Crooked Trails and Straight

  CHAPTER X

  CASS FENDRICK MAKES A CALL

  Kate was in her rose garden superintending the stable boy as he loosenedthe dirt around the roots of some of the bushes. She had returned to theCircle C for a day or two to give some directions in the absence of herfather. Buck and the other riders came to her for orders and took themwithout contempt. She knew the cattle business, and they knew she knew it.To a man they were proud of her, of her spirit, her energy, and her goodlooks.

  This rose garden was one evidence of her enterprise. No ranch in thecounty could show such a riot of bloom as the Circle C. The AmericanBeauty, the Duchess, the La France bowed gracefully to neighbors of adozen other choice varieties. Kate had brought this glimpse of Eden intothe desert. She knew her catalogues by heart and she had the lovinginstinct that teaches all gardeners much about growing things.

  The rider who cantered up to the fence, seeing her in her well-hungcorduroy skirt, her close-fitting blouse, and the broad-rimmed straw hatthat shielded her dark head from the sun, appreciated the fitness of hersurroundings. She too was a flower of the desert, delicately fashioned,yet vital with the bloom of health.

  At the clatter of hoofs she looked up from the bush she was trimming andat once rose to her feet. With the change in position she showed slim andtall, straight as a young poplar. Beneath their long lashes her eyes grewdark and hard. For the man who had drawn to a halt was Cass Fendrick.

  From the pocket of his shirt he drew a crumpled piece of stained linen.

  "I've brought back your handkerchief, Miss Cullison."

  "What have you done with my father?"

  He nodded toward the Mexican boy and Kate dismissed the lad. When he hadgone she asked her question again in exactly the same words.

  "If we're going to discuss your father you had better get your quirtagain," the sheepman suggested, touching a scar on his face.

  A flush swept over her cheeks, but she held her voice quiet and even."Where is Father? What have you done with him?"

  He swung from the horse and threw the rein to the ground. Then, saunteringto the gate, he let himself in.

  "You've surely got a nice posy garden here. Didn't know there was one likeit in all sunbaked Arizona."

  She stood rigid. Her unfaltering eyes, sloe-black in the pale face, neverlifted from him.

  "There's only one thing you can talk to me about Where have you hidden myfather?"

  "I've heard folks say he did himself all the hiding that was done."

  "You know that isn't true. That convict and you have hidden him somewhere.We have evidence enough to convict you both."

  "Imagination, most of it, I expect." He was inspecting the roses andinhaling their bloom.

  "Fact enough to send you to the penitentiary."

  "I ought to be scared. This is a La France, ain't it?"

  "I want you to tell me what you have done with my father."

  He laughed a little and looked at her with eyes that narrowed like thoseof a cat basking in the sun. He had something the look of the largermembers of the cat family--the soft long tread, the compact ripplingmuscles of a tame panther, and with these the threat that always liesbehind its sleepy wariness.

  "You're a young lady of one idea. No use arguing with you, I reckon."

  "Not the least use. I've talked with Mrs. Wylie."

  He raised his eyebrows. "Do I know the lady?"

  "She will know you. That is more to the point."

  "Did she say she knew me?" he purred.

  "She will say it in court--if it ever comes to that."

  "Just what will she say, if you please."

  Kate told him in four sentences with a stinging directness that was theoutstanding note of her, that and a fine self-forgetful courage.

  "Is that all? Comes to this then, that she says I heard her scream, ranin, and saved your father's life. Is that a penitentiary offense? I don'tsay it oughtn't to be, but is it?"

  "You helped the villain take his body into the cellar. You plotted withhim to hold Father a prisoner there."

  "Says that, does she--that she overheard us plotting?"

  "Of course she did not overhear what you said. You took good care of that.But she knew you were conspiring."

  "Just naturally knew it without overhearing," he derided. "And of courseif I was in a plot I must have been Johnny-on-the-spot a good deal of thetime. Hung round there a-plenty, I expect?"

  He had touched on the weak spot of Mrs. Wylie's testimony. The man who hadsaved Cullison's life, after a long talk with Blackwell, had gone out ofthe Jack of Hearts and had not returned so far as she knew. For her formerhusband had sent her on an errand just before the prisoner was taken awayand she did not know who had helped him.

  Kate was silent.

  "How would this do for an explanation?" he suggested lazily. "We'll sayjust for the sake of argument that Mrs. Wylie's story is true, that I didsave your father's life. We'll put it that I did help carry him downstairswhere it was cooler and that I did have a long talk with the fellowBlackwell. What would I be talking to him about, if I wasn't reading theriot act to him? Ain't it likely too that he would be sorry for what hedid while he was angry at your father for butting in as he was havingtrouble with his wife? And after he had said he was sorry why shouldn't Ihit the road out of there? There's no love lost between me and LuckCullison. I wasn't under any obligations to wrap him up in cotton andbring him back this side up with care to his anxious friends. If he choselater to take a hike out of town on p.d.q. hurry up business I ain't toblame. And I reckon you'll find a jury will agree with me."

  She had to admit to herself that he made out a plausible case. Not thatshe believed it for a moment. But very likely a jury would. As for hissubsequent silence that could be explained by his desire not to mixhimself in the affairs of one with whom he was upon unfriendly terms. Theirrefutable fact that he had saved the life of Cullison would go a longway as presumptive proof of his innocence.

  "I see you are wearing your gray hat again? What have you done with thebrown one?"

  She had flashed the question at him so unexpectedly that he was startled,but the wary mask fell again over the sardonic face.

  "You take a right friendly interest in my hats, seems to me."

  "I know this much. Father took your hat by mistake from the club. Youbought a brown one half an hour later. You used Father's to manufactureevidence against him. If it isn't true that he is your prisoner how doesit come that you have your gray hat again? You must have taken it fromhim."

  He laughed uneasily. She had guessed the exact truth.

  "In Arizona there are about forty thousand gray hats like this. Do youfigure you can identify this one, Miss Cullison? And suppose your fairytale of the Jack of Hearts is true, couldn't I have swapped hats againwhile he lay there unconscious?"

  She brushed his explanation aside with a woman's superb indifference tologic.

  "You can talk of course. I don't care. It is all lies--lies. You havekidnapped Father and are holding him somewhere. Don't you dare to hurthim. If you should--Oh, if you should--you will wish you had never beenborn." The fierceness of her passion beat upon him like sudden summerhail.

  He laughed slowly, well pleased. A lazy smoldering admiration shone in hishalf shuttered eyes.

  "So you're going to take it out of me, are you?"

  A creature of moods, there came over her now a swift change. Every featureof her, the tense pose, the manner of defiant courage, softenedindescribably. She was no longer an enemy bent on his destruction but agirl pleading for the father she loved.

  "Why do you do it? You are a man. You want to fight fair. Tell me he iswell. Tell me you will set him free."

  He forgot for the moment that he was a man with the toils of the lawclosing upon him, forgot that his success and even his liberty were atstake. He saw only a girl with the hunger of love in her wistful eyes, andknew that it lay in his power to bring back the laughter and the lightinto them.

  "Suppose I can't fight f
air any longer. Suppose I've let myself gettrapped and it isn't up to me but to somebody else."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Up to your father, say."

  "My father?"

  "Yes. How could I turn him loose when the first thing he did would be toswear out a warrant for my arrest?"

  "But he wouldn't--not if you freed him."

  He laughed harshly. "I thought you knew him. He's hard as nails."

  She recognized the justice of this appraisal. "But he is generous too. Hestands by his friends."

  "I'm not his friend, not so you could notice it." He laughed again,bitterly. "Not that it matters. Of course I was just putting a case.Nothing to it really."

  He was hedging because he thought he had gone too far, but she appearednot to notice it. Her eyes had the faraway look of one who communes withherself.

  "If I could only see him and have a talk with him."

  "What good would that do?" he pretended to scoff.

  But he watched her closely nevertheless.

  "I think I could get him to do as I ask. He nearly always does." Her gazewent swiftly back to him. "Let me talk with him. There's a reason why heought to be free now, one that would appeal to him."

  This was what he had come for, but now that she had met him half way hehesitated. If she should not succeed he would be worse off than before. Hecould neither hold her a prisoner nor free her to lead the pack of the lawto his hiding place. On the other hand if Cullison thought they intendedto keep her prisoner he would have to compromise. He dared not leave herin the hands of Lute Blackwell. Fendrick decided to take a chance. At theworst he could turn them both free and leave for Sonora.

  "All right. I'll take you to him. But you'll have to do as I say."

  "Yes," she agreed.

  "I'm taking you to back my play. I tell you straight that Blackwell wouldlike nothing better than to put a bullet through your father. But I've gota hold on the fellow that ties him. He's got to do as I say. But if I'mnot there and it comes to a showdown--if Bucky O'Connor for instancehappens to stumble in--then it's all off with Luck Cullison. Blackwellwon't hesitate a second. He'll kill your father and make a bolt for it.That's one reason why I'm taking you. I want to pile up witnesses againstthe fellow so as to make him go slow. But that's not my main object.You've got to persuade Luck to come through with an agreement to let go ofthat Del Oro homestead and to promise not to prosecute us. He won't do itto save his own life. He's got to think you come there as my prisoner.See? He's got to wrestle with the notion that you're in the power of thedamnedest villain that ever went unhung. I mean Blackwell. Let him chew onthat proposition a while and see what he makes of it."

  She nodded, white to the lips. "Let us go at once, please. I don't want toleave Father alone with that man." She called across to the corral."Manuel, saddle the pinto for me. Hurry!"

  They rode together through the wind-swept sunlit land. From time to timehis lazy glance embraced her, a supple graceful creature at perfect easein the saddle. What was it about her that drew the eye so irresistibly?Prettier girls he had often seen. Her features were irregular, mouth andnose too large, face a little thin. Her contour lacked the softness, theallure that in some women was an unconscious invitation to cuddle. Toughas whipcord she might be, but in her there flowed a life vital and strong;dwelt a spirit brave and unconquerable. She seemed to him as little subtleas any woman he had ever met. This directness came no doubt from living sofar from feminine influences. But he had a feeling that if a man oncewakened her to love, the instinct of sex would spring full-grown intobeing.

  They talked of the interests common to the country, of how the springrains had helped the range, of Shorty McCabe's broken leg, of the newschool district that was being formed. Before she knew it Kate waslistening to his defense of himself in the campaign between him and herfather. He found her a partisan beyond chance of conversion. Yet she heardpatiently his justification.

  "I didn't make the conditions that are here. I have to accept them. Thegovernment establishes forest reserves on the range. No use ramming myhead against a stone wall. Uncle Sam is bigger than we are. Your fatherand his friends got stubborn. I didn't."

  "No, you were very wise," she admitted dryly.

  "You mean because I adapted myself to the conditions and made the best ofthem. Why shouldn't I?" he flushed.

  "Father's cattle had run over that range thirty years almost. What righthad you to take it from him?"

  "Conditions change. He wouldn't see it. I did. As for the right ofit--well, Luck ain't king of the valley just because he thinks he is."

  She began to grow angry. A dull flush burned through the tan of hercheeks.

  "So you bought sheep and brought them in to ruin the range, knowing thatthey would cut the feeding ground to pieces, kill the roots of vegetationwith their sharp hoofs, and finally fill the country with little gulliesto carry off the water that ought to sink into the ground."

  "Sheep ain't so bad if they are run right."

  "It depends where they run. This is no place for them."

  "That's what you hear your father say. He's prejudiced."

  "And you're not, I suppose."

  "I'm more reasonable than he is."

  "Yes, you are," she flung back at him irritably.

  Open country lay before them. They had come out from a stretch of heavyunderbrush. Catclaw had been snatching at their legs. Cholla had made thetraveling bad for the horses. Now she put her pony to a canter that forthe time ended conversation.