BUCKY FOLLOWS A HOT TRAIL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 March 1939, Page 12

BUCKY FOLLOWS A HOT TRAIL

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRAN GEM ENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE.

CHAPTER I. The loungers on the station platform saw two men step down from the vestibule of the Pullman. The first, a blonde, age about tnirty, received scant attention. All the interest was in the younger passenger descending. Bucky Cameron was tne last man in the world except one Toltec had expected to see Eyes focused on him with surprised resentment and beat an unvoiced question at his insouciance.

The object of this scowling regard took it without turning a hair. He was a slim, neat young man, standing about five feet seven inches in the custom-made shoes he wore. His grey suit was well tailored, and he wore it with distinction.

White teeth flashed from the darkly tanned face in a derisive smile as his gaze passed deliberately from one to another. “A committee of welcome?” he asked, dragging the words in a drawl.

One of the men blurted the question in the minds of all. "What in hell you come back here for?” Bucky’s glance raked the man and dismissed him as negligible. He was a station idler, a slack-mouthed gossip who had small weight or influence in the place. No need to waste words on him. Before Bucky reached the taxi stand his eye fell on a Mexican boy he knew. Cameron had been cooped up in a sleeper all night and wanted to get a breath of fresh air into his lungs. I t t would be pleasant to walk to the hotel. He.beckoned the boy and passed him his bag.

“Buenos, Juan,” he said with a smile. “The Toltec House.”

A' murmur of anger, entirely disregarded, pursued him as he walked away. Ignored but not unnoticed. Tim is right, he thought. All Camerons unpopular just now. The dumbness of popular opinion disgusted him. Those staring at him found insult even in his cocky walk. They were chagrined at letting him get away with his effrontery, the more so since they could not quite understand why. His soft brown eyes, shaded by longlashed lids, just missed effeminacy, an effect enhanced by his small silky moustache. Perhaps the recklessness of spirit dancing in the pupils recalled to them his turbulent record. All his youth he had been a madcap, always in and out of scrapes. Moreover, a point never to be forgotten, he came of a line of fighters. The Camerons were individualists, always had been, men who knew how to stand on their own feet.

“Struts like a goshdinged li’l bantam,” one of the men growled. “He’s sure gonna get his comb cut plenty,” another contributed. Bucky swung into Front street, Juan by his side. It was good to see his home town again, though the circumstances of his return ■ were unhappy. In the untempered sunlight, the city looked peaceful as old age. Between the buildings, beyond the town, his imagination could picture the shining desert stretching to the far horizon. The train from which he had alighted was already rushing through it. In his father’s time a herd of antelopes might have been seen flitting in and out of the silvery sage. Those days were past, but a magic light still flooded the atmosphere. It was strange, he reflected, how civilisation had wiped out the wild animal life with one exception. The pigeons and the turkeys were gone. Deer was scarce. Even in the mountains one did not see a bear in five years unless he was hunting big game. But in a certain stretch of rough country—a district of splintered peaks and dark canons and mountain parks seen rarely by law-abiding citizens—the wild human life of forty years ago was repeating itself with the same wary and vigilant furtiveness. At sight of Bucky men stiffened with surprise. His arrival was a sensation. That must be because he was' his uncle’s nephew. The young man grinned, sardonically. He had come on important business, and he meant to see it out. Folks could like it or not as they pleased. Inside the Crystal Palace, just ahead of him, he heard a burst of laughter, a clamour of voices. Through the swing doors of the saloon burst three oi’ four men. At sight of him they stopped precipitately, the mirth wiped from their faces as a wet sponge obliterates writing on a slate. The first of them, a large dish-faced man with a thin-lipped evil mouth, cried out, “Well, I’ll be damned!” “Quite likely, Mr West,” Bucky agreed. “If it isn’t Dude Cameron,” cried a bandy-legged man. “In person,” admitted the owner of the name lightly. The third member of the party was a tall broad-shouldered fellow, blackhair and dark. His heavy eyebrows met in a frown.

“What brought you back?" he said curtly. “The Pacific Flyer.” “Don’t get funny, Cameron. I’m telling you that this town is fed up with your gang.”

“Friendly of you to mention it, Mr Davis. I suppose you’re telling me for my own good.” < The bandy-legged man made a contribution, with righteous severity. Several citizens had stopped and were listening. “Toltec won't stand for you. not after what you did to poor Max Buchmann. I’m surprise you had the nerve to come back from where you was holed up and show your face here.”

“Mr Pete Quinn of the Red Rock district, who came back himself once." Bucky retorted, lifting his hand to those present in a little gesture of introduction.

Dark anger showed in Quinn’s face. The reference needed no explanation. Years he had come back from the penitentiary, where he had been sent through the efforts of a Cameron.

“I’ll stand lust so much from you he murmured.

“Folks here have made up their mind about the whole Cameron outfit.” West carried on vindictively. “From the start they always acted like they were kings of the range. Years ago he had come back from the penitentiary, where he had been sent dirty work under cover he could get away with it. but when he came to town and started his robbing and murdering ”

Eucky's voice rang out' in challenge.

"That’s a lie.” From me gathering crowd some one caneu out, ".Facts aun't lie." ”i'lot wnen you get your facts straignt,’ Lucky flung back. "You nave them all wrong in this business. "What 1 aimed to say,” West went on, "is that Toltec won’t any longer tolerate killers and robbers.”

"Tough on the Red Rock scalawags," Bucky drawled.-" Have you boys picked ine next district you expect to infest?”,

"Fellow, you can’t talk yourself out of the jam you're in by throwing mud at decent cowmen!” West cried, his gash of a mouth a slit of menace.

"You’re in this First National business up to your neck. If Haskell does what he'd ought to do he’ll arrest you soon as he knows you’re here.” "And if he doesn't, why Toltec can take care of the matter itself,” Davis added. One Of the townsmen murmured assent.

"Take care of it how?” asked Bucky. "You'll find out how,” Quinn said thickly, anger still simmering in him. It came to Bucky, from the sullen silence of the waiting circle, that the situation was more serious for him than he had anticipated. They were associating him with his uncle, and on the evidence at hand Cliff Cameron had robbed a thousand depositors of his bank.

The young man spoke to the Toltec man within hearing, quietly, not raising his voice. “I’m not looking for trouble. I came here to clear my uncle’s name, to prove false the lies being told about him. From his enemies I ask nothing, but I do expect fair play from his neighbours in town who knew Uncle Cliff for a square-shooter who never wronged any man. “Better clear your own name first before your start whitewashing his,” Quinn cried harshly. “That’s right,” a listener approved. The brown eyes of Cameron grew hard as agates. “I’m not talking to scoundrels who. robbed my uncle for years and were hammered, down by him so that they hated the ground he walked on, but to you decent people who don’t belong in the penitentiary. Uncle Cliff is innocent. I’m going to prove it before I'm through.” “You’ve got a nerve to come back and try to play innocent,” West roared. “With Max Buchman hardly cold in his grave. Cliff Cameron as guilty as hell, and even if you weren’t on the ground you were helping him on the dirty job.” Except for Bucky himself the echo of assent was unanimous. He felt the heat of their anger beat upon him. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “I haven’t been in town for a year. How could I be in this bank robbery, if that’s what you mean?” “How do we know you weren't here under cover?” some one asked. “You came back like a dern fool to try to bluff it out,” Davis charged. “And you made a big mistake sticking yore head out for the rope, I’ll say.” Bucky began to wonder if he had not made a mistake. There was something back of this he did not understand. It was clear that public opinion assumed he had aided and abetted his uncle and that his return to town was an outrageous challenge of impudent guilt to decency. His enemies would, if possible, blow the smouldering anger to red-hot fury. “If Sheriff Haskell wants to see me, I'll be at the Toltec House for an hour, and after that at the ranch. I’m here to see this thing. through. All I ask is a little time to clear it up.” “All you’ll get is a rope or a bullet,” Quinn snarled. “I’m not talking to rustlers and crooks like this fellow and his friends who do business at night in other men’s stock,” Bucky said quietly. “They are known enemies of us Camerons. I’m appealing to the decent folks of Toltec, those who knew my uncle and respected him.” A little red-faced man flung a question hotly at him. “If Cliff Cameron is innocent, where’s he at. What has he done with our money? Why did he light out like a scared coyote after the robbery?” '“I don’t know where he is, Todd,” Bucky replied. “That’s one of the things to be cleared up.” “Yeah, you want it clear as mud, don’t you?' 7 jeered Quinn. “We’re not complete idjits, fellow. Buchmann is found dead. The bank is robbed. Cliff is missing. What more do you want?”

“I want to find out who robbed the bank and killed Buchmann. I want to find out what became of my uncle.” “So you claim you don’t know where he is,” Quinn said. Bucky’s steady gaze rested on the seamed face of the bow-legged man. “I don't know where he is, Pete, as I mentioned a minute ago. Do you?” Quinn began to bluster. “If youtre claiming ” “I'm claiming just one thing—yet,” Bucky’s low clear voice cut in. “That Cliff Cameron is as square a man as ever lived.”

The young man turned away abruptly and walked across the street to the Toltec House, the Maxican boy still shuffling at his side. As Bucky approached the desk the loungers in the lobby chairs straightened to watch him. A groud of three sat smoking not far from the cigar stand. One of them was a plump little man with a round moon face and horn spectacles back of which twinkled jolly benevolent eyes. He was telling a funny story, with the exaggerated gestures of an old-time actor. A flicker of astonished hostility, banished almost instantly, showed behind the glasses. I-Ie rose quickly to meet the young man, waving the lighted cigar in his hand.

“Well —well, here we are back in the old town!” he cried heartily. “Welcome home again.” Bucky stopped and smiled blandly. His fingers were in his pocket searching for a half dollar to give the Mexican, so that he was unable to shake the soft hand outstretched to him. "It’s a great thing to be sure you can rely on your old friends, Richman,” he said, with the faintest accent of irony.

Richman ignored any rebuff that might have been meant. “Just in, I suppose. Did you bring any news from Cliff?’' he asked smoothly. “Not any,” Bucky drawled. “What news of him there is can be got here in Toltec. Thought rnaybe you might

have some for me.” The plump man was solicitously regretful. “Sorry, Bucky. I certainly wish I had. You surely must be worried about him.” (To be Continued).