A Touch Of The Third Degree

: LUCK
: Crooked Trails And Straight

Cullison was not the man to acknowledge himself beaten so long as there

was a stone unturned. In the matter of the Del Oro homestead claim he

moved at once. All of the county commissioners were personal friends of

his, and he went to them with a plan for a new road to run across the Del

Oro at the point where the canyon walls opened to a valley.



"What in Mexico is the good of a county road there, Luck? Can't run a
>
wagon over them mountains and down to the river. Looks to me like it would

be a road from nowhere to nowhere," Alec Flandrau protested, puzzled at

his friend's request.



"I done guessed it," Yesler announced with a grin. "Run a county road

through, and Cass Fendrick can't fence the river off from Luck's cows.

Luck ain't aiming to run any wagon over that road."



The Map of Texas man got up and stamped with delight. "I get you. We'll

learn Cass to take a joke, by gum. Luck sure gets a county road for his

cows to amble over down to the water. Cass can have his darned old

homestead now."



When Fendrick heard that the commissioners had condemned a right of way

for a road through his homestead he unloaded on the desert air a rich

vocabulary. For here would have been a simple way out of his trouble if he

had only thought of it. Instead of which he had melodramatically kidnapped

his enemy and put himself within reach of the law and of Cullison's

vengeance.



Nor did Luck confine his efforts to self-defense. He knew that to convict

Fendrick of the robbery he must first lay hands upon Blackwell.



It was, however, Bucky that caught the convict. The two men met at the top

of a mountain pass. Blackwell, headed south, was slipping down toward

Stone's horse ranch when they came face to face. Before the bad man had

his revolver out, he found himself looking down the barrel of the ranger's

leveled rifle.



"I wouldn't," Bucky murmured genially.



"What you want me for?" Blackwell demanded sulkily.



"For the W. & S. robbery."



"I'm not the man you want. My name's Johnson."



"I'll put up with you till I find the man I do want, Mr. Johnson," Bucky

told him cheerfully. "Climb down from that horse. No, I wouldn't try that.

Keep your hands up."



With his prisoner in front of him, O'Connor turned townward. They jogged

down out of the hills through dark gulches and cactus-clad arroyos. The

sharp catclaw caught at their legs. Tangled mesquite and ironwood made

progress slow. They reached in time Apache Desert, and here Bucky camped.

He hobbled his prisoner's feet and put around his neck a rope, the other

end of which was tied to his own waist. Then he built a small fire of

greasewood and made coffee for them both. The prisoner slept, but his

captor did not. For he could take no chances of an escape.



The outlines of the mountain ranges loomed shadowy and dim on both sides.

The moonlight played strange tricks with the mesquit and the giant cactus,

a grove of which gave to the place an awesome aspect of some ghostly

burial ground of a long vanished tribe.



Next day they reached Saguache. Bucky took his prisoner straight to the

ranger's office and telephoned to Cullison.



"Don't I get anything to eat?" growled the convict while they waited.



"When I'm ready."



Bucky believed in fair play. The man had not eaten since last night. But

then neither had he. It happened that Bucky was tough as whipcord, as

supple and untiring as a hickory sapling. Well, Blackwell was a pretty

hard nut to crack, too. The lieutenant did not know anything about book

psychology, but he had observed that hunger and weariness try out the

stuff that is in a man. Under the sag of them many a will snaps that would

have held fast if sustained by a good dinner and a sound night's sleep.

This is why so many "bad men," gun fighters with a reputation for

gameness, wilt on occasion like whipped curs. In the old days this came to

nearly every terror of the border. Some day when he had a jumping

toothache, or when his nerves were frayed from a debauch, a silent

stranger walked into his presence, looked long and steadily into his eyes,

and ended forever his reign of lawlessness. Sometimes the two-gun man was

"planted," sometimes he subsided into innocuous peace henceforth.



The ranger had a shrewd instinct that the hour had come to batter down

this fellow's dogged resistance. Therefore he sent for Cullison, the man

whom the convict most feared.



The very look of the cattleman, with that grim, hard, capable aspect,

shook Blackwell's nerve.



"So you've got him, Bucky."



Luck looked the man over as he sat handcuffed beside the table and read in

his face both terror and a sly, dogged cunning. Once before the fellow had

been put through the third degree. Something of the sort he fearfully

expected now. Villainy is usually not consistent. This hulking bully

should have been a hardy ruffian. Instead, he shrank like a schoolgirl

from the thought of physical pain.



"Stand up," ordered Cullison quietly.



Blackwell got to his feet at once. He could not help it, even though the

fear in his eyes showed that he cowered before the anticipated attack.



"Don't hit me," he whined.



Luck knew the man sweated under the punishment his imagination called up,

and he understood human nature too well to end the suspense by making real

the vision. For then the worst would be past, since the actual is never

equal to what is expected.



"Well?" Luck watched him with the look of tempered steel in his hard

eyes.



The convict flinched, moistened his lips with his tongue, and spoke at

last.



"I--I--Mr. Cullison, I want to explain. Every man is liable to make a

mistake--go off half cocked. I didn't do right. That's a fac'. I can

explain all that, but I'm sick now--awful sick."



Cullison laughed harshly. "You'll be sicker soon."



"You promised you wouldn't do anything if we turned you loose," the man

plucked up courage to remind him.



"I promised the law wouldn't do anything. You'll understand the

distinction presently."



"Mr. Cullison, please---- I admit I done wrong. I hadn't ought to have

gone in with Cass Fendrick. He wanted me to kill you, but I wouldn't."



With that unwinking gaze the ranchman beat down his lies, while fear

dripped in perspiration from the pallid face of the prisoner.



Bucky had let Cullison take the center of the stage. He had observed a

growing distress mount and ride the victim. Now he stepped in to save the

man with an alternative at which Blackwell might be expected not to snatch

eagerly perhaps, but at least to be driven toward.



"This man is my prisoner, Mr. Cullison. From what I can make out you ought

to strip his hide off and hang it up to dry. But I've got first call on

him. If he comes through with the truth about the W. & S. Express robbery,

I've got to protect him."



Luck understood the ranger. They were both working toward the same end.

The immediate punishment of this criminal was not the important issue. It

was merely a club with which to beat him into submission, and at that a

moral rather than a physical one. But the owner of the Circle C knew

better than to yield to Bucky too easily. He fought the point out with him

at length, and finally yielded reluctantly, in such a way as to aggravate

rather than relieve the anxiety of the convict.



"All right. You take him first," he finally conceded harshly.



Bucky kept up the comedy. "I'll take him, Mr. Cullison. But if he tells me

the truth--and if I find out it's the whole truth--there'll be nothing

doing on your part. He's my prisoner. Understand that."



Metaphorically, Blackwell licked the hand of his protector. He was still

standing, but his attitude gave the effect of crouching.



"I aim to do what's right, Captain O'Connor. Whatever's right. You ask me

any questions."



"I want to know all about the W. & S. robbery, everything, from start to

finish."



"Honest, I wish I could tell you. But I don't know a thing about it. Cross

my heart, I don't."



"No use, Blackwell. If I'm going to stand by you against Mr. Cullison,

you'll have to tell the truth. Why, man, I've even got the mask you wore

and the cloth you cut it from."



"I reckon it must a-been some one else, Major. Wisht I could help you, but

I can't."



Bucky rose. "All right. If you can't help me, I can't help you."

Apparently he dismissed the matter from his mind, for he looked at his

watch and turned to the cattleman. "Mr. Cullison, I reckon I'll run out

and have some supper. Do you mind staying here with this man till I get

back?"



"No. That's all right, Bucky. Don't hurry, I'll keep him entertained."

Perhaps it was not by chance that his eye wandered to a blacksnake whip

hanging on the wall.



O'Connor sauntered to the door. The frightened gaze of the prisoner clung

to him as if for safety.



"Major--Colonel--you ain't a-going," he pleaded.



"Only for an hour or two. I'll be back. I wouldn't think of saying

good-by--not till we reach Yuma."



With that the door closed behind him. Blackwell cried out, hurriedly,

eagerly. "Mister O'Connor!"



Bucky's head reappeared. "What! Have you reduced me to the ranks already?

I was looking to be a general by the time I got back," he complained

whimsically.



"I--I'll tell you everything--every last thing. Mr. Cullison--he's aiming

to kill me soon as you've gone."



"I've got no time to fool away, Blackwell. I'm hungry. If you mean

business get to it. But remember that whatever you say will be used

against you."



"I'll tell you any dog-goned thing you want to know. You've got me beat.

I'm plumb wore out--sick. A man can't stand everything."



O'Connor came in and closed the door. "Let's have it, then--the whole

story. I want it all: how you came to know about this shipment of money,

how you pulled it off, what you have done with it, all the facts from

beginning to the end."



"Lemme sit down, Captain. I'm awful done up. I reckon while I was in the

hills I've been underfed."



"Sit down. There's a good dinner waiting for you at Clune's when you get

through."



Even then, though he must have known that lies could not avail, the man

sprinkled his story with them. The residuum of truth that remained after

these had been sifted out was something like this.



He had found on the street a letter that had inadvertently been dropped.

It was to Jordan of the Cattlemen's National Bank, and it notified him

that $20,000 was to be shipped to him by the W. & S. Express Company on

the night of the robbery. Blackwell resolved to have a try for it. He hung

around the office until the manager and the guard arrived from the train,

made his raid upon them, locked the door, and threw away his mask. He

dived with the satchel into the nearest alley, and came face to face with

the stranger whom he later learned to be Fendrick. The whole story of the

horse had been a myth later invented by the sheepman to scatter the

pursuit by making it appear that the robber had come from a distance. As

the street had been quite deserted at the time this detail could be

plausibly introduced with no chance of a denial.



Fendrick, who had heard the shouting of the men locked in the express

office, stopped the robber, but Blackwell broke away and ran down the

alley. The sheepman followed and caught him. After another scuffle the

convict again hammered himself free, but left behind the hand satchel

containing the spoils. Fendrick (so he later explained to Blackwell) tied

a cord to the handle of the bag and dropped it down the chute of a laundry

in such a way that it could later be drawn up. Then he hurried back to the

express office and released the prisoners. After the excitement had

subsided, he had returned for the money and hid it. The original robber

did not know where.



Blackwell's second meeting with the sheepman had been almost as startling

as the first. Cass had run into the Jack of Hearts in time to save the

life of his enemy. The two men recognized each other and entered into a

compact to abduct Cullison, for his share in which the older man was paid

one thousand dollars. The Mexican Dominguez had later appeared on the

scene, had helped guard the owner of the Circle C, and had assisted in

taking him to the hut in the Rincons where he had been secreted.



Both men asked the same question as soon as he had finished.



"Where is the money you got from the raid on the W. & S. office?"



"Don't know. I've been at Fendrick ever since to tell me. He's got it

salted somewhere. You're fixing to put me behind the bars, and he's the

man that really stole it."



From this they could not shake him. He stuck to it vindictively, for

plainly his malice against the sheepman was great. The latter had spoiled

his coup, robbed him of its fruits, and now was letting him go to prison.



"I reckon we'd better have a talk with Cass," Bucky suggested in a low

voice to the former sheriff.



Luck laughed significantly. "When we find him."



For the sheepman had got out on bail the morning after his arrest.



"We'll find him easily enough. And I rather think he'll have a good

explanation, even if this fellow's story is true."



"Oh, he'll be loaded with explanations. I don't doubt that for a minute.

But it will take a hell of a lot of talk to get away from the facts. I've

got him where I want him now, and by God! I'll make him squeal before the

finish."



"Oh, well, you're prejudiced," Bucky told him with an amiable smile.



"Course I am; prejudiced as old Wall-eyed Rogers was against the

vigilantes for hanging him on account of horse stealing. But I'll back my

prejudices all the same. We'll see I'm right, Bucky."



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