello, Curly! How are things a-comin’?”

“Fine. When did you blow in to Saguache? Ain’t you off your run some?”

They had ridden the range together and had frolicked around on a dozen boyish larks. Their ways had suited each other and they had been a good deal more than casual bunkies. To put it mildly the meeting was likely to prove embarrassing.

“Came down to see about getting some cows for the old man from the Fiddleback outfit,” Davis explained. “Didn’t expect to bump into friends ’way down here. You riding for the Bar Double M?”

There was a momentary silence. Curly’s vigilant eyes met those of his old side partner. What did Slats know? Had he been in the stable while the remuda was still in the corral? Had he seen them with Bad Bill and Blackwell? Were his suspicions already active?

“No, I’m riding for the Map of Texas,” Flandrau answered evenly.

“Come on, Curly. Let’s go feed our faces,” Mac called from the stable.

Flandrau nodded. “You still with the Hashknife?” he asked Davis.

“Still with ’em. I’ve been raised to assistant foreman.”

“Bully for you. That’s great. All right, Mac. I’m coming. That’s sure great, old hoss. Well, see you later, Slats.”

Flandrau followed Mac, dissatisfied with himself for leaving his friend so cavalierly. In the old days they had told each other everything, had talked things out together before many a campfire. He guessed Slats would be hurt, but he had to think of his partners in this enterprise.

After supper they took a room at the hotel and divided the money Warren had paid for the horses. None of them had slept for the last fifty hours and Mac proposed to tumble into bed at once.

Bad Bill shook his head. “I wouldn’t, Mac. Let’s hit the trail and do our sleeping in the hills. There’s too many telephone lines into this town to suit me.”

“Sho! We made a clean getaway, and we’re plumb wore out. Our play isn’t to hike out like we were scared stiff of something. What we want to do is to act as if we could look every darned citizen in the face. Mac’s sure right,” Curly agreed.

“You kids make me tired. As if you knew anything about it. I’m going to dust muy pronto,” Blackwell snarled.

“Sure. Whenever you like. You go and we’ll stay. Then everybody’ll be satisfied. We got to split up anyhow,” Mac said.

Bad Bill looked at Blackwell and nodded. “That’s right. We don’t all want to pull a blue streak. That would be a dead give away. Let the kids stay if they want to.”

“So as they can round on us if they’re nabbed,” Blackwell sneered.

Cranston called him down roughly. “That’ll be enough along that line, Lute. I don’t stand for any more cracks like it.”

Blackwell, not three months out from the penitentiary, faced the other with an ugly look in his eyes. He was always ready to quarrel, but he did not like to fight unless he had a sure thing. He knew Bad Bill was an ugly customer when he once got started.

“Didn’t mean any harm,” the ex-convict growled. “But I don’t like this sticking around town. I tell you straight I don’t like it.”

“Then I wouldn’t stay if I were you,” Curly suggested promptly. “Mac and I have got a different notion. So we’ll tie to Saguache for a day or two.”

As soon as the older men had gone the others tumbled into bed and fell asleep at once. Daylight was sifting in through the open window before their eyes opened. Somebody was pounding on the bedroom door, which probably accounted for Flandrau’s dream that a sheriff was driving nails in the lid of a coffin containing one Curly.

Mac was already out of bed when his partner’s feet hit the floor.

“What’s up, Mac?”

The eyes of the redheaded puncher gleamed with excitement. His six-gun was in his hand. By the look of him he was about ready to whang loose through the door.

“Hold your horses, you chump,” Curly sang out “It’s the hotel clerk. I left a call with him.”

But it was not the hotel clerk after all. Through the door came a quick, jerky voice.

“That you, Curly? For God’s sake, let me in.”

Before he had got the words out the door was open. Slats came in and shut it behind him. He looked at Mac, the forty-five shaking in the boy’s hand, and he looked at Flandrau.

“They’re after you,” he said, breathing fast as if he had been running.

“Who?” fired Curly back at him.

“The Bar Double M boys. They just reached town.”

“Put up that gun, Mac, and move into your clothes immediate,” ordered Curly. Then to Davis: “Go on. Unload the rest. What do they know?”

“They inquired for you and your friend here down at the Legal Tender. The other members of your party they could only guess at.”

“Have we got a chance to make our getaway?” Mac asked.

Davis nodded. “Slide out through the kitchen, cut into the alley, and across lots to the corral. We’ll lock the door and I’ll hold them here long as I can.”

“Good boy, Slats. If there’s a necktie party you’ll get the first bid,” Curly grinned.

Slats looked at him, cold and steady. Plainer than words he was telling his former friend that he would not joke with a horse thief. For the sake of old times he would save him if he could, but he would call any bluffs about the whole thing being a lark.

Curly’s eyes fell away. It came to him for the first time that he was no longer an honest man. Up till this escapade he had been only wild, but now he had crossed the line that separates decent folks from outlaws. He had been excited with liquor when he joined in this fool enterprise, but that made no difference now. He was a rustler, a horse thief. If he lived a hundred years he could never get away from the disgrace of it.

Not another word was said while they hurried into their clothes. But as Curly passed out of the door he called back huskily. “Won’t forget what you done for us, Slats.”

Again their eyes met. Davis did not speak, but the chill look on his face told Flandrau that he had lost a friend.

The two young men ran down the back stairs, passed through the kitchen where a Chinese cook was getting breakfast, and out into the bright sunlight. Before they cut across to the corral their eyes searched for enemies. Nobody was in sight except the negro janitor of a saloon busy putting empty bottles into a barrel.

“Won’t do to be in any hurry. The play is we’re gentlemen of leisure, just out for an amble to get the mo’ning air,” Curly cautioned.

While they fed, watered, and saddled they swapped gossip with the wrangler. It would not do to leave the boy with a story of two riders in such a hurry to hit the trail that they could not wait to feed their bronchos. So they stuck it out while the animals ate, though they were about as contented as a two-pound rainbow trout on a hook. One of them was at the door all the time to make sure the way was still clear. At that they shaved it fine, for as they rode away two men were coming down the street.

“Kite Bonfils,” Curly called to his partner.

No explanation was needed. Bonfils was the foreman of the Bar Double M. He let out a shout as he caught sight of them and began to run forward. Simultaneously his gun seemed to jump from its holster.

Mac’s quirt sang and his pony leaped to a canter in two strides. A bullet zipped between them. Another struck the dust at their heels. Faintly there came to the fugitives the sound of the foreman’s impotent curses. They had escaped for the time.

Presently they passed the last barb wire fence and open country lay before them. It did not greatly matter which direction they followed, so long as they headed into the desert.

“What we’re looking for is a country filled with absentees,” Curly explained with a grin.

Neither of them had ever been in serious trouble before and both regretted the folly that had turned their drunken spree into a crime. Once or twice they came to the edge of a quarrel, for Mac was ready to lay the blame on his companion. Moreover, he had reasons why the thing he had done loomed up as a heinous offense.

His reasons came out before the camp fire on Dry Sandy that evening. They were stretched in front of it trying to make a smoke serve instead of supper. Mac broke a gloomy silence to grunt out jerkily a situation he could no longer keep to himself.

“Here’s where I get my walking papers I reckon. No rustlers need apply.”

Curly shot a slant glance at him. “Meaning—the girl?”

The redheaded puncher nodded. “She’ll throw me down sure. Why shouldn’t she? I tell you I’ve ruined my life. You’re only a kid. What you know about it?”

He took from his coat pocket a photograph and showed it to his friend. The sweet clean face of a wholesome girl smiled at Curly.

“She’s ce’tainly a right nice young lady. I’ll bet she stands by you all right. Where’s she live at?”

“Waits in a restaurant at Tombstone. We was going to be married soon as we had saved five hundred dollars.” Mac swallowed hard. “And I had to figure out this short cut to the money whilst I was drunk. As if she’d look at money made that way. Why, we’d a-been ready by Christmas if I’d only waited.”

Curly tried to cheer him up, but did not make much of a job at it. The indisputable facts were that Mac was an outlaw and a horse thief. Very likely a price was already on his head.

The redheaded boy rolled another cigarette despondently. “Sho! I’ve cooked my goose. She’ll not look at me—even if they don’t send me to the pen.” In a moment he added huskily, staring into the deepening darkness: “And she’s the best ever. Her name’s Myra Anderson.”

Abruptly Mac got up and disappeared in the night, muttering something about looking after the horses. His partner understood well enough what was the matter. The redheaded puncher was in a stress of emotion, and like the boy he was he did not want Curly to know it.

Flandrau pretended to be asleep when Mac returned half an hour later.

They slept under a live oak with the soundness of healthy youth. For the time they forgot their troubles. Neither of them knew that as the hours slipped away red tragedy was galloping closer to them.

The sun was shining in his face when Curly wakened. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Mac was nowhere in sight. Probably he had gone to get the horses.

A sound broke the stillness of the desert. It might have been the explosion of a giant firecracker, but Flandrau knew it was nothing so harmless. He leaped to his feet, and at the same instant Mac came running over the brow of the hill. A smoking revolver was in his hand.

From behind the hill a gun cracked—then a second—and a third. Mac stumbled over his feet and pitched forward full length on the ground. His friend ran toward him, forgetting the revolver that lay in its holster under the live oak. Every moment he expected to see Mac jump up, but the figure stretched beside the cholla never moved. Flandrau felt the muscles round his heart tighten. He had seen sudden death before, but never had it come so near home.

A bullet sent up a spurt of dust in front of him, another just on the left. Riders were making a half circle around the knoll and closing in on him. In his right mind Curly would have been properly frightened. But now he thought only of Mac lying there so still in the sand. Right into the fire zone he ran, knelt beside his partner, and lifted the red-thatched head. A little hole showed back of the left ear and another at the right temple. A bullet had plowed through the boy’s skull.

Softly Flandrau put the head back in the sand and rose to his feet. The revolver of the dead puncher was in his hand. The attackers had stopped shooting, but when they saw him rise a rifle puffed once more. The riders were closing in on him now. The nearest called to him to surrender. Almost at the same time a red hot pain shot through the left arm of the trapped rustler. Someone had nipped him from the rear.

Curly saw red. Surrender nothing! He would go down fighting. As fast as he could blaze he emptied Mac’s gun. When the smoke cleared the man who had ordered him to give up was slipping from his horse. Curly was surprised, but he knew he must have hit him by chance.

“We got him. His gun’s empty,” someone shouted.

Cautiously they closed in, keeping him covered all the time. Of a sudden the plain tilted up to meet the sky. Flandrau felt himself swaying on his feet. Everything went black. The boy had fainted.

When he came to himself strange faces were all around him, and there were no bodies to go with them. They seemed to float about in an odd casual sort of way. Then things cleared.

“He’s coming to all right,” one said.

“Good. I’d hate to have him cheat the rope,” another cried with an oath.

“That’s right. How is Cullison?”

This was said to another who had just come up.

“Hard hit. Looks about all in. Got him in the side.”

The rage had died out of Curly. In a flash he saw all that had come of their drunken spree: the rustling of the Bar Double M stock, the discovery, the death of his friend and maybe of Cullison, the certain punishment that would follow. He was a horse thief caught almost in the act. Perhaps he was a murderer too. And the whole thing had been entirely unpremeditated.

Flandrau made a movement to rise and they jerked him to his feet.

“You’ve played hell,” one of the men told the boy.

He was a sawed-off little fellow known as Dutch. Flandrau had seen him in the Map of Texas country try a year or two before. The rest were strangers to the boy. All of them looked at him out of hard hostile eyes. He was scarcely a human being to them; rather a wolf to be stamped out of existence as soon as it was convenient. A chill ran down Curly’s spine. He felt as if someone were walking on his grave.

At a shift in the group Flandrau’s eyes fell on his friend lying in the sand with face turned whitely to the sky he never would see again. It came over him strangely enough how Mac used to break into a little chuckling laugh when he was amused. He had quit laughing now for good and all. A lump came into the boy’s throat and he had to work it down before he spoke.

“There’s a picture in his pocket, and some letters I reckon. Send them to Miss Myra Anderson, Tombstone, care of one of the restaurants. I don’t know which one.”

“Send nothin’,” sneered Dutch, and coupled it with a remark no decent man makes of a woman on a guess.

Because of poor Mac lying there with the little hole in his temple Curry boiled over. With a jerk his right arm was free. It shot out like a pile-driver, all his weight behind the blow. Dutch went down as if a charging bull had flung him.

Almost simultaneously Curly hit the sand hard. Before he could stir three men were straddled over his anatomy. One of them ground his head into the dust.

“You would, eh? We’ll see about that. Jake, bring yore rope.”

They tied the hands of the boy, hauled him to his feet, and set him astride a horse. In the distance a windmill of the Circle C ranch was shining in the morning sun. Toward the group of buildings clustered around this two of his captors started with Flandrau. A third was already galloping toward the ranch house to telephone for a doctor.

As they rode along a fenced lane which led to the house a girl came flying down the steps. She swung herself to the saddle just vacated by the messenger and pulled the horse round for a start. At sight of those coming toward her she called out quickly.

“How is dad?” The quiver of fear broke in her voice.

“Don’ know yet, Miss Kate,” answered one of the men. “He’s right peart though. Says for to tell you not to worry. Don’t you, either. We’ve got here the mangy son of a gun that did it.”

Before he had finished she was off like an arrow shot from a bow, but not until her eyes had fallen on the youth sitting bareheaded and bloody between the guns of his guard. Curly noticed that she had given a shudder, as one might at sight of a mangled mad dog which had just bit a dear friend. Long after the pounding of her pony’s hoofs had died away the prisoner could see the startled eyes of fear and horror that had rested on him. As Curly kicked his foot out of the stirrup to dismount a light spring wagon rolled past him. In its bed were a mattress and pillows. The driver whipped up the horse and went across the prairie toward Dry Sandy Creek. Evidently he was going to bring home the wounded man.

His guards put Flandrau in the bunk house and one of them sat at the door with a rifle across his knees. The cook, the stable boy, and redheaded Bob Cullison, a nephew of the owner of the ranch, peered past the vaquero at the captive with the same awe they would have yielded to a caged panther.

“Why, he’s only a kid, Buck,” the cook whispered.

Buck chewed tobacco impassively. “Old enough to be a rustler and a killer.”

Bob’s blue eyes were wide with interest “I’ll bet he’s a regular Billy the Kid,” murmured the half-grown boy to the other lad.

“Sure. Course he is. He’s got bad eyes all right.”

“I’ll bet he’s got notches on his gun. Say, if Uncle Luck dies—” Bob left the result to the imagination.

The excitement at the Circle C increased. Horses cantered up. Men shouted to each other the news. Occasionally some one came in to have a look at the “bad man” who had shot Luck Cullison. Young Flandrau lay on a cot and stared at the ceiling, paying no more attention to them than if they had been blocks of wood. It took no shrewdness to see that there burned in them a still cold anger toward him that might easily find expression in lynch law.

The crunch of wagon wheels over disintegrated granite drifted to the bunk house.

“They’re bringing the boss back,” Buck announced from the door to one of his visitors.

The man joined him and looked over his shoulder. “Miss Kate there too?”

“Yep. Say, if the old man don’t pull through it will break her all up.”

The boy on the bed turned his face to the wall. He had not cried for ten years, but now he would have liked the relief of tears. The luck had broken bad for him, but it would be the worst ever if his random shot were to make Kate Cullison an orphan. A big lump rose in his throat and would not stay down. The irony of it was that he was staged for the part of a gray wolf on the howl, while he felt more like a little child that has lost its last friend.

After a time there came again the crisp roll of wheels.

“Doc Brown,” announced Buck casually to the other men in the bunk house.

There was more than one anxious heart at the Circle C waiting for the verdict of the bowlegged baldheaded little man with the satchel, but not one of them—no, not even Kate Cullison herself—was in a colder fear than Curly Flandrau. He was entitled to a deep interest, for if Cullison should die he knew that he would follow him within a few hours. These men would take no chances with the delays of the law.

The men at the bunk house had offered more than once to look at Curly’s arm, but the young man declined curtly. The bleeding had stopped, but there was a throb in it as if someone were twisting a red-hot knife in the wound. After a time Doctor Brown showed up in the doorway of the men’s quarters.

“Another patient here, they tell me,” he grunted in the brusque way that failed to conceal the kindest of hearts.

Buck nodded toward Flandrau.

“Let’s have a look at your arm, young fellow,” the doctor ordered, mopping his bald head with a big bandanna handkerchief.

“What about the boss?” asked Jake presently.

“Mighty sick man, looks like. Tell you more to-morrow morning.”

“Do you mean that he—that he may not get well?” Curly pumped out, his voice not quite steady.

Doctor Brown looked at him curiously. Somehow this boy did not fit the specifications of the desperado that had been poured into his ears.

“Don’t know yet. Won’t make any promises.” He had been examining the wound in a businesslike way. “Looks like the bullet’s still in there. Have to give you an anesthetic while I dig it out.”

“Nothin’ doing,” retorted Flandrau. “You round up the pill in there and I’ll stand the grief. When this lead hypodermic jabbed into my arm it sorter gave me one of them annie-what-d’ye-call-’em—and one’s a-plenty for me.”

“It’ll hurt,” the little man explained.

“Expect I’ll find that out. Go to it.”

Brown had not been for thirty years carrying a medicine case across the dusty deserts of the frontier without learning to know men. He made no further protest but set to work.

Twenty minutes later Curly lay back on the bunk with a sudden faintness. He was very white about the lips, but he had not once flinched from the instruments.

The doctor washed his hands and his tools, pulled on his coat, and came across to the patient.

“Feeling like a fighting cock, are you? Ready to tackle another posse?” he asked.

“Not quite.” The prisoner glanced toward his guards and his voice fell to a husky whisper. “Say, Doc. Pull Cullison through. Don’t let him die.”

“Hmp! Do my best, young fellow. Seems to me you’re thinking of that pretty late.”

Brown took up his medicine case and went back to the house.