I’d hate to have him cheat the rope,” another cried with an oath.
“That’s right. How is Cullison?”
This was said to another who had just come up.
“Hard hit. Looks about all in. Got him in the side.”
The rage had died out of Curly. In a flash he saw all that had come of their drunken spree: the rustling of the Bar Double M stock, the discovery, the death of his friend and maybe of Cullison, the certain punishment that would follow. He was a horse thief caught almost in the act. Perhaps he was a murderer too. And the whole thing had been entirely unpremeditated.
Flandrau made a movement to rise and they jerked him to his feet.
“You’ve played hell,” one of the men told the boy.
He was a sawed-off little fellow known as Dutch. Flandrau had seen him in the Map of Texas country try a year or two before. The rest were strangers to the boy. All of them looked at him out of hard hostile eyes. He was scarcely a human being to them; rather a wolf to be stamped out of existence as soon as it was convenient. A chill ran down Curly’s spine. He felt as if someone were walking on his grave.
At a shift in the group Flandrau’s eyes fell on his friend lying in the sand with face turned whitely to the sky he never would see again. It came over him strangely enough how Mac used to break into a little chuckling laugh when he was amused. He had quit laughing now for good and all. A lump came into the boy’s throat and he had to work it down before he spoke.
“There’s a picture in his pocket, and some letters I reckon. Send them to Miss Myra Anderson, Tombstone, care of one of the restaurants. I don’t know which one.”
“Send nothin’,” sneered Dutch, and coupled it with a remark no decent man makes of a woman on a guess.
Because of poor Mac lying there with the little hole in his temple Curry boiled over. With a jerk his right arm was free. It shot out like a pile-driver, all his weight behind the blow. Dutch went down as if a charging bull had flung him.
Almost simultaneously Curly hit the sand hard. Before he could stir three men were straddled over his anatomy. One of them ground his head into the dust.
“You would, eh? We’ll see about that. Jake, bring yore rope.”
They tied the hands of the boy, hauled him to his feet, and set him astride a horse. In the distance a windmill of the Circle C ranch was shining in the morning sun. Toward the group of buildings clustered around this two of his captors started with Flandrau. A third was already galloping toward the ranch house to telephone for a doctor.
As they rode along a fenced lane which led to the house a girl came flying down the steps. She swung herself to the saddle just vacated by the messenger and pulled the horse round for a start. At sight of those coming toward her she called out quickly.
“How is dad?” The quiver of fear broke in her voice.
“Don’ know yet, Miss Kate,” answered one of the men. “He’s right peart though. Says for to tell you not to worry. Don’t you, either. We’ve got here the mangy son of a gun that did it.”
Before he had finished she was off like an arrow shot from a bow, but not until her eyes had fallen on the youth sitting bareheaded and bloody between the guns of his guard. Curly noticed that she had given a shudder, as 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
