Luck Meets An Old Acquaintance

: LUCK
: Crooked Trails And Straight

Cullison and his friends proceeded down Papago street to the old plaza

where their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for

these four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All along

the route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, and

genial banter. One of them--the man who had formerly been the hard-riding,

quick-shooting sheriff of the county--met also scowls once or twice, to
br />
which he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law,

had indeed, if rumor were true, run a wild and stormy course in his youth.

But his reign as sheriff had been a terror to lawbreakers. He had made

enemies, desperate and unscrupulous ones, who had sworn to wipe him from

among the living, and one of these he was now to meet for the first time

since the man had stood handcuffed before him, livid with fury, and had

sworn to cut his heart out at the earliest chance.



It was in the lobby of the hotel that Cullison came plump against Lute

Blackwell. For just a moment they stared at each other before the former

sheriff spoke.



"Out again, eh, Blackwell?" he said easily.



From the bloodshot eyes one could have told at a glance the man had been

drinking heavily. From whiskey he had imbibed a Dutch courage just bold

enough to be dangerous.



"Yes, I'm out--and back again, just as I promised, Mr. Sheriff," he

threatened.



The cattleman ignored his manner. "Then I'll give you a piece of advice

gratis. Papago County has grown away from the old days. It has got past

the two-gun man. He's gone to join the antelope and the painted Indian.

You'll do well to remember that."



The fellow leaned forward, sneering so that his ugly mouth looked like a

crooked gash. "How about the one-gun man, Mr. Sheriff?"



"He doesn't last long now."



"Doesn't he?"



The man's rage boiled over. But Luck was far and away the quicker of the

two. His left hand shot forward and gripped the rising wrist, his right

caught the hairy throat and tightened on it. He shook the convict as if he

had been a child, and flung him, black in the face, against the wall,

where he hung, strangling and sputtering.



"I--I'll get you yet," the ruffian panted. But he did not again attempt to

reach for the weapon in his hip pocket.



"You talk too much with your mouth."



With superb contempt, Luck slapped him, turned on his heel, and moved

away, regardless of the raw, stark lust to kill that was searing this

man's elemental brain.



Across the convict's rage came a vision. He saw a camp far up in the

Rincons, and seated around a fire five men at breakfast, all of them

armed. Upon them had come one man suddenly. He had dominated the situation

quietly, had made one disarm the others, had handcuffed the one he wanted

and taken him from his friends through a hostile country where any hour he

might be shot from ambush. Moreover, he had traveled with his prisoner two

days, always cheerful and matter of fact, not at all uneasy as to what

might lie behind the washes or the rocks they passed. Finally he had

brought his man safely to Casa Grande, from whence he had gone over the

road to the penitentiary. Blackwell had been the captured man, and he held

a deep respect for the prowess of the officer who had taken him. The sheer

pluck of the adventure had alone made it possible. For such an unflawed

nerve Blackwell knew his jerky rage was no match.



The paroled convict recovered his breath and slunk out of the hotel.



Billie Mackenzie, owner of the Fiddleback ranch, laughed even while he

disapproved. "Some day, Luck, you'll get yours when you are throwing

chances at a coyote like this. You'll guess your man wrong, or he'll be

one glass drunker than you figure on, and then he'll plug you through and

through."



"The man that takes chances lives longest, Mac," his friend replied,

dismissing the subject carelessly. "I'm going to tuck away about three

hours of sleep. So long." And with a nod he was gone to his room.



"All the same Luck's too derned rash," Flandrau commented. "He'll run into

trouble good and hard one of these days. When I'm in Rattlesnake Gulch I

don't aim to pick posies too unobservant."



Mackenzie looked worried. No man lived whom he admired so much as Luck

Cullison. "And he hadn't ought to be sitting in these big games. He's hard

up. Owes a good bit here and there. Always was a spender. First thing

he'll have to sell the Circle C to square things. He'll pay us this week

like he said he would. That's dead sure. He'd die before he'd fall down on

it, now Fendrick has got his back up. But I swear I don't know where he'll

raise the price. Money is so tight right now."



That afternoon Luck called at every bank in Saguache. All of the bankers

knew him and were friendly to him, but in spite of their personal regard

they could do nothing for him.



"It's this stringency, Luck," Jordan of the Cattlemen's National explained

to him. "We can't let a dollar go even on the best security. You know I'd

like to let you have it, but it wouldn't be right to the bank. We've got

to keep our reserve up. Why, I'm lying awake nights trying to figure out a

way to call in more of our money."



"I'm not asking much, Jack."



"Luck, I'd let you have it if I dared. Why, we're running close to the

wind. Public confidence is a mighty ticklish thing. If I didn't have

twenty thousand coming from El Paso on the Flyer to-night I'd be uneasy

for the bank."



"Twenty thousand on the Flyer. I reckon you ship by express, don't you?"



"Yes. Don't mention it to anyone. That twenty thousand would come handy to

a good many people in this country these times."



"It would come right handy to me," Luck laughed ruefully. "I need every

cent of it. After the beef roundup, I'll be on Easy Street, but it's going

to be hard sledding to keep going till then."



"You'll make a turn somehow. It will work out. Maybe when money isn't so

tight I'll be able to do something for you."



Luck returned to the hotel morosely, and tried to figure a way out of his

difficulties. He was not going to be beaten. He never had accepted defeat,

even in the early days when he had sometimes taken a lawless short cut to

what he wanted. By God, he would not lose out after all these years of

fighting. It had been his desperate need of money that had made him sit in

last night's poker game. But he had succeeded only in making a bad

situation worse. He knew his debts by heart, but he jotted them down on

the back of an envelope and added them again.



Mortgage on ranch (due Oct. 1), $13,000

Note to First National, 3,500

Note to Reynolds, 1,750

I O U to Mackenzie, 1,200

Same to Flandrau, 400

Same to Yesler, 300

------

Total, $20,150



Twenty thousand was the sum he needed, and mighty badly, too.

Absentmindedly he turned the envelope over and jotted down one or two

other things. Twenty thousand dollars! Just the sum Jordan had coming to

the bank on the Flyer. Subconsciously, Luck's fingers gave expression to

his thoughts. $20,000. Half a dozen times they penciled it, and just below

the figures, "W. & S. Ex. Co." Finally they wrote automatically the one

word, "To-night."



Luck looked at what he had written, laughed grimly, and tore the envelope

in two. He threw the pieces in the waste paper basket.



More

;