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Curly thought about the girl who had fought for his life. "You'll not let him die, Doc," he begged. "He's too tough for that, Luck Cullison is." Presently Doctor Brown gave him a sleeping powder and left him. Soon after that Curly fell asleep and dreamed about a slim dark girl with fine longlashed eyes that could be both tender and ferocious.
Others had ridden over from neighboring ranches. All of them plainly meant business. They meant to stamp out rustling, and their determination had been given an edge by the wounding of Luck Cullison, the most popular man in the county. "Think again, Curly," advised Sweeney quietly. "The boys ain't trifling about this thing. They mean to find out who was in the rustling of the Bar Double M stock."
"There's a chance he'll make for one of my sheep camps to lay in a supply. Wouldn't it be a good idea to keep a man stationed at each one of them?" "You're talking sense," Cullison approved. "Sam, ride back and get in touch with Curly. Tell him to do that. And rouse the whole country over the wire. We'll run him down and feed him to the coyotes." Fendrick had told the exact truth.
Cranston asked. A muscle twitched in Flandrau's cheek. "They got Mac." "Got him! Where? At Saguache?" "Ran us down near the Circle C. Mac opened fire. They killed him." "Shot him, or ?" Curly was left to guess the other half of the question. "Shot him, and took me prisoner." "They couldn't prove a thing, could they?" "They could prove I wounded Cullison. That was enough for them.
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.
The print was a snapshot of a boy about nineteen, a good looking handsome fellow, a little sulky around the mouth but with a pair of straight honest eyes. Curly shook his head slowly. Yet he was vaguely reminded of someone he knew. Glancing up, he found instantly the clew to what had puzzled him. The young man in the picture was like Kate Cullison, like her father too for that matter.
The sheriff observed that the prevailing denomination was the same. "Get these from Luck?" he asked carelessly. The cattleman stared at him, and the suspicion grew on him that he had been trapped again. "Why do you ask?" "Because it happens the bills stolen from the W. & S. were all twenties." "No, I didn't get them from Cullison. This is money I had," he answered sullenly.
"My little girl," he cried in a voice that rang with love. Luck had found his ewe lamb that was lost. It was Curly who first saw the man approaching from the gulch. "Hello, Cass! Did you get him?" Fendrick nodded wearily. "Dead sure?" "Yep. He's up there." The sheepman's hand swept toward the bluff. "You're wounded." "Got me in the shoulder. Nothing serious, I judge." Cullison swung around.
As they rode back to the ranch, Curly mentioned that he had seen Sam's people a day or two before. Cullison asked no questions, but he listened intently while the other told the story of his first rustling and of how Miss Kate and her father had stood by him in his trouble. The dusk was settling over the hills by this time, so that they could not see each other's faces clearly.
And he was lying comfortably in a clean bed instead of hanging by the neck from the limb of one of the big cottonwoods on the edge of the creek. A memory smote him and instantly he was grave again. "How is Cullison?" "Good as the wheat, doc says. Mighty lucky for Mr. C. Flandrau that he is. Say, I'm to be yore valley and help you into them clothes. Git a wiggle on you."
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