A TOUCH OF THE THIRD DEGREE
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 cañon 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.