Crooked Trails and Straight. William MacLeod Raine

one might at sight of a mangled mad dog which had just bit a dear friend. Long after the pounding of her pony’s hoofs had died away the prisoner could see the startled eyes of fear and horror that had rested on him. As Curly kicked his foot out of the stirrup to dismount a light spring wagon rolled past him. In its bed were a mattress and pillows. The driver whipped up the horse and went across the prairie toward Dry Sandy Creek. Evidently he was going to bring home the wounded man.

      His guards put Flandrau in the bunk house and one of them sat at the door with a rifle across his knees. The cook, the stable boy, and redheaded Bob Cullison, a nephew of the owner of the ranch, peered past the vaquero at the captive with the same awe they would have yielded to a caged panther.

      “Why, he’s only a kid, Buck,” the cook whispered.

      Buck chewed tobacco impassively. “Old enough to be a rustler and a killer.”

      Bob’s blue eyes were wide with interest “I’ll bet he’s a regular Billy the Kid,” murmured the half-grown boy to the other lad.

      “Sure. Course he is. He’s got bad eyes all right.”

      “I’ll bet he’s got notches on his gun. Say, if Uncle Luck dies—” Bob left the result to the imagination.

      The excitement at the Circle C increased. Horses cantered up. Men shouted to each other the news. Occasionally some one came in to have a look at the “bad man” who had shot Luck Cullison. Young Flandrau lay on a cot and stared at the ceiling, paying no more attention to them than if they had been blocks of wood. It took no shrewdness to see that there burned in them a still cold anger toward him that might easily find expression in lynch law.

      The crunch of wagon wheels over disintegrated granite drifted to the bunk house.

      “They’re bringing the boss back,” Buck announced from the door to one of his visitors.

      The man joined him and looked over his shoulder. “Miss Kate there too?”

      “Yep. Say, if the old man don’t pull through it will break her all up.”

      The boy on the bed turned his face to the wall. He had not cried for ten years, but now he would have liked the relief of tears. The luck had broken bad for him, but it would be the worst ever if his random shot were to make Kate Cullison an orphan. A big lump rose in his throat and would not stay down. The irony of it was that he was staged for the part of a gray wolf on the howl, while he felt more like a little child that has lost its last friend.

      After a time there came again the crisp roll of wheels.

      “Doc Brown,” announced Buck casually to the other men in the bunk house.

      There was more than one anxious heart at the Circle C waiting for the verdict of the bowlegged baldheaded little man with the satchel, but not one of them—no, not even Kate Cullison herself—was in a colder fear than Curly Flandrau. He was entitled to a deep interest, for if Cullison should die he knew that he would follow him within a few hours. These men would take no chances with the delays of the law.

      The men at the bunk house had offered more than once to look at Curly’s arm, but the young man declined curtly. The bleeding had stopped, but there was a throb in it as if someone were twisting a red-hot knife in the wound. After a time Doctor Brown showed up in the doorway of the men’s quarters.

      “Another patient here, they tell me,” he grunted in the brusque way that failed to conceal the kindest of hearts.

      Buck nodded toward Flandrau.

      “Let’s have a look at your arm, young fellow,” the doctor ordered, mopping his bald head with a big bandanna handkerchief.

      “What about the boss?” asked Jake presently.

      “Mighty sick man, looks like. Tell you more to-morrow morning.”

      “Do you mean that he—that he may not get well?” Curly pumped out, his voice not quite steady.

      Doctor Brown looked at him curiously. Somehow this boy did not fit the specifications of the desperado that had been poured into his ears.

      “Don’t know yet. Won’t make any promises.” He had been examining the wound in a businesslike way. “Looks like the bullet’s still in there. Have to give you an anesthetic while I dig it out.”

      “Nothin’ doing,” retorted Flandrau. “You round up the pill in there and I’ll stand the grief. When this lead hypodermic jabbed into my arm it sorter gave me one of them annie-what-d’ye-call-’em—and one’s a-plenty for me.”

      “It’ll hurt,” the little man explained.

      “Expect I’ll find that out. Go to it.”

      Brown had not been for thirty years carrying a medicine case across the dusty deserts of the frontier without learning to know men. He made no further protest but set to work.

      Twenty minutes later Curly lay back on the bunk with a sudden faintness. He was very white about the lips, but he had not once flinched from the instruments.

      The doctor washed his hands and his tools, pulled on his coat, and came across to the patient.

      “Feeling like a fighting cock, are you? Ready to tackle another posse?” he asked.

      “Not quite.” The prisoner glanced toward his guards and his voice fell to a husky whisper. “Say, Doc. Pull Cullison through. Don’t let him die.”

      “Hmp! Do my best, young fellow. Seems to me you’re thinking of that pretty late.”

      Brown took up his medicine case and went back to the house.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

AT THE END OF THE ROAD

       Table of Contents

      Curly’s wooden face told nothing of what he was thinking. The first article of the creed of the frontier is to be game. Good or bad, the last test of a man is the way he takes his medicine. So now young Flandrau ate his dinner with a hearty appetite, smoked cigarettes impassively, and occasionally chatted with his guards casually and as a matter of course. Deep within him was a terrible feeling of sickness at the disaster that had overwhelmed him, but he did not intend to play the quitter.

      Dutch and an old fellow named Sweeney relieved the other watchers about noon. The squat puncher came up and looked down angrily at the boy lying on the bunk.

      “I’ll serve notice right now that if you make any breaks I’ll fill your carcass full of lead,” he growled.

      The prisoner knew that he was nursing a grudge for the blow that had floored him. Not to be bluffed, Curly came back with a jeer. “Much obliged, my sawed-off and hammered-down friend. But what’s the matter with your face? It looks some lopsided. Did a mule kick you?”

      Sweeney gave his companion the laugh. “Better let him alone, Dutch. If he lands on you again like he did before your beauty ce’tainly will be spoiled complete.”

      The little puncher’s eyes snapped rage. “You’ll get yours pretty soon, Mr. Curly Flandrau. The boys are fixin’ to hang yore hide up to dry.”

      “Does look that way, doesn’t it?” the boy agreed quietly.

      As the day began to wear out it looked so more than ever. Two riders from the Bar Double M reached the ranch and were brought in to identify him as the horse thief. The two were Maloney and Kite Bonfils, neither of them friends of the young rustler. The foreman in particular was a wet blanket to his chances. The man’s black eyes were the sort that never soften toward the follies