Crooked Trails and Straight - William MacLeod Raine (the top 100 crime novels of all time txt) 📗
- Author: William MacLeod Raine
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Your plainsman is a taciturn individual. These two rode for an hour without exchanging a syllable. Then Curly was moved to talk.
“Can you tell me how it is a man can get fond of so Godforsaken a country? Cactus and greasewood and mesquite, and for a change mesquite and greasewood and cactus! Nothing but sand washes and sand hills, except the naked mountains ’way off with their bones sticking through. But in the mo’ning like this, when the world’s kind o’ smiley with the sunshine, or after dark when things are sorter violet soft and the mountains lose their edges—say, would you swap it for any other country on earth?”
Maloney nodded. He had felt that emotion a hundred times, though he had never put it into words.
At Willow Wash their ways diverged. They parted with a casual “So-long; see you later.” Curly was striking for the headwaters of Dead Cow Creek, where Soapy Stone had a horse ranch.
He put up that night at the place of a nester in the foothills. His host looked at him curiously when he mentioned his destination, but he did not say anything. It was none of his business how many young fellows rode to Soapy’s ranch.
Flandrau took the trail again next morning after breakfast. About two o’clock he reached a little park in the hills, in the middle of which, by a dry creek, lay a ranch.
The young man at first thought the place was deserted for the day, but when he called a girl appeared at the door. She smiled up at him with the lively interest any ranch girl may be expected to feel in a stranger who happens to be both young and good looking.
She was a young person of soft curves and engaging dimples. Beneath the brown cheeks of Arizona was a pink that came and went very attractively.
Curly took off his dusty gray hat. “Buenos tardes; senorita! I’ll bet I’m too late to draw any dinner.”
“Buenos, senor,” she answered promptly. “I’ll bet you’d lose your money.”
He swung from the saddle. “That’s good hearing. When a fellow has had his knees clamped to the side of a bronch for seven hours he’s sure ready for the dinner bell.”
“You can wash over there by the pump. There’s a towel on the fence.”
She disappeared into the house, and Curly took care of his horse, washed, and sauntered back to the porch. He could smell potatoes frying and could hear the sizzling of ham and eggs.
While he ate the girl flitted in and out, soft-footed and graceful, replenishing his plate from time to time.
Presently he discovered that her father was away hunting strays on Sunk Creek, that the nearest neighbor was seven miles distant, and that Stone’s ranch was ten miles farther up Dead Cow.
“Ever meet a lad called Sam Cullison?” the guest asked carelessly.
Curly was hardly prepared to see the color whip into her cheeks or to meet the quick stabbing look she fastened on him.
“You’re looking for him, are you?” she said.
“Thought while I was here I’d look him up. I know his folks a little.”
“Do you know him?”
He shook his head. She looked at him very steadily before she spoke.
“You haven’t met him yet but you want to. Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Will you have another egg?”
Flandrau laughed. “No, thanks. Staying up at Stone’s, is he?”
“How should I know who’s staying at Stone’s?”
It was quite plain she did not intend to tell anything that would hurt young Cullison.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I ain’t lost him any to speak of,” the young man drawled.
“Are you expecting to stop in the hills long—or just visiting?”
“Yes,” Curly answered, with his most innocent blank wall look.
“Yes which?”
“Why, whichever you like, Miss London. What’s worrying you? If you’ll ask me plain out I’ll know how to answer you.”
“So you know my name?”
“Anything strange about that? The Bar 99 is the London brand. I saw your calves in the corral with their flanks still sore. Naturally I assume the young lady I meet here is Miss Laura London.”
She defended her suspicions. “Folks come up here with their mysterious questions. A person would think nobody lived on Dead Cow but outlaws and such, to hear some of you valley people tell it.”
“There’s nothing mysterious about me and my questions. I’m just a lunkheaded cowpuncher out of a job. What did you think I was?”
“What do you want with Sam Cullison? Are you friendly to him? Or aren’t you?”
“Ladies first. Are you friendly to him? Or aren’t you?”
Curly smiled gaily across the table at her. A faint echo of his pleasantry began to dimple the corners of her mouth. It lit her eyes and spread from them till the prettiest face on the creek wrinkled with mirth. Both of them relaxed to peals of laughter, and neither of them quite knew the cause of their hilarity.
“Oh, you!” she reproved when she had sufficiently recovered.
“So you thought I was a detective or a deputy sheriff. That’s certainly funny.”
“For all I know yet you may be one.”
“I never did see anyone with a disposition so dark-complected as yours. If you won’t put them suspicions to sleep I’ll have to table my cards.” From his pocket he drew a copy of the Saguache Sentinel and showed her a marked story. “Maybe that will explain what I’m doing up on Dead Cow.”
This was what Laura London read:
From Mesa comes the news of another case of bold and flagrant rustling. On Friday night a bunch of horses belonging to the Bar Double M were rounded up and driven across the mountains to this city. The stolen animals were sold here this morning, after which the buyers set out at once for the border and the thieves made themselves scarce. It is claimed that the rustlers were members of the notorious Soapy Stone outfit. Two of the four were identified, it is alleged, as William Cranston, generally known as “Bad Bill,” and a young vaquero called “Curly” Flandrau.
At the time of going to press posses are out after both the outlaws and the stolen horses. Chances of overtaking both are considered excellent. All likely points and outlying ranches have been notified by telephone whenever possible.
In case the guilty parties are apprehended the Sentinel hopes an example will be made of them that will deter others of like stamp from a practice that has of late been far too common. Lawlessness seems to come in cycles. Just now the southern tier of counties appears to be suffering from such a sporadic attack. Let all good men combine to stamp it out. The time has passed when Arizona must stand as a synonym for anarchy.
She looked up at the young man breathlessly, her pretty lips parted, her dilated eyes taking him in solemnly. A question trembled on her lips.
“Say it,” advised Flandrau.
The courage to ask what she was thinking came back in a wave. “Then I will. Are you a rustler?”
“That’s what the paper says, don’t it?”
“Are you this man mentioned here? What’s his name—‘Curly’ Flandrau?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re a rustler?”
“What do you think? Am I more like a rustler than a deputy sheriff? Stands to reason I can’t be both.”
Her eyes did not leave him. She brushed aside his foolery impatiently. “You don’t even deny it.”
“I haven’t yet. I expect I will later.”
“Why do men do such things?” she went on, letting the hands that held the paper drop into her lap helplessly. “You don’t look bad. Anyone would think——”
Her sentence tailed out and died away. She was still looking at Curly, but he could see that her mind had flown to someone else. He would have bet a month’s pay that she was thinking of another lad who was wild but did not look bad.
Flandrau rose and walked round the table to her. “Much obliged, Miss Laura. I’ll shake hands on that with you. You’ve guessed it. Course, me being so ‘notorious’ I hate to admit it, but I ain’t bad any more than he is.”
She gave him a quick shy look. He had made a center shot she was not expecting. But, womanlike, she did not admit it.
“You mean this ‘Bad Bill’?”
“You know who I mean all right. His name is Sam Cullison. And you needn’t to tell me where he is. I’ll find him.”
“I know you don’t mean any harm to him.” But she said it as if she were pleading with him.
“C’rect. I don’t. Can you tell me how to get to Soapy Stone’s horse ranch from here, Miss London?”
She laughed. Her doubts were vanishing like mist before the sunshine. “Good guess. At least he was there the last I heard.”
“And I expect your information is pretty recent.”
That drew another little laugh accompanied by a blush.
“Don’t you think I have told you enough for one day, Mr. Flandrau?”
“That ‘Mr.’ sounds too solemn. My friends call me ‘Curly,’” he let her know.
She remembered that he was a stranger and a rustler and she drew herself up stiffly. This pleasant young fellow was too familiar.
“If you take this trail to the scrub pines above, then keep due north for about four miles, you’ll strike the creek again. Just follow the trail along it to the horse ranch.”
With that she turned on her heel and walked into the kitchen.
Curly had not meant to be “fresh.” He was always ready for foolery with the girls, but he was not the sort to go too far. Now he blamed himself for having moved too fast. He had offended her sense of what was the proper thing.
There was nothing for it but to saddle and take the road.
The winding trail led up to the scrub pines and from there north into the hills. Curly had not traveled far when he heard the sound of a gun fired three times in quick succession. He stopped to listen. Presently there came a faint far call for help.
Curly cantered around the shoulder of the hill and saw a man squatting on the ground. He was stooped forward in an awkward fashion with his back to Flandrau.
“What’s up?”
At the question the man looked over his shoulder. Pain and helpless rage burned in the deep-set black eyes.
“Nothing at all. Don’t you see I’m just taking a nap?” he answered quietly.
Curly recognized him now. The man was Soapy Stone. Behind the straight thin-lipped mouth a double row of strong white teeth were clamped tightly. Little beads of perspiration stood out all over his forehead. A glance showed the reason. One of his hands was caught in a bear trap fastened to a cottonwood. Its jaws held him so that he could not move.
The young man swung from the back of Keno. He found the limb of a cottonwood about as thick as his forearm below the elbow. This he set close to the trap.
“Soon as I get the lip open shove her in,” he told Stone.
The prisoner moistened his dry lips. It was plain that he was in great pain.
The rescuer slipped the toes of his boots over the lower lip and caught the upper one with both hands. Slowly the mouth of the trap opened. Stone slipped in the wooden wedge and withdrew his crushed wrist. By great good fortune the steel had caught on the leather gauntlet he was wearing. Otherwise it must have mangled the arm to a pulp.
Even now he was suffering a good deal.
“You’ll have to let a doc look at it,” Curly suggested.
Stone agreed. “Reckon I better strike for the Bar 99.” He was furious at himself for having let such an accident happen. The veriest tenderfoot might have known better.
His horse had disappeared, but Curly helped him to the
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