Crooked Trails and Straight Read online

  “Yes, that will be fine. From the way the old man talked when I was there, I expect he’ll kill the fatted yearling for you.”

  “I don’t figure on including the old man in my call. What’s the use of having a friend along if you don’t use him? You drift in ... just happen along, you know. I’ll stay in the scrub pines up here. If the old man is absent scenery, you wave your bandanna real industrious. If he is at home, give Laura the tip and she’ll know where to find me.”

  The owner of the ranch, as it happened, was cutting trail over by Agua Caliente.

  “Do you want to see him very bad, Mr. Flandrau?” asked Miss Laura demurely.

  “My friends call me Curly.”

  “I meant to say Curly.”

  “That’s what I thought. No, I can’t say I’ve lost Mr. London.”

  “You inquired for him.”

  “Hmp! That’s different. When I used to come home from the swimming hole contrary to orders, I used to ask where Dad was, but I didn’t want to see him.”

  “I see. Did you just come down from the horse ranch?”

  “You’ve guessed it right.”

  “Then I’m sorry I can’t ask you to ’light. Dad’s orders.”

  “You’ve got lots of respect for his orders, haven’t you?” he derided.

  “Yes, I have.” She could not quite make up her mind whether to laugh or become indignant.

  “Then there’s no use trying to tell you the news from the ranch.”

  A smile dimpled her cheeks and bubbled in her eyes. “If you should tell me, I suppose I couldn’t help hearing.”

  “But I’m trying to figure out my duty. Maybe I oughtn’t to tempt you.”

  “While you’re making up your mind, I’ll run back into the kitchen and look at the pies in the oven.”

  Curly swung from the saddle, and tossed the bridle rein to the ground. He followed her into the house. She was taking an apple pie from the oven, but took time to be saucy over her shoulder.

  “I’m not allowed to invite you into the house, sir.”

  “Anything in the by-laws about me inviting myself in?”

  “No, that wasn’t mentioned.”

  “Anything in them about you meeting one of the lads from the horse ranch up on the hillside where it is neutral ground?”

  “Did Sam come with you?” she cried.

  “Who said anything about Sam?”

  Glints of excitement danced in the brown pupils of her eyes. “He’s here. Oh, I know he’s here.”

  “What do I get for bringing good news?”

  “I didn’t say it was good news.”

  “Sho! Your big eyes are shouting it.”

  “Was that the news from the horse ranch?”

  “That’s part of it, but there is more. Sam and Curly are on their way to Saguache to spend the Fourth of July. Sam is going for another reason, but I’m not sure yet what it is.”

  “You mean——?”

  “There’s something doing I don’t savez, some big deal on foot that’s not on the level. Sam is in it up to the hocks. To throw me off the scent they fixed up a quarrel among them. Sam is supposed to be quitting Soapy’s outfit for good. But I know better.”

  White to the lips, she faced him bravely. “What sort of trouble is he leading Sam into?”

  “I’ve got a kind of a notion. But it won’t bear talking about yet. Don’t you worry, little girl. I’m going to stand by Sam. And don’t tell him what I’ve told you, unless you want to spoil my chance of helping him.”

  “I won’t,” she promised; then added, with quick eagerness: “Maybe I can help you. I’m going down to Saguache to visit on the fourth. I’m to be there two weeks.”

  “I’ll look you up. Trouble is that Sam is hell bent on ruining himself. Seems to think Soapy is his best friend. If we could show him different things might work out all right.”

  While she climbed the hill to Sam, Curly watered his horse and smoked a cigarette. He was not hired to chaperone lovers. Therefore, it took him three-quarters of an hour to reach the scrub pine belt on the edge of the park.

  At once he saw that they had been having a quarrel. The girl’s eyes were red, and she was still dabbing at them with her handkerchief when he came whistling along. Sam looked discouraged, but stubborn. Very plainly they had been disagreeing about his line of conduct.

  The two young men took the trail again. The moroseness of Sam was real and not affected this time. He had flared up because the girl could not let him alone about his friendship for Soapy Stone. In his heart the boy knew he was wrong, that he was moving fast in the wrong direction. But his pride would neither let him confess it or go back on his word to the men with whom he had been living.

  About noon the next day they reached Saguache. After they had eaten, Curly strolled off by himself to the depot.

  “Gimme a ticket to Tin Cup for this evening. I want to go by the express,” he told the agent.

  The man looked at him and grinned. “I saw you at Mesa in the bucking broncho doings last year, didn’t I?”

  “Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t. Why?”

  “You certainly stay with the bad bronchs to a fare-you-well. If I’d been judge you’d a-had first place, Mr. Flandrau.”

  “Much obliged. And now you’ve identified me sufficient, how about that ticket?”

  “I was coming to that. Sure you can get a ticket. Good on any train. You’re so darned active, maybe you could get off Number 4 when she is fogging along sixty miles per. But most folks couldn’t, not with any comfort.”

  “Meaning that the Flyer doesn’t stop?”

  “Not at Tin Cup.”

  “Have to take the afternoon train then?”

  “I reckon.” He punched a ticket and shoved it through the window toward Curly. “Sixty-five cents, please.”

  Flandrau paid for and pocketed the ticket he did not intend to use. He had found out what he wanted to know. The express did not stop at Tin Cup. Why, then, had Soapy marked the time of its arrival there? He was beginning to guess the reason. But he would have to do more than guess.

  Curly walked back to the business section from the depot. Already the town was gay with banners in preparation for the Fourth. On the program were broncho-busting, roping, Indian dances, races, and other frontier events. Already visitors were gathering for the festivities. Saguache, wide open for the occasion, was already brisk with an assorted population of many races. Mexicans, Chinese, Indians of various tribes brushed shoulders with miners, tourists and cattlemen. Inside the saloons faro, chuckaluck and roulette attracted each its devotees.

  Flandrau sauntered back to the hotel on the lookout for Sam. He was not there, but waiting for him was a boy with a note for the gentleman in Number 311.

  “Kid looking for you,” the clerk called to the cowpuncher.

  “Are you Mr. Soapy Stone’s friend, the one just down from Dead Cow creek?” asked the boy.

  Taken as a whole, the answer was open to debate. But Curly nodded and took the note.

  This was what he read:

  Sam, come to Chalkeye’s place soon as you get this. There we will talk over the business.

  You Know Who.

  Though he did not know who, Curly thought he could give a pretty good guess both as to the author and the business that needed talking over.

  Through the open door of the hotel he saw Sam approaching. Quickly he sealed the flap of the envelope again, and held it pressed against his fingers while he waited.

  “A letter for you, Sam.”

  Cullison tore open the envelope and read the note.

  “A friend of mine has come to town and wants to see me,” he explained.

  To help out his bluff, Curly sprang the feeble-minded jest on him. “Blonde or brunette?”

  “I’m no lady’s man,” Sam protested, content to let the other follow a wrong scent.

  “Sure not. It never is a lady,” Flandrau called after him as he departed.

  But Sam had no
more than turned the corner before Curly was out of a side door and cutting through an alley toward Chalkeye’s place. Reaching the back door of the saloon, he opened it a few inches and peered in. A minute later Sam opened the front screen and asked a question of the man in the apron. The bartender gave a jerk of his thumb. Sam walked toward the rear and turned in at the second private booth.

  Curly slipped forward quietly, and passed unobserved into the third stall. The wall which divided one room from another was of pine boarding and did not reach the ceiling. As the eavesdropper slid to a seat a phonograph in front began the Merry Widow waltz. Noiselessly Flandrau stood on the cushioned bench with his ear close to the top of the dividing wall. He could hear a murmur of voices but could not make out a word. The record on the instrument wheezed to silence, but immediately a rag-time tune followed.

  Presently the music died away. Flattened against the wall, his attention strained to the utmost, Curly began to catch words and phrases of the low-voiced speakers in the next compartment. His position was perilous in the extreme, but he would not leave now until he had found out what he wanted to know.

  * * *

  CHAPTER IX

  EAVESDROPPING

  Out of the murmur of voices came one that Curly recognized as that of Soapy Stone, alias You Know Who.

  “ ... then you’ll take the 9:57, Sam....”

  After more whispering, “Yep, soon as you hear the first shot ... cover the passengers....”

  The listener lost what followed. Once he thought he heard the name Tin Cup, but he could not be sure. Presently another fragment drifted to him. “...make our getaway and cache the plunder....”

  The phonograph lifted up its voice again. This time it was “I love a lassie.” Before the song was finished there came the sound of shuffling feet. One of the men in the next stall was leaving. Curly could not tell which one, nor did he dare look over the top of the partition to find out. He was playing safe. This adventure had caught him so unexpectedly that he had not found time to run back to his room for his six-gun. What would happen to him if he were caught listening was not a matter of doubt. Soapy would pump lead into him till he quit kicking, slap a saddle on a broncho, and light out for the Sonora line.

  As the phonograph finished unexpectedly—someone had evidently interrupted the record—the fragment of a sentence seemed to jump at Curly.

  “ ... so the kid will get his in the row.”

  It was the voice of Soapy, raised slightly to make itself heard above the music.

  “Take care,” another voice replied, and Flandrau would have sworn that this belonged to Blackwell.

  Stone, who had been sitting on the other side of the table, moved close to the paroled convict. Between him and Curly there was only the thickness of a plank. The young man was afraid that the knocking of his heart could be heard.

  “ ... don’t like it,” Blackwell was objecting sullenly.

  “Makes it safe for us. Besides”—Stone’s voice grated like steel rasping steel, every word distinct though very low—“I swore to pay off Luck Cullison, and by God! I’m going to do it.”

  “Someone will hear you if you ain’t careful,” the convict protested anxiously.

  “Don’t be an old woman, Lute.”

  “ ... if you can do it safe. I owe Luck Cullison much as you do, but....”

  Again they fell to whispers. The next word that came to Curly clearly was his own name. But it was quite a minute before he gathered what they were saying.

  “Luck Cullison went his bail. I learnt it this mo’ning.”

  “The son-of-a-gun. It’s a cinch he’s a spy. And me wanting you to let him in so’s he could hold the sack instead of Sam.”

  “Knew it wouldn’t do, Lute. He’s smart as a whip.”

  “Reckon he knows anything?”

  “No. Can’t.”

  “If I thought he did——”

  “Keep your shirt on, Lute. He don’t know a thing. And you get revenge on him all right. Sam will run with him and his friends while he’s here. Consequence is, when they find the kid where we leave him they’ll sure guess Curly for one of his pardners. Tell you his ticket is good as bought to Yuma. He’s a horse thief. Why shouldn’t he be a train robber, too. That’s how a jury will argue.”

  Blackwell grumbled something under his breath.

  Stone’s voice grated harshly. “Me too. If he crosses my trail I’m liable to spoil his hide before court meets. No man alive can play me for a sucker and throw me down. Not Soapy Stone.”

  Once more the voices ran together indistinctly. It was not till Blackwell suggested that they go get a drink that Curly understood anything more of what was being said.

  The outlaws passed out of the little room and strolled forward to the bar.

  Curly had heard more than he had expected to. Moreover, as he congratulated himself, his luck had stood up fine. Nobody in the sunburnt territory felt happier than he did that minute when he struck the good fresh air of the alley and knew that he had won through his hazardous adventure alive.

  The first thing that Flandrau did was to walk toward the outskirts of the town where he could think it out by himself. But in this little old planet events do not always occur as a man plans them. Before he reached Arroyo street Curly came plump against his old range-mate Slats Davis.

  The assistant foreman of the Hashknife nodded as he passed. He had helped Curly escape less than a month before, but he did not intend to stay friendly with a rustler.

  Flandrau caught him by the arm. “Hello, Slats. You’re the man I want.”

  “I’m pretty busy to-day,” Davis answered stiffly.

  “Forget it. This is more important.”

  “Well?”

  “Come along and take a walk. I got something to tell you.”

  “Can’t you tell it here?”

  “I ain’t going to, anyhow. Come along. I ain’t got smallpox.”

  Reluctantly Davis fell in beside him. “All right. Cut it short. I’ve got to see a man.”

  “He’ll have to wait.” Curly could not help chuckling to himself at the evident embarrassment of the other. The impish impulse to “devil” him had its way. “You’re a man of experience, Slats. Ever hold up a train?”

  The foreman showed plainly his disgust at this foolishness. “Haven’t you sense enough ever to be serious, Curly? You’re not a kid any more. In age you’re a grown man. But how do you act? Talk like that don’t do you any good. You’re in trouble good and deep. Folks have got their eyes on you. Now is the time to show them you have quit all that hell raising you have been so busy at.”

  “He sure is going good this mo’ning,” Curly drawled confidentially to the scenery. “You would never guess, would you, that him and me had raised that crop in couples?”

  “That’s all right, too. I’m no sky pilot. But I know when to quit. Seemingly you don’t. I hear you’ve been up at Stone’s horse ranch. I want to tell you that won’t do you any good if it gets out.”

  “Never was satisfied till I had rounded up all the trouble in sight. That’s why I mentioned this train robbery. Some of my friends are aiming to hold up one shortly. If you’d like to get in I’ll say a good word for you.”

  Davis threw at him a look that drenched like ice water. “I expect you and me are traveling different trails these days, Curly. You don’t mean it of course, but the point is I’m not going to joke with you along that line. Understand?”

  “Wrong guess, old hoss. I do mean it.”

  Davis stopped in his tracks. “Then you’ve said too much to me. We’ll part right here.”

  “It takes two to agree to that, Slats.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. One is enough. We used to be good friends, but those days are past. None of us can keep a man from being a durned fool if he wants to be one. Nor a scoundrel. You’ve got the bit in your teeth and I reckon you’ll go till there is a smash. But you better understand this. When you choose Soapy Stone’s, crowd to run with that
cuts out me and other decent folks. If they have sent you here to get me mixed up in their deviltry you go back and tell them there’s nothing doing.”

  “Won’t have a thing to do with them. Is that it?”

  “Not till the call comes for citizens to get together and run them out of the country. Or to put them behind bars. Or to string them to a cottonwood. Then I’ll be on the job.”

  He stood there quiet and easy, the look in his steady eyes piercing Curly’s ironic smile as a summer sun does mackerel clouds in a clear sky. Not many men would have had the courage to send that message to Soapy and his outfit. For Stone was not only a man killer, but a mean one at that. Since he had come back from the penitentiary he had been lying pretty low, but he brought down from the old days a record that chilled the blood.

  Curly sloughed his foolishness and came to the point.

  “You’re on, Slats. I’m making that call to you now.”

  The eyes of the two men fastened. Those of Flandrau had quit dancing and were steady as the sun in a blue sky. Surprise, doubt, wonder, relief filled in turn the face of the other man.

  “I’m listening, Curly.”

  His friend told him the whole story from the beginning, just as he had been used to do in the old days. And Davis heard it without a word, taking the tale in quietly with a grim look settling, on his face.

  “So he aims to play traitor to young Cullison. The thing is damnable.”

  “He means to shut Sam’s mouth for good and all. That is what he has been playing for from the start, to get even with Luck. He and his gang will get away with the haul and they will leave Sam dead on the scene of the hold-up. There will be some shooting, and it will be figured the boy was hit by one of the train crew. Nothing could be easier.”

  “If it worked out right.”

  “Couldn’t help working out right. That’s why Soapy didn’t let me in on the proposition. To get rid of one would be no great trouble, but two—well, that’s different. Besides, I could tell he was not sure of me. Now he aims to put me on the stand and prove by me that Sam and he had a quarrel and parted company mighty sore at each other hardly a week before the hold-up. He’ll have an alibi too to show he couldn’t have been in it. You’ll see.”