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Crooked Trails and Straight, a fiction by William MacLeod Raine |
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Part 2. Luck - Chapter 1. At The Round Up Club |
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_ PART II. LUCK CHAPTER I. AT THE ROUND UP CLUB A big game had been in progress all night at the Round Up Club. Now the garish light of day streamed through the windows, but the electric cluster still flung down its yellow glare upon the table. Behind the players were other smaller tables littered with cigars, discarded packs, and glasses full or empty. The men were in their shirt sleeves. Big broad-shouldered fellows they were, with the marks of the outdoors hard-riding West upon them. No longer young, they were still full of the vigor and energy of unflagging strength. From bronzed faces looked steady unwinking eyes with humorous creases around the corners, hard eyes that judged a man and his claims shrewdly and with good temper. Most of them had made good in the land, and their cattle fed upon a thousand hills. The least among them physically was Luck Cullison, yet he was their recognized leader. There was some innate quality in this man with the gray, steel-chilled eyes that marked him as first in whatever company he chose to frequent. A good friend and a good foe, men thought seriously before they opposed him. He had made himself a power in the Southwest because he was the type that goes the limit when aroused. Yet about him, too, there was the manner of a large amiability, of the easy tolerance characteristic of the West. While Alec Flandrau shuffled and dealt, the players relaxed. Cigars were relit, drinks ordered. Conversation reverted to the ordinary topics that interested Cattleland. The price of cows, the good rains, the time of the fall roundup, were touched upon. The door opened to let in a newcomer, a slim, graceful man much younger than the others present, and one whose costume and manner brought additional color into the picture. Flandrau, Senior, continued to shuffle without turning his head. Cullison also had his back to the door, but the man hung his broad-rimmed gray hat on the rack--beside an exactly similar one that belonged to the owner of the Circle C--and moved leisurely forward till he was within range of his vision. "Going to prove up soon on that Del Oro claim of yours, Luck?" asked Flandrau. He was now dealing, his eyes on the cards, so that he missed the embarrassment in the faces of those about him. "On Thursday, the first day the law allows," Cullison answered quietly. Flandrau chuckled. "I reckon Cass Fendrick will be some sore." "I expect." Cullison's gaze met coolly the black, wrathful eyes of the man who had just come in. "Sort of put a crimp in his notions when you took up the canyon draw," Flandrau surmised. Something in the strained silence struck the dealer as unusual. He looked up, and showed a momentary confusion. "Didn't know you were there, Cass. Looks like I put my foot in it sure that time. I ce'tainly thought you were an absentee," he apologized. "Or you wouldn't have been talking about me," retorted Fendrick acidly. The words were flung at Flandrau, but plainly they were meant as a challenge for Cullison. A bearded man, the oldest in the party, cut in with good-natured reproof. "I shouldn't wonder, Cass, but your name is liable to be mentioned just like that of any other man." "Didn't know you were in this, Yesler," Fendrick drawled insolently. "Oh, well, I butted in," the other laughed easily. He pushed a stack of chips toward the center of the table. "The pot's open." Fendrick, refused a quarrel, glared at the impassive face of Cullison, and passed to the rear room for a drink. His impudence needed fortifying, for he knew that since he had embarked in the sheep business he was not welcome at this club, that in fact certain members had suggested his name be dropped from the books. Before he returned to the poker table the drink he had ordered became three. The game was over and accounts were being straightened. Cullison was the heavy loser. All night he had been bucking hard luck. His bluffs had been called. The others had not come in against his strong hands. On a straight flush he had drawn down the ante and nothing more. To say the least, it was exasperating. But his face had showed no anger. He had played poker too many years, was too much a sport in the thorough-going frontier fashion, to wince when the luck broke badly for him. The settlement showed that the owner of the Circle C was twenty-five hundred dollars behind the game. He owed Mackenzie twelve hundred, Flandrau four hundred, and three hundred to Yesler. With Fendrick sitting in an easy chair just across the room, he found it a little difficult to say what otherwise would have been a matter of course. "My bank's busted just now, boys. Have to ask you to let it stand for a few days. Say, till the end of the week." Fendrick laughed behind the paper he was pretending to read. He knew quite well that Luck's word was as good as his bond, but he chose to suggest a doubt. "Maybe you'll explain the joke to us, Cass," the owner of the Circle C said very quietly. "Oh, I was just laughing at the things I see, Luck," returned the younger man with airy offense, his eyes on the printed sheet. "Meaning for instance?" "Just human nature. Any law against laughing?" Cullison turned his back on him. "See you on Thursday if that's soon enough, boys." "All the time you want, Luck. Let mine go till after the roundup if you'd rather," Mackenzie suggested. "Thursday suits me." Cullison rose and stretched. He had impressed his strong, dominant personality upon his clothes, from the high-heeled boots to the very wrinkles in the corduroy coat he was now putting on. He bad enemies, a good many of them, but his friends were legion. "Don't hurry yourself." "Oh, I'll rustle the money, all right. Coming down to the hotel?" Luck was reaching for his hat, but turned toward his friends as he spoke. Without looking again at Fendrick, he led the way to the street. The young man left alone cursed softly to himself, and ordered another drink. He knew he was overdoing it, but the meeting with Cullison had annoyed him exceedingly. The men had never been friends, and of late years they had been leaders of hostile camps. Both of them could be overbearing, and there was scarcely a week but their interests overlapped. Luck was capable of great generosity, but he could be obstinate as the rock of Gibraltar when he chose. There had been differences about the ownership of calves, about straying cattle, about political matters. Finally had come open hostility. Cass leased from the forestry department the land upon which Cullison's cattle had always run free of expense. Upon this he had put sheep, a thing in itself of great injury to the cattle interests. The stockmen had all been banded together in opposition to the forestry administration of the new regime, and Luck regarded Fendrick's action as treachery to the common cause. He struck back hard. In Arizona the open range is valuable only so long as the water holes also are common property or a private supply available. The Circle C cattle and those of Fendrick came down from the range to the Del Oro to water at a point where the canyon walls opened to a spreading valley. This bit of meadow Luck homesteaded and fenced on the north side, thus cutting the cattle of his enemy from the river. Cass was furious. He promptly tore down the fence to let his cattle and sheep through. Cullison rebuilt it, put up a shack at a point which commanded the approach, and set a guard upon it day and night. Open warfare had ensued, and one of the sheepherders had been beaten because he persisted in crossing the dead line. Now Cullison was going to put the legal seal on the matter by making final proof on his homestead. Cass knew that if he did so it would practically put him out of business. He would be at the mercy of his foe, who could ruin him if he pleased. Luck would be in a position to dictate terms absolutely. Nor did it make his defeat any more palatable to Cass that he had brought it on himself by his bad-tempered unneighborliness and by his overreaching disposition. A hundred times he had blacknamed himself for an arrant fool because he had not anticipated the move of his enemy and homesteaded on his own account. He felt that there must be some way out of the trap if he could only find it. Whenever the thought of eating humble pie to Luck came into his mind, the rage boiled in him. He swore he would not do it. Better a hundred times to see the thing out to a fighting finish. Taking the broad-rimmed gray hat he found on the rack, Cass passed out of the clubhouse and into the sun-bathed street. _ |
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