Crooked Trails and Straight
CHAPTER II
LUCK MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Cullison and his friends proceeded down Papago street to the old plazawhere their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, forthese four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All alongthe route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, andgenial banter. One of them--the man who had formerly been the hard-riding,quick-shooting sheriff of the county--met also scowls once or twice, towhich he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law,had indeed, if rumor were true, run a wild and stormy course in his youth.But his reign as sheriff had been a terror to lawbreakers. He had madeenemies, desperate and unscrupulous ones, who had sworn to wipe him fromamong the living, and one of these he was now to meet for the first timesince the man had stood handcuffed before him, livid with fury, and hadsworn to cut his heart out at the earliest chance.
It was in the lobby of the hotel that Cullison came plump against LuteBlackwell. For just a moment they stared at each other before the formersheriff spoke.
"Out again, eh, Blackwell?" he said easily.
From the bloodshot eyes one could have told at a glance the man had beendrinking heavily. From whiskey he had imbibed a Dutch courage just boldenough to be dangerous.
"Yes, I'm out--and back again, just as I promised, Mr. Sheriff," hethreatened.
The cattleman ignored his manner. "Then I'll give you a piece of advicegratis. Papago County has grown away from the old days. It has got pastthe two-gun man. He's gone to join the antelope and the painted Indian.You'll do well to remember that."
The fellow leaned forward, sneering so that his ugly mouth looked like acrooked gash. "How about the one-gun man, Mr. Sheriff?"
"He doesn't last long now."
"Doesn't he?"
The man's rage boiled over. But Luck was far and away the quicker of thetwo. His left hand shot forward and gripped the rising wrist, his rightcaught the hairy throat and tightened on it. He shook the convict as if hehad been a child, and flung him, black in the face, against the wall,where he hung, strangling and sputtering.
"I--I'll get you yet," the ruffian panted. But he did not again attempt toreach for the weapon in his hip pocket.
"You talk too much with your mouth."
With superb contempt, Luck slapped him, turned on his heel, and movedaway, regardless of the raw, stark lust to kill that was searing thisman's elemental brain.
Across the convict's rage came a vision. He saw a camp far up in theRincons, and seated around a fire five men at breakfast, all of themarmed. Upon them had come one man suddenly. He had dominated the situationquietly, had made one disarm the others, had handcuffed the one he wantedand taken him from his friends through a hostile country where any hour hemight be shot from ambush. Moreover, he had traveled with his prisoner twodays, always cheerful and matter of fact, not at all uneasy as to whatmight lie behind the washes or the rocks they passed. Finally he hadbrought his man safely to Casa Grande, from whence he had gone over theroad to the penitentiary. Blackwell had been the captured man, and he helda deep respect for the prowess of the officer who had taken him. The sheerpluck of the adventure had alone made it possible. For such an unflawednerve Blackwell knew his jerky rage was no match.
The paroled convict recovered his breath and slunk out of the hotel.
Billie Mackenzie, owner of the Fiddleback ranch, laughed even while hedisapproved. "Some day, Luck, you'll get yours when you are throwingchances at a coyote like this. You'll guess your man wrong, or he'll beone glass drunker than you figure on, and then he'll plug you through andthrough."
"The man that takes chances lives longest, Mac," his friend replied,dismissing the subject carelessly. "I'm going to tuck away about threehours of sleep. So long." And with a nod he was gone to his room.
"All the same Luck's too derned rash," Flandrau commented. "He'll run intotrouble good and hard one of these days. When I'm in Rattlesnake Gulch Idon't aim to pick posies too unobservant."
Mackenzie looked worried. No man lived whom he admired so much as LuckCullison. "And he hadn't ought to be sitting in these big games. He's hardup. Owes a good bit here and there. Always was a spender. First thinghe'll have to sell the Circle C to square things. He'll pay us this weeklike he said he would. That's dead sure. He'd die before he'd fall down onit, now Fendrick has got his back up. But I swear I don't know where he'llraise the price. Money is so tight right now."
That afternoon Luck called at every bank in Saguache. All of the bankersknew him and were friendly to him, but in spite of their personal regardthey could do nothing for him.
"It's this stringency, Luck," Jordan of the Cattlemen's National explainedto him. "We can't let a dollar go even on the best security. You know I'dlike to let you have it, but it wouldn't be right to the bank. We've gotto keep our reserve up. Why, I'm lying awake nights trying to figure out away to call in more of our money."
"I'm not asking much, Jack."
"Luck, I'd let you have it if I dared. Why, we're running close to thewind. Public confidence is a mighty ticklish thing. If I didn't havetwenty thousand coming from El Paso on the Flyer to-night I'd be uneasyfor the bank."
"Twenty thousand on the Flyer. I reckon you ship by express, don't you?"
"Yes. Don't mention it to anyone. That twenty thousand would come handy toa good many people in this country these times."
"It would come right handy to me," Luck laughed ruefully. "I need everycent of it. After the beef roundup, I'll be on Easy Street, but it's goingto be hard sledding to keep going till then."
"You'll make a turn somehow. It will work out. Maybe when money isn't sotight I'll be able to do something for you."
Luck returned to the hotel morosely, and tried to figure a way out of hisdifficulties. He was not going to be beaten. He never had accepted defeat,even in the early days when he had sometimes taken a lawless short cut towhat he wanted. By God, he would not lose out after all these years offighting. It had been his desperate need of money that had made him sit inlast night's poker game. But he had succeeded only in making a badsituation worse. He knew his debts by heart, but he jotted them down onthe back of an envelope and added them again.
Mortgage on ranch (due Oct. 1), $13,000 Note to First National, 3,500 Note to Reynolds, 1,750 I O U to Mackenzie, 1,200 Same to Flandrau, 400 Same to Yesler, 300 ------ Total, $20,150
Twenty thousand was the sum he needed, and mighty badly, too.Absentmindedly he turned the envelope over and jotted down one or twoother things. Twenty thousand dollars! Just the sum Jordan had coming tothe bank on the Flyer. Subconsciously, Luck's fingers gave expression tohis thoughts. $20,000. Half a dozen times they penciled it, and just belowthe figures, "W. & S. Ex. Co." Finally they wrote automatically the oneword, "To-night."
Luck looked at what he had written, laughed grimly, and tore the envelopein two. He threw the pieces in the waste paper basket.