Crooked Trails and Straight Part 39

"Of my own free will," she added.

"I promised you a better argument than those I'd given you. Miss Cullison is that argument," Fendrick said.

The cattleman's set face had a look more deadly than words. It told Fendrick he would gladly have killed him where he stood. For Luck knew he was cornered and must yield. Neither Dominguez nor Blackwell would consent to let her leave otherwise.

"He brought me here to have a talk with you, Dad. You must sign any paper he wants you to sign."

"And did he promise to take you back home after our talk?"

"Miss Cullison would not want to leave as long as her father was here,"

Fendrick answered for her glibly with a smile that said more than the words.

"I'm going to hold you responsible for bringing her here."

Fendrick could not face steadily the eyes of his foe. They bored into him like gimlets.

"And responsible for getting her back home just as soon as I say the word," Luck added, the taut muscles standing out in his clenched jaw.

"I expect your say-so won't be final in this matter, Luck. But I'll take the responsibility. Miss Cullison will get home at the proper time."

"I'm not going home till you do," the girl broke in. "Oh, Dad, we've been so worried. You can't think."

"You've played a rotten trick on me, Fendrick. I wouldn't have thought it even of a sheepman."

"No use you getting crazy with the heat, Cullison. Your daughter asked me to bring her here, and I brought her. Of course I'm not going to break my neck getting her home where she can 'phone Bolt or Bucky O'Connor and have us rounded up. That ain't reasonable to expect. But I aim to do what's right. We'll all have supper together like sensible folks. Then Jose and I will give you the cabin for the night if you'll promise not to attempt to escape. In the morning maybe you'll see things different."

Fendrick calculated not without reason that the best thing to do would be to give Kate a chance for a long private talk with her father. Her influence would be more potent than any he could bring to bear.

After supper the door of the cabin was locked and a sentry posted. The prisoners were on parole, but Ca.s.s did not on that account relax his vigilance. For long he and his partner could hear a low murmur of voices from within the cabin. At length the lights went out and presently the voices died. But all through the night one or the other of the sheepmen patroled a beat that circled around and around the house.

Fendrick did not broach the subject at issue next morning till after breakfast.

"Well, what have you decided?" he asked at last.

"Let's hear about that compromise. What is it you offer?" Luck demanded gruffly.

"You sign the relinquishment and agree not to make us any trouble because we brought you here, and you may go by two o'clock."

"You want to reach Saguache with the relinquishment in time to file it before I could get to a 'phone. You don't trust me."

Fendrick smiled. "When we let you go we're trusting you a heap more than we would most men. But of course you're going to be sore about this and we don't want to put temptation in your way."

"I see. Well, I accept your terms. I'll make you no _legal_ trouble. But I tell you straight this thing ain't ended. It's only just begun. I'm going to run you out of this country before I'm through with you."

"Go to it. We'll see whether you make good."

"Where is that paper you want me to sign?"

Luck dashed off his signature and pushed the doc.u.ment from him. He hated the necessity that forced him to surrender. For himself he would have died rather than give way, but he had to think of his daughter and of his boy Sam who was engaged in a plot to hold up a train.

His stony eyes met those of the man across the table. "No need for me to tell you what I think of this. A white man wouldn't have done such a trick. It takes sheepherders and greasers to put across a thing so d.a.m.nable as dragging a woman into a feud."

Fendrick flushed angrily. "It's not my fault; you're a pigheaded obstinate chump. I used the only weapon left me."

Kate, standing straight and tall behind her father's chair, looked at their common foe with uncompromising scorn. "He is not to blame, Dad. He can't help it because he doesn't see how despicable a thing he has done."

Again the blood rushed to the face of the sheepman. "I reckon that will hold me hitched for the present, Miss Cullison. In the meantime I'll go file that homestead entry of mine. Nothing like living up to the opinion your friends have of you."

He wheeled away abruptly, but as he went out of the door one word came to him.

"Friends!" Kate had repeated, and her voice told fully the contempt she felt.

At exactly two o'clock Dominguez set the Cullisons on the homeward road.

He fairly dripped apologies for the trouble to which he and his friends had been compelled to put them.

Blackwell, who had arrived to take his turn as guard, stood in the doorway and sulkily watched them go.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE WAS THANKING G.o.d THE AFFAIR WAS ENDED]

From the river bed below the departing guests looked up at the cabin hidden in the pines. The daughter was thanking G.o.d in her heart that the affair was ended. Her father was vowing to himself that it had just begun.

CHAPTER XII

AN ARREST

After half a week in the saddle Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor of the Arizona Rangers and Curly Flandrau reached Saguache tired and travel-stained. They had combed the Rincons without having met hide or hair of the men they wanted. Early next morning they would leave town again and this time would make for Soapy Stone's horse ranch.

Bucky O'Connor was not disheartened. Though he was the best man hunter in Arizona, it was all in the day's work that criminals should sometimes elude him. But with Curly the issue was a personal one. He owed Luck Cullison a good deal and his imagination had played over the picture of that moment when he could go to Kate and tell her he had freed her father.

After reaching town the first thing each of them did was to take a bath, the second to get shaved. From the barber shop they went to the best restaurant in Saguache. Curly was still busy with his pie _a la mode_ when Burridge Thomas, United States Land Commissioner for that district, took the seat opposite and told to O'Connor a most interesting piece of news.

They heard him to an end without interruption. Then Curly spoke one word.

"Fendrick."

"Yes, sir, Ca.s.s Fendrick. Came in about one o'clock and handed me the relinquishment just as I've been telling you."

"Then filed on the claim himself, you said."

"Yes, took it up himself."

"Sure the signature to the relinquishment was genuine?"

"I'd take oath to it. As soon as he had gone I got out the original filing and compared the two. Couldn't be any possible mistake. n.o.body could have forged the signature. It is like Luck himself, strong and forceful and decided."