Brand Blotters Part 34

"I have no news--yet."

"You mean----" Her eager glance swept over him. The brown eyes, which had been full of questioning, flashed to understanding. "You are not Lieutenant O'Connor?"

"Am I not?" he smiled.

"I mean--are you?"

"At your service, Miss Lee."

She had heard for years of this lieutenant of rangers, who was the terror of all Arizona "bad men." Her father, Jack Flatray, the range riders whom she knew--game men all--hailed Bucky O'Connor as a wonder. For coolness under fire, for ac.u.men, for sheer, unflawed nerve, and for his skill in that deadly game he played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes.

"Come in," the girl invited. "Father said, if you came, I was to keep you here until he got back or sent a messenger for you. He's hunting for the criminals in the Roaring Fork country. Of course, he didn't know when you would get here. At the time he left we hadn't been able to catch you on the wire. I signed Mr. Flatray's name at his suggestion, because he was in correspondence with you once about the Roaring Fork outlaws. He is out in the hills, too. He started half an hour after the kidnappers. But he isn't armed. I'm troubled about him."

Again the young man's white-toothed smile flashed. "You'd better be.

Anybody that goes hunting Black MacQueen unarmed ought to be right well insured."

She nodded, a shadow in her eyes. "Yes--but he would go. He doesn't mean them to see him, if he can help it."

"Black sees a heap he isn't expected to see. He has got eyes all over the hills, and they see by night as well as by day."

"Yes--I know he has spies everywhere; and he has the hill people terrorized, they say. You think this is his work?"

"It's a big thing--the kind of job he likes to tackle. Who else would dare do such a thing?"

"That's what father thinks. If he had stolen the President of the United States, it wouldn't have stirred up a bigger fuss. Newspaper men and detectives are hurrying here from all directions. They are sure to catch him."

"Are they?"

She noticed a curious, derisive contempt in the man's voice, and laid it to his vanity. "I don't mean that _they_ are. I mean that _you_ are sure to get him," she hastened to add. "Father thinks you are wonderful."

"I'm much obliged to him," said the man, with almost a sneer.

He seemed to have so good an opinion of himself that he was above praise even. Melissy was coming to the decision that she did not like him--which was disappointing, since she had expected to like him immensely.

"I didn't look for you till night. You wired you would be on number seven," she said. "I understood that was the earliest you could get here."

His explanation of the change was brief, and invited no further discussion. "I found I could make an earlier train."

"I'm glad you could. Father says it is always well to start on the trail while it is fresh."

"Have you ever seen this MacQueen, Miss Lee?" he asked.

"Not unless he was there when Mr. West was kidnapped."

"Did you know any of the men?"

She hesitated. "I thought one was Duncan Boone."

"What made you think so?"

"He was the leader, I think, moved the way he does." Her anger flashed for an instant. "And acted like him--detestably."

"Was he violent to West? Injure him?"

"No--he didn't do him any physical injury that I saw. I wasn't thinking about Mr. West."

"Surely he didn't lay hands on _you_!"

She looked up, in time to see the flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt sponged from his face. It stirred vague anger in her. "He was insolent and ungentlemanly."

"As how?"

"It doesn't matter how." Her manner specifically declined to particularize.

"Would you recognize him again if you met him? Describe him, if you can."

"Yes. I used to know him well--before he became known as an outlaw," she added after a perceptible hesitation. "There's something ravenous about him."

"You mean that he is fierce and bloodthirsty?"

"No--I don't mean that; though, for that matter, I don't think he would stick at anything. What I mean is that he is pantherine in his movements--more lithe and supple than most men are."

"Is he a big man?"

"No--medium size, and dark."

"There were four of them, you say?"

"Yes. Jack saw them, too, but at a distance."

"He reached you after they were out of sight?"

"They had been gone about five minutes when I saw him--five or ten. I couldn't be sure."

"Boone offered no personal indignity to you?"

"Why are you so sure?" she flashed.

"The story is that he is quite the ladies' man."

Melissy laughed scornfully.

At his request, she went over again the story of the abduction, telling everything save the matter of the ravished kisses. This she kept to herself. She did not quite know why, except that there was something she did not like about this Bucky O'Connor. He had a trick of narrowing his eyes and gloating over her, as a cat gloats over its expected kill.

However, his confidence impressed her. c.o.c.ksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than she needed a certificate that on occasion he could be merciless. On the other hand, he fitted very badly with the character of the young lieutenant of rangers, as Jack Flatray had sketched it for her. Her friend's description of his hero had been enthusiastic.

She decided that the young cattleman was a bad judge of men--though, of course, he had never actually met O'Connor.

"I reckon I'll not wait for your father's report, Miss Lee. I work independent of other men. That is how I get the wonderful results I do."