Crooked Trails and Straight Part 45

"Don't you move," the boy warned.

"What does this tommyrot mean?" the sheepman demanded angrily.

"It means that you are coming back with me to the ranch. That's what it means."

"What for?"

"Never you mind what for."

"Oh, go to Mexico," Ca.s.s flung back impatiently. "Think we're in some fool moving-picture play, you blamed young idiot. Put up that gun."

Shrilly Bob retorted. He was excited enough to be dangerous. "Don't you get the wrong idea. I'm going to make this stick. You'll turn and go back with me to the Circle C."

"And you'll travel to Yuma first thing you know, you young Jesse James.

What _you_ need is a pair of leather chaps applied to your hide."

"You'll go home with me, just the same."

"You've got one more guess coming, kid. I'll not go without knowing why."

"You're wanted for the W. & S. Express robbery. Blackwell has confessed."

"Confessed that I did it?" Fendrick inquired scornfully.

"Says you were in it with him. I ain't a-going to discuss it with you.

Swing that horse round; and don't make any breaks, or there'll be mourning at the C. F. ranch."

Ca.s.s sat immovable as the sphinx. He was thinking that he might as well face the charge now as any time. Moreover, he had reasons for wanting to visit the Circle C. They had to do with a tall, slim girl who never looked at him without scorn in her dark, flashing eyes.

"All right. I'll go back with you, but not under a gun."

"You'll go the way I say."

"Don't think it. I've said I'll go. That settles it. But I won't stand for any gun-play capture."

"You'll have to stand for it."

Fendrick's face set. "Will I? It's up to you, then. Let's see you make me."

Sitting there with his gaze steadily on the boy, Ca.s.s had Bob at a disadvantage. If the sheep owner had tried to break away into the chaparral. Bob could have blazed away at him, but he could not shoot a man looking at him with cynical, amused eyes. He could understand the point of view of his adversary. If Fendrick rode into the Circle C under compulsion of a gun in the hands of a boy he would never hear the end of the laugh on him.

"You won't try to light out, will you?"

"I've got no notion of lighting out."

Bob put up his big blue gun reluctantly. Never before had it been trained on a human being, and it was a wrench to give up the thought of bringing in the enemy as a prisoner. But he saw he could not pull it off. Fendrick had declined to scare, had practically laughed him out of it. The boy had not meant his command as a bluff, but Ca.s.s knew him better than he did himself.

They turned toward the Circle C.

"Must have been taking lessons on how to bend a gun. You in training for sheriff, or are you going to take Bucky's place with the rangers?"

Fendrick asked with casual impudence, malicious amus.e.m.e.nt gleaming from his lazy eyes.

Bob, very red about the ears, took refuge in a sulky silence. He was being guyed, and not by an inch did he propose to compromise the Cullison dignity.

"From the way you go at it, I figure you an old hand at the hold-up game.

Wonder if you didn't pull off the W. & S. raid yourself."

Bob writhed impotently. At this sort of thing he was no match for the other. Fendrick, now in the best of humors, planted lazily his offhand barbs.

Kate was seated on the porch sewing. She rose in surprise when her cousin and the sheepman appeared. They came with jingling spurs across the plaza toward her. Bob was red as a turkeyc.o.c.k, but Fendrick wore his most devil-may-care insouciance.

"Where's Uncle Luck, sis? I've brought this fellow back with me. Caught him on the mesa," explained the boy sulkily.

Fendrick bowed rather extravagantly and flashed at the girl a smiling double-row of strong white teeth. "He's qualifying for a moving-picture show actor, Miss Cullison. I hadn't the heart to disappoint him when he got that cannon trained on me. So here I am."

Kate looked at him and then let her gaze travel to her cousin. She somehow gave the effect of judging him of negligible value.

"I think he's in his office, Bob. I'll go see."

She went swiftly, and presently her father came out. Kate did not return.

Luck looked straight at Ca.s.s with the uncompromising hostility so characteristic of him. Neither of the men spoke. It was Bob who made the necessary explanations. The sheepman heard them with a polite derision that suggested an impersonal amus.e.m.e.nt at the situation.

"I've been looking for you," Luck said bluntly, after his nephew had finished.

"So I gathered from young Jesse James. He intimated it over the long blue barrel of his cannon. Anything particular, or just a pleasant social call?"

"You're in bad on this W. & S. robbery. I reckoned you would be safer in jail till it's cleared up."

"You still sheriff, Mr. Cullison? Somehow I had got a notion you had quit the job."

"I'm an interested party. There's new evidence, not manufactured, either."

"Well, well!"

"We'll take the stage into town and see what O'Connor says--that is, if you've got time to go." Luck could be as formal in his sarcasm as his neighbor.

"With such good company on the way I'll have to make time."

The stage did not usually leave till about half past one. Presently Kate announced dinner. A little awkwardly Luck invited the sheepman to join them. Fendrick declined. He was a Fletcherite, he informed Cullison ironically, and was in the habit of missing meals occasionally. This would be one of the times.

His host hung in the doorway. Seldom at a loss to express himself, he did not quite know how to put into words what he was thinking. His enemy understood.

"That's all right. You've satisfied the demands of hospitality. Go eat your dinner. I'll be right here on the porch when you get through."

Kate, who was standing beside her father, spoke quietly.

"There's a place for you, Mr. Fendrick. We should be very pleased to have you join us. People who happen to be at the Circle C at dinner time are expected to eat here."