Bucky O’Connor was not disheartened. Though he was the best man hunter in Arizona, it was all in the day’s work that criminals should sometimes elude him. But with Curly the issue was a personal one. He owed Luck Cullison a good deal and his imagination had played over the picture of that moment when he could go to Kate and tell her he had freed her father.
After reaching town the first thing each of them did was to take a bath, the second to get shaved. From the barber shop they went to the best restaurant in Saguache. Curly was still busy with his pie à la mode when Burridge Thomas, United States Land Commissioner for that district, took the seat opposite and told to O’Connor a most interesting piece of news.
They heard him to an end without interruption. Then Curly spoke one word. “Fendrick.”
“Yes, sir, Cass Fendrick. Came in about one o’clock and handed me the relinquishment just as I’ve been telling you.”
“Then filed on the claim himself, you said.”
“Yes, took it up himself.”
“Sure the signature to the relinquishment was genuine?”
“I’d take oath to it. As soon as he had gone I got out the original filing and compared the two. Couldn’t be any possible mistake. Nobody could have forged the signature. It is like Luck himself, strong and forceful and decided.”
“We’re not entirely surprised, Mr. Thomas,” Lieutenant O’Connor told the commissioner. “In point of fact we’ve rather been looking for something of the kind.”
“Then you know where Luck is?” Thomas, a sociable garrulous soul, leaned forward eagerly.