Bucky OConnor | Page 5

front of him
traveling to meet their father in California, he found intuitively
common ground of interest. Even Major Mackenzie, the engineer in
charge of the large irrigation project being built by a company in
southern Arizona, relaxed at one of the plainsman's humorous tales.
It was after Collins had half-depopulated the car by leading the more
jovial spirits back in search of liquid refreshments that an urbane
clergyman, now of Boston but formerly of Pekin, Illinois, professedly
much interested in the sheriff's touch-and-go manner as presumably
quite characteristic of the West, dropped into the vacant seat beside
Major Mackenzie.
"And who might our energetic friend be?" he asked, with an
ingratiating smile.
The young woman in front of them turned her head ever so slightly to
listen.
"Val Collins is his name," said the major. "Sometimes called 'Bear-trap
Collins.' He has always lived on the frontier. At least, I met him twelve
years ago when he was riding mail between Aravaipa and Mesa. He

was a boy then, certainly not over eighteen, but in a desperate fight he
had killed two men who tried to hold up the mail. Cow-puncher,
stage-driver, miner, trapper, sheriff, rough rider, politician--he's past
master at them all."
"And why the appellation of 'Bear-trap,' may I ask?" The smack of
pulpit oratory was not often missing in the edifying discourse of the
Reverend Peter Melancthon Brooks.
"Well, sir, that's a story. He was trapping in the Tetons about five years
ago thirty miles from the nearest ranch-house. One day, while he was
setting a bear-trap, a slide of snow plunged down from the tree
branches above and freed the spring, catching his hand between its jaws.
With his feet and his other hand he tried to open that trap for four hours,
without the slightest success. There was not one chance in a million of
help from outside. In point of fact, Collins had not seen a human being
for a month. There was only one thing to do, and he did it."
"And that was?"
"You probably noticed that he wears a glove over his left hand. The
reason, sir, is that he has an artificial hand."
"You mean--" The Reverend Peter paused to lengthen his delicious
thrill of horror.
"Yes, sir. That's just what I mean. He hacked his hand off at the wrist
with his hunting-knife."
"Why, the man's a hero!" cried the clergyman, with unction.
Mackenzie flung him a disgusted look. "We don't go much on heroes
out here. He's game, if that's what you mean. And able, too. Bucky
O'Connor himself isn't any smarter at following a trail."
"And who is Bucky O'Connor?"
"He's the man that just ran down Fernendez. Think I'll have a smoke,

sir. Care to join me?"
But the Pekin-Bostonian preferred to stay and jot down in his
note-book the story of the beartrap, to be used later as a sermon
illustration. This may have been the reason he did not catch the quick
look that passed without the slightest flicker of the eyelids between
Major Mackenzie and the young woman in Section 3. It was as if the
old officer had wired her a message in some code the cipher of which
was known only to them.
But the sheriff, returning at the head of his cohorts, caught it, and
wondered what meaning might lie back of that swift glance. Major
Mackenzie and this dark-eyed beauty posed before others as strangers,
yet between them lay some freemasonry of understanding to which he
had not the key.
Collins did not know that the aloofness in the eyes of Miss
Wainwright--he had seen the name on her suit-case--gave way to horror
when her glance fell on his gloved hand. She had a swift, shuddering
vision of a grim-faced man, jaws set like a vise, hacking at his wrist
with a hunting-knife. But the engaging impudence of his eye, the
rollicking laughter in his voice, shut out the picture instantly.
The young man resumed his seat, and Miss Wainwright her listless
inspection of the flying stretches of brown desert. Dusk was beginning
to fall, and the porter presently lit the lamps. Collins bought a magazine
from the newsboy and relapsed into it, but before he was well adjusted
to reading the Limited pounded to a second unscheduled halt.
Instantly the magazine was thrown aside and Collins' curly head thrust
out of the window. Presently the head reappeared, simultaneously with
the crack of a revolver, the first of a detonating fusillade.
"Another of your impatient citizens eager to utilize the unspeakable
convenience of rapid transit," suggested the clergyman, with ponderous
jocosity.
"No, sir; nothing so illegal," smiled the cattleman, a whimsical light in

his daredevil eyes. He leaned forward and whispered a word to the little
girl in front of him, who