Returning to the runabout, the girl drove across a kind of natural meadow to a hillside not far distant, gathered a double handful of wild flowers, and turned homeward again. The stage was still there when she came in sight of the group of buildings at the ranch.

As she drew up and dismounted with her armful of flowers, Alan McKinstra stepped from the store to the porch and came forward to assist her.

"The Fort Allison stage has been robbed," he blurted out.

"What nonsense! Who would want to rob it?" she retorted.

"Morse had a gold shipment aboard," he explained in a low voice, and added in bitter self-condemnation: "He sent me along to guard it, and I never even fired a shot to save it."

"But—do you mean that somebody held up the stage?" she gasped.

"Yes. But whoever it was can't escape. I've 'phoned to Jack Flatray and to Morse. They'll be right out here. The sheriff of Mesa County has already started with a posse. They'll track him down. That's a cinch. He can't get away with the box without a rig. If he busts the box, he's got to carry it on a horse and a horse leaves tracks."

"But who do you think it was?"

"Don't know. One of the Roaring Fork bunch of bad men, likely. But I don't know."

The young man was plainly very much excited and disturbed. He walked nervously up and down, jerking his sentences out piecemeal as he thought of them.

"Was there only one man? And did you see him?" Melissy asked breathlessly.

He scarcely noticed her excitement, or if he did, it seemed to him only natural under the circumstances.

"I expect there were more, but we saw only one. Didn't see much of him. He was screened by the bushes and wore a black mask. So long as the stage was in sight he never moved from that place; just stood there and kept us covered."

"But how could he rob you if he didn't come out?" she asked in wide-eyed innocence.

"He didn't rob us any. He must 'a' heard of the shipment of gold, and that's what he was after. After he'd got us to rights he made me throw the box down in the road. That's where it was when he ordered us to move on and keep agoing."

"And you went?"

"Jose handled the lines, but 't would 'a' been the same if I'd held them. That gun of his was a right powerful persuader." He stopped to shake a fist in impotent fury in the air. "I wish to God I could meet up with him some day when he didn't have the drop on me."

"Maybe you will some time," she told him soothingly. "I don't think you're a bit to blame, Alan. Nobody could think so. Ever so many times I've heard Dad say that when a man gets the drop on you there's nothing to do but throw up your hands."

"Do you honest think so, Melissy? Or are you just saying it to take the sting away? Looks like I ought to 'a' done something mor'n sit there like a bump on a log while he walked off with the gold."

His cheerful self-satisfaction was under eclipse. The boyish pride of him was wounded. He had not "made good." All over Cattleland the news would be wafted on the wings of the wind that Alan McKinstra, while acting as shotgun messenger to a gold shipment, had let a road agent hold him up for the treasure he was guarding.

"Very likely they'll catch him and get the gold back," she suggested.

"That won't do me any good," he returned gloomily. "The only thing that can help me now is for me to git the fellow myself, and I might just as well look for a needle in a haystack."

"You can't tell. The robber may be right round here now." Her eyes, shining with excitement, passed the crowd moving in and out of the store, for already the news of the hold-up had brought riders and ranchmen jogging in to learn the truth of the wild tale that had reached them.

"More likely he's twenty miles away. But whoever he is, he knows this county. He made a slip and called Jose by his name."

Melissy's gaze was turned to the dust whirl that advanced up the road that ran round the corral. "That doesn't prove anything, Alan. Everybody knows Jose. He's lived all over Arizona—at Tucson and Tombstone and Douglas."

"That's right too," the lad admitted.

The riders in advance of the dust cloud resolved themselves into the persons of her father and Norris. Her incautious admission was already troubling her.

"But I'm sure you're right. No hold-up with any sense would stay around here and wait to be caught. He's probably gone up into the Galiuros to hide."

"Unless he's cached the gold and is trying to throw off suspicion."

The girl had moved forward to the end of the house with Alan to meet her father. At that instant, by the ironic humor of chance, her glance fell upon a certain improvised wash-stand covered with oilcloth. She shook her head decisively. "No, he won't risk waiting to do that. He'll make sure of his escape first."

"I reckon."

"Have you heard, Daddy?" Melissy called out eagerly. She knew she must play the part expected of her, that of a young girl much interested in this adventure which had occurred in the community.

He nodded grimly, swinging from the saddle. She observed with surprise that his eye did not meet hers. This was not like him.

"What do you think?"

His gaze met that of Norris before he answered, and there was in it some hint of a great fear. "Beats me, 'Lissy."

He had told the simple truth, but not the whole truth. The men had waited at the entrance to the Box canyon for nearly two hours without the arrival of the stage. Deciding that something must have happened, they started back, and presently met a Mexican who stopped to tell them the news. To say that they were dazed is to put it mildly. To expect them to believe that somebody else had heard of the secret shipment and had held up the stage two miles from the place they had chosen, was to ask a credulity too simple. Yet this was the fact that confronted them.

Arrived at the scene of the robbery both men had dismounted and had examined the ground thoroughly. What they saw tended still more to bewilder them. Neither of them was a tenderfoot, and the little table at the summit of the long hill told a very tangled tale to those who had eyes to read. Obvious tracks took them at once to the spot where the bandit had stood in the bushes, but there was something about them that struck both men as suspicious.

"Looks like these are worked out on purpose," commented Lee. "The guy's leaving too easy a trail to follow, and it quits right abrupt in the bushes. Must 'a' took an airship from here, I 'low."

"Does look funny. Hello! What's this?"

Norris had picked up a piece of black cloth and was holding it out. A startled oath slipped from the lips of the Southerner. He caught the rag from the hands of his companion and studied it with a face of growing astonishment.

"What's up?"

Lee dived into his pocket and drew forth the mask he had been wearing. Silently he fitted it to the other. The pieces matched exactly, both in length and in the figure of the pattern.

When the Southerner looked up his hands were shaking and his face ashen.

"For God's sake, Phil, what does this mean?" he cried hoarsely.

"Search me."

"It must have been—looks like the hold-up was somebody—my God, man, we left this rag at the ranch when we started!" the rancher whispered.

"That's right."

"We planned this thing right under the nigger's room. He must 'a' heard and—— But it don't look like Jim Budd to do a thing like that."

Norris had crossed the road again and was standing on the edge of the lateral.

"Hello! This ditch is full of water. When we passed down it was empty," he said.

Lee crossed over and stood by his side, a puzzled frown on his face. "There hadn't ought to be water running hyer now," he said, as if to himself. "I don't see how it could 'a' come hyer, for Bill Weston—he's the ditch rider—went to Mesa this mo'ning, and couldn't 'a' got back to turn it in."

The younger man stooped and examined a foot-print at the edge of the ditch. It was the one Melissy had made just as she stepped into the rig.

"Here's something new, Lee. We haven't seen this gentleman's track before. Looks like a boy's. It's right firm and deep in this soft ground. I'll bet a cooky your nigger never made that track."

The Southerner crouched down beside him, and they looked at it together, head to head.

"No, it ain't Jim's. I don't rightly savez this thing at all," the old man muttered, troubled at this mystery which seemed to point to his household.

"By Moses, I've got it! The guy who did the holding up had his horse down here. He loaded the sack on its back and drove off up the ditch. All we got to do is follow the ditch up or down till we come to the place where he climbed out and struck across country."

"That's right, Phil. He must have had a pardner up at the head-gates. They had some kind of signal arranged, and when Mr. Hold-up was ready down come the water and washed out his tracks. It's a blame' smooth piece of business if you ask me."

"The fellow made two bad breaks, though. That piece of shirt is one. This foot-print is another. They may land him in the pen yet."

"I don't think it," returned the old man with composure, and as he spoke his foot erased the telltale print. "I 'low there won't anybody go to the pen for he'pin himself to Mr. Morse's gold dust. I don't give a cuss who it was."

Norris laughed in his low, easy way. "I'm with you, Mr. Lee. We'll make a thorough job while we're at it and mess up these other tracks. After that we'll follow the ditch up and see if there's anything doing."

They remounted their broncos and rode them across the tracks several times, then followed the lateral up, one on either side of the ditch, their eyes fastened to the ground to see any evidence of a horse having clambered over the bank. They drew in sight of the ranch house without discovering what they were looking for. Lee's heart was in his mouth, for he knew that he would see presently what his eye sought.

"I reckon the fellow went down instead of up," suggested Norris.

"No, he came up."

Lee had stopped and was studying wheel tracks that ran up from the ditch to his ranch house. His face was very white and set. He pointed to them with a shaking finger.

"There's where he went in the ditch, and there's where he came out."

Norris forded the stream, cast a casual eye on the double track, and nodded. He was still in a fog of mystery, but the old man was already fearing the worst.

He gulped out his fears tremblingly. For himself, he was of a flawless nerve, but this touched nearer home than his own danger.

"Them wheel-tracks was made by my little gyurl's runabout, Phil."

"Good heavens!" The younger man drew rein sharply and stared at him. "You don't think——"

He broke off, recalling the sharp, firm little foot-print on the edge of the ditch some miles below.

"I don't reckon I know what to think. If she was in this, she's got some good reason." A wave of passion suddenly swept the father. "By God! I'd like to see the man that dares mix her name up in this."

Norris met this with his friendly smile. "You can't pick a row with me about that, old man. I'm with you till the cows come home. But that ain't quite the way to go at this business. First thing, we've got to wipe out these tracks. How? Why, sheep! There's a bunch of three hundred in that pasture. We'll drive the bunch down to the ditch and water them here. Savez?"

"And wipe out the wheel-marks in the sand. Bully for you, Phil."

"That's the idea. After twelve hundred chisel feet have been over this sand I reckon the wheel-tracks will be missing."

They rode up to the house, and the first thing that met them was the candid question of the girl:

"Have you heard, Daddy?"

And out of his troubled heart he had answered, "Beats me, 'Lissie."

"They've sent for the officers. Jack Flatray is on the way himself. So is Sheriff Burke," volunteered Alan gloomily.

"Getting right busy, ain't they?" Norris sneered.

Again Lee glanced quickly at Norris. "I reckon, Phil, we better drive that bunch of sheep down to water right away. I clean forgot them this mo'ning."

"Sure." The younger man was not so easily shaken. He turned to McKinstra naturally. "How many of the hold-ups were there?"

"I saw only one, and didn't see him very good. He was a slim fellow in a black mask."

"You don't say. Were you the driver?"

Alan felt the color suffuse his face. "No, I was the guard."

"Oh, you were the guard."

Alan felt the suave irony that covered this man's amusement, and he resented it impotently. When Melissy came to his support he was the more grateful.

"And we all think he did just right in using his common sense, Mr. Norris," the girl flashed.

"Oh, certainly."

And with that he was gone after her father to help him water the sheep.

"I don't see why those sheep have to be watered right now," she frowned to Alan. "Dad did water them this morning. I helped him."

Together they went into the store, where Jose was telling his story for the sixth time to a listening circle of plainsmen.

"And right then he come at you and ree-quested yore whole outfit to poke a hole in the scenery with yore front feet?" old Dave Ellis asked just as Melissy entered.

"Si, Senor."

"One of MacQueen's Roaring Fork gang did it, I'll bet," Alan contributed sourly.

"What kind of a lookin' guy was he?" spoke up a dark young man known as Bob Farnum.

"A big man, senor, and looked a ruffian."

"They're always that way until you run 'em down," grinned Ellis. "Never knew a hold-up wasn't eight foot high and then some—to the fellow at the wrong end of the gun."

"If you mean to say, Dave Ellis, that I lay down to a bluff——" Alan was beginning hotly when the old frontiersman interrupted.

"Keep your shirt on, McKinstra. I don't mean to say it. Nobody but a darn fool makes a gun-play when the cards are stacked that-a-way. Yore bad play was in reaching for the gun at all."

"Well, Jack Flatray will git him. I'll bet a stack of blues on that," contributed a fat ranchman wheezily.

"Unless you mussed up the trail coming back," said Ellis to the stage-driver.

"We didn't. I thought of that, and I had Jose drive clear round the place. Jack will find it all right unless there's too much travel before he gets here," said Alan.

Farnum laughed malevolently. "Mebbe he'll get him and mebbe he won't. Jack's human, like the rest of us, if he is the best sheriff in Arizona. Here's hoping he don't get him. Any man that waltzes out of the cactus and appropriates twenty thousand dollars belonging to Mr. Morse is welcome to it for all of me. I don't care if he is one of MacQueen's bad men. I wish it had been forty thousand."

Farnum did not need to explain the reasons for his sentiments. Everybody present knew that he was the leader of that bunch of cattlemen who had bunched themselves together to resist the encroachments of sheep upon the range. Among these the feeling against Morse was explosively dangerous. It had found expression in more than one raid upon his sheep. Many of them had been destroyed by one means or another, but Morse, with the obstinacy characteristic of him, had replaced them with others and continually increased his herds. There had been threats against his life, and one of his herders had been wounded. But the mine-owner went his way with quiet fearlessness and paid no attention to the animosity he had stirred up. The general feeling was that the trouble must soon come to a head. Nobody expected the rough and ready vaqueros, reckless and impulsive as they were, to submit to the loss of the range, which meant too the wiping out of their means of livelihood, without a bitter struggle that would be both lawless and bloody.

Wherefore there was silence after Farnum had spoken, broken at length by the amiable voice of the fat ranchman, Baker.

"Well, we'll see what we'll see," he wheezed complacently. "And anyways I got to have some horseshoe plug, Melissy."

The girl laughed nervously as she reached for what he wanted. "You're a safe prophet, Mr. Baker," she said.

"He'd be a safe one if he'd prophesy that Jack Flatray would have Mr. Hold-up in the calaboose inside of three days," put in a half-grown lad in leathers.

"I ain't so sure about that. You'll have to show me, and so will Mr. Deputy Sheriff Flatray," retorted Farnum.

A shadow darkened the doorway.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen all—and Miss Lee," a pleasant voice drawled.

The circle of eyes focused on the new-comer and saw a lean, muscular, young fellow of medium height, cool and alert, with the dust of the desert on every sunbaked inch of him.

"I'm damned if it ain't Jack here already!" gasped Baker.



CHAPTER VII

WATERING SHEEP

The deputy glanced quietly round, nodded here and there at sight of the familiar face of an acquaintance, and spoke to the driver.

"Let's hear you say your little piece again, Jose."

The Mexican now had it by heart, and he pattered off the thing from beginning to end without a pause. Melissy, behind the counter, leaned her elbows on it and fastened her eyes on the boyish face of the officer. In her heart she was troubled. How much did he know? What could he discover from the evidence she had left? He had the reputation of being the best trailer and the most fearless officer in Arizona. But surely she had covered her tracks safely.

From Jose the ranger turned to Alan. "We'll hear your account of it now, seh," he said gently.

While Alan talked, Jack's gaze drifted through the window to the flock of sheep that were being driven up from the ditch by Lee and Norris. That little pastoral scene had its significance for him. He had arrived at the locality of the hold-up a few minutes after they had left, and his keen intelligence had taken in some of the points they had observed. A rapid circuit of the spot at the distance of thirty yards had shown him no tracks leading from the place except those which ran up the lateral on either side of it. It was possible that these belonged to the horses of the robbers, but if so the fellows were singularly careless of detection. Moreover, the booty must be accounted for. They had not carried it with them, since no empty box remained to show that they had poured the gold into sacks, and it would have been impossible to take the box as it was on a horse. Nor had they buried it, unless at the bottom of the irrigating ditch, for some signs of their work must have remained.

Balancing probabilities, it had seemed to Flatray that these might be the tracks of ranchmen who had arrived after the hold-up and were following the escaping bandits up the lateral. For unless these were the robber's, there was no way of escape except either up or down the bottom of the ditch. His search had eliminated the possibility of any other but the road, and this was travelled too frequently to admit of even a chance of escape by it without detection. Jack filed away one or two questions in his brain for future reference. The most important of these was to discover whether there had been any water in the ditch at the time of the hold-up.

He had decided to follow the tracks leading up the ditch and found no difficulty in doing so at a fast walk. Without any hesitation they paralleled the edge of the lateral. Nor had the deputy travelled a quarter of a mile before he made a discovery. The rider on the right hand side of the stream had been chewing tobacco, and he had a habit of splashing his mark on boulders he passed in the form of tobacco juice. Half a dozen times before he reached the Lee ranch the ranger saw this signature of identity writ large on smooth rocks shining in the sun. The last place he saw it was at the point where the two riders deflected from the lateral toward the ranch house, following tracks which led up from the bottom of the ditch.

An instant later Flatray had dodged back into the chaparral, for somebody was driving a flock of sheep down to the ditch. He made out that there were two riders behind them, and that they had no dog. For the present his curiosity was satisfied. He thought he knew why they were watering sheep in this odd fashion. Swiftly he had made a circuit, drawn rein in front of the store, and dropped in just in time to hear his name. Now, as with one ear he listened to Alan's account of the hold-up, with his subconscious mind he was with the sheep-herders who were driving the flock back into the pasture.

"Looks like our friend the bad man was onto his job all right," was the deputy's only comment when Alan had finished.

"I'll bet he's making his getaway into the hills mighty immediate," chuckled Baker. "He can't find a bank in the mountainside to deposit that gold any too soon to suit him."

"Sho! I'll bet he ain't worried a mite. He's got his arrangements all made, and likely they'll dovetail to suit him. He's put his brand on that gold to stay," answered Farnum confidently.

Jack's mild blue eyes rested on him amiably. "Think so, Bob?"

"I ain't knockin' you any, Jack. You're all right. But that's how I figure it out, and, by Gad! I'm hopin' it too," Farnum made answer recklessly.

Flatray laughed and strolled from the crowded room to the big piazza. A man had just cantered up and flung himself from his saddle. The ranger, looking at him, thought he had never seen another so strikingly handsome an Apollo. Black eyes looked into his from a sun-tanned face perfectly modelled. The pose of the head and figure would have delighted a sculptor.

There was a vigor, an unspoken hostility, in the gaze of both men.

"Mo'nin", Mr. Deputy Sheriff, one said; and the other, "Same to you, Mr. Norris."

"You're on the job quick," sneered the cattle detective.

"The quicker the sooner, I expect."

"And by night you'll have Mr. Hold-up roped and hog-tied?"

"Not so you could notice it. Are you a sheep-herder these days, Mr. Norris?"

The gentle irony of this was not lost on its object, for in the West a herder of sheep is the next remove from a dumb animal.

"No, I'm riding for the Quarter Circle K Bar outfit. This is the first time I ever took the dust of a sheep in my life. I did it to oblige Mr. Lee."

"Oh! To oblige Mr. Lee?"

"He wanted to water them, and his herder wasn't here."

"Must 'a' been wanting water mighty bad, I reckon," commented Jack amiably.

"You bet! Lee feels better satisfied now he's watered them."

"I don't doubt it."

Norris changed the subject. "You must have burnt the wind getting here. I didn't expect to see you for some hours."

"I happened to be down at Yeager's ranch, and one of the boys got me on the line from Mesa."

"Picked up any clues yet?" asked the other carelessly, yet always with that hint of a sneer; and innocently Flatray answered, "They seem to be right seldom."

"Didn't know but you'd happened on the fellow's trail."

"I guess I'm as much at sea as you are," was the equivocal answer.

Lee came over from the stable, still wearing spurs and gauntlets.

"Howdy, Jack!" he nodded, not quite so much at his ease as usual. "Got hyer on the jump, didn't you?"

"I kept movin'."

"This shorely beats hell, don't it?" Lee glanced around, selected a smooth boulder, and fired his discharge of tobacco juice at it true to the inch. "Reminds me of the old days. You boys ain't old enough to recall them, but stage hold-ups were right numerous then."

Blandly the deputy looked from one to the other. "I don't suppose either of you gentlemen happen to have been down and looked over the ground where the hold-up was? The tracks were right cut up before I got there."

This center shot silenced Lee for an instant, but Norris was on the spot with smiling ease.

"No, Mr. Lee and I have been hunting strays on the mesa. We didn't hear about it till a few minutes ago. We're at your service, though, Mr. Sheriff, to join any posses you want to send out."

"Much obliged. I'm going to send one out toward the Galiuros in a few minutes now. I'll be right glad to have you take charge of it, Mr. Norris."

The derisive humor in the newly appointed deputy's eyes did not quite reach the surface.

"Sure. Whenever you want me."

"I'm going to send Alan McKinstra along to guide you. He knows that country like a book. You want to head for the lower pass, swing up Diable canyon, and work up in the headquarters of the Three Forks."

Within a quarter of an hour the posse was in motion. Flatray watched it disappear in the dust of the road without a smile. He had sent them out merely to distract the attention of the public and to get rid of as many as possible of the crowd. For he was quite as well aware as the leader of the posse that this search in the Galiuros was a wild-goose chase. Somewhere within three hundred yards of the place he stood both the robber and his booty were in all probability to be found.

Flatray was quite right in his surmise, since Melissy Lee, who had come out to see the posse off, was standing at the end of the porch with her dusky eyes fastened on him, the while he stood beside the house with one foot resting negligently on the oilcloth cover of the wash-stand.

She had cast him out of her friendship because of his unworthiness, but there was a tumult in her heart at sight of him. No matter how her judgment condemned him as a villain, some instinct in her denied the possibility of it. She was torn in conflict between her liking for him and her conviction that he deserved only contempt. Somehow it hurt her too that he accepted without protest her verdict, appeared so willing to be a stranger to her.

Now that the actual physical danger of her adventure was past, Melissy was aware too of a chill dread lurking at her heart. She was no longer buoyed up by the swiftness of action which had called for her utmost nerve. There was nothing she could do now but wait, and waiting was of all things the one most foreign to her impulsive temperament. She acknowledged too some fear of this quiet, soft-spoken frontiersman. All Arizona knew not only the daredevil spirit that fired his gentleness, but the competence with which he set about any task he assigned himself. She did not see how he could unravel this mystery. She had left no clues behind her, she felt sure of that, and yet was troubled lest he guessed at her secret behind that mask of innocence he wore. He did not even remotely guess it as yet, but he was far closer to the truth than he pretended. The girl knew she should leave him and go about her work. Her role was to appear as inconspicuous as possible, but she could not resist the fascination of trying to probe his thoughts.

"I suppose your posse will come back with the hold-ups in a few hours. Will it be worth while to wait for them?" she asked with amiable derision.

The ranger had been absorbed in thought, his chin in his hand, but he brought his gaze back from the distance to meet hers. What emotion lay behind those cold eyes she could not guess.

"You're more hopeful than I am, Miss Lee."

"What are you sending them out for, then?"

"Oh, well, the boys need to work off some of their energy, and there's always a show they might happen onto the robbers."

"Do you think some of the Roaring Fork gang did it?"

"Can't say."

"I suppose you are staying here in the hope that they will drop in and deliver themselves to you."

He looked at her out of an expressionless face. "That's about it, I reckon. But what I tell the public is that I'm staying so as to be within telephone connection. You see, Sheriff Burke is moving up to cut them off from the Catalinas, Jackson is riding out from Mammoth to haid them off that way, these anxious lads that have just pulled out from here are taking care of the Galiuros. I'm supposed to be sitting with my fingers on the keys as a sort of posse dispatcher."

"Well, I hope you won't catch them," she told him bluntly.

"That seems to be a prevailing sentiment round here. You say it right hearty too; couldn't be more certain of your feelings if it had been your own father."

He said it carelessly, yet with his keen blue eyes fixed on her. Nevertheless, he was totally unprepared for the effect of his words. The color washed from her bronzed cheeks, and she stood staring at him with big, fear-filled eyes.

"What—what do you mean?" she gasped. "How dare you say that?"

"I ain't said anything so terrible. You don't need to take it to heart like that." He gave her a faint smile for an instant. "I'm not really expecting to arrest Mr. Lee for holding up that stage."

The color beat back slowly into her face. She knew she had made a false move in taking so seriously his remark.

"I don't think you ought to joke about a thing like that," she said stiffly.

"All right. I'll not say it next time till I'm in earnest," he promised as he walked away.

"I wonder if he really meant anything," the girl was thinking in terror, and he, "she knows something; now, I would like to know what."

Melissy attended to her duties in the postoffice after the arrival of the stage, and looked after the dining-room as usual, but she was all the time uneasily aware that Jack Flatray had quietly disappeared. Where had he gone? And why? She found no answer to that question, but the ranger dropped in on his bronco in time for supper, imperturbable and self-contained as ever.

"Think I'll stay all night if you have a room for me," he told her after he had eaten.

"We have a room," she said. "What more have you heard about the stage robbery?"

"Nothing, Miss Lee."

"Oh, I thought maybe you had," she murmured tremulously, for his blue eyes were unwaveringly upon her and she could not know how much or how little he might mean.

Later she saw him sitting on the fence, holding genial converse with Jim Budd. The waiter was flashing a double row of white teeth in deep laughter at something the deputy had told him. Evidently they were already friends. When she looked again, a few minutes later, she knew Jack had reached the point where he was pumping Jim and the latter was disseminating misinformation. That the negro was stanch enough, she knew, but she was on the anxious seat lest his sharp-witted inquisitor get what he wanted in spite of him. After he had finished with Budd the ranger drifted around to the kitchen in time to intercept Hop Ling casually as he came out after finishing his evening's work. The girl was satisfied Flatray could not have any suspicion of the truth. Nevertheless, she wished he would let the help alone. He might accidentally stumble on something that would set him on the right track.



CHAPTER VIII

THE BOONE-BELLAMY FEUD IS RENEWED

"Here's six bits on the counter under a seed catalogue. Did you leave it here, daddy?"

Champ Lee, seated on the porch just outside the store door, took the pipe from his mouth and answered:

"Why no, honey, I don't reckon I did, not to my ricollection."

"That's queer. I know I didn't——"

Melissy broke her sentence sharply. There had come into her eyes a spark of excitement, simultaneous with the brain-flash which told her who had left the money. No doubt the quarter and the half dollar had been lying there ever since the day last week when Morse had eaten at the Bar Double G. She addressed an envelope, dropped the money in, sealed the flap, and put the package beside a letter addressed to T. L. Morse.

Lee, full of an unhappy restlessness which he could not control, presently got up and moved away to the stables. He was blaming himself bitterly for the events of the past few days.

It was perhaps half an hour later that Melissy looked up to see the sturdy figure of Morse in the doorway. During the past year he had filled out, grown stronger and more rugged. His deep tan and heavy stride pronounced him an outdoor man no less surely than the corduroy suit and the high laced miners' boots.

He came forward to the postoffice window without any sign of recognition.

"Is Mr. Flatray still here?"

"No!" Without further explanation Melissy took from the box the two letters addressed to Morse and handed them to him.

The girl observed the puzzled look that stole over his face at sight of the silver in one envelope. A glance at the business address printed on the upper left hand corner enlightened him. He laid the money down in the stamp window.

"This isn't mine."

"You heard what my father said?"

"That applies to next time, not to this."

"I think it does apply to this time."

"I can't see how you're going to make me take it back. I'm an obstinate man."

"Just as you like."

A sudden flush of anger swept her. She caught up the silver and flung it through the open window into the dusty road.

His dark eyes met hers steadily and a dull color burned in his tanned cheeks. Without a word he turned away, and instantly she regretted what she had done. She had insulted him deliberately and put herself in the wrong. At bottom she was a tender-hearted child, even though her father and his friends had always spoiled her, and she could not but reproach herself for the hurt look she had brought into his strong, sad face. He was their enemy, of course, but even enemies have rights.

Morse walked out of the office looking straight before him, his strong back teeth gripped so that the muscles stood out on his salient jaw. Impulsively the girl ran around the counter after him.

He looked up from untying his horse to see her straight and supple figure running toward him. Her eager face was full of contrition and the color of pink rose petals came and went in it.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Morse. I oughtn't to have done that. I hurt your feelings," she cried.

At best he was never a handsome man, but now his deep, dark eyes lit with a glow that surprised her.

"Thank you. Thank you very much," he said in a low voice.

"I'm so tempery," she explained in apology, and added: "I suppose a nice girl wouldn't have done it."

"A nice girl did do it," was all he could think to say.

"You needn't take the trouble to say that. I know I've just scrambled up and am not ladylike and proper. Sometimes I don't care. I like to be able to do things like boys. But I suppose it's dreadful."

"I don't think it is at all. None of your friends could think so. Not that I include myself among them," he hastened to disclaim. "I can't be both your friend and your enemy, can I?"

The trace of a sardonic smile was in his eyes. For the moment as she looked at him she thought he might. But she answered:

"I don't quite see how."

"You hate me, I suppose," he blurted out bluntly.

"I suppose so." And more briskly she added, with dimples playing near the corners of her mouth: "Of course I do."

"That's frank. It's worth something to have so decent an enemy. I don't believe you would shoot me in the back."

"Some of the others would. You should be more careful," she cried before she could stop herself.

He shrugged. "I take my fighting chance."

"It isn't much of a one. You'll be shot at from ambush some day."

"It wouldn't be a new experience. I went through it last week."

"Where?" she breathed.

"Down by Willow Wash."

"Who did it?"

He laughed, without amusement. "I didn't have my rifle with me, so I didn't stay to inquire."

"It must have been some of those wild vaqueros."

"That was my guess."

"But you have other enemies, too."

"Miss Lee," he smiled.

"I mean others that are dangerous."

"Your father?" he asked.

"Father would never do that except in a fair fight. I wasn't thinking of him."

"I don't know whom you mean, but a few extras don't make much difference when one is so liberally supplied already," he said cynically.

"I shouldn't make light of them if I were you," she cautioned.

"Who do you mean?"

"I've said all I'm going to, and more than I ought," she told him decisively. "Except this, that it's your own fault. You shouldn't be so stiff. Why don't you compromise? With the cattlemen, for instance. They have a good deal of right on their side. They did have the range first."

"You should tell that to your father, too."

"Dad runs sheep on the range to protect himself. He doesn't drive out other people's cattle and take away their living."

"Well, I might compromise, but not at the end of a gun."

"No, of course not. Here comes dad now," she added hurriedly, aware for the first time that she had been holding an extended conversation with her father's foe.

"We started enemies and we quit enemies. Will you shake hands on that, Miss Lee?" he asked.

She held out her hand, then drew it swiftly back. "No, I can't. I forgot. There's another reason."

"Another reason! You mean the Arkansas charge against me?" he asked quietly.

"No. I can't tell you what it is." She felt herself suffused in a crimson glow. How could she explain that she could not touch hands with him because she had robbed him of twenty thousand dollars?

Lee stopped at the steps, astonished to see his daughter and this man in talk together. Yesterday he would have resented it bitterly, but now the situation was changed. Something of so much greater magnitude had occurred that he was too perturbed to cherish his feud for the present. All night he had carried with him the dreadful secret he suspected. He could not look Melissy in the face, nor could he discuss the robbery with anybody. The one fact that overshadowed all others was that his little girl had gone out and held up a stage, that if she were discovered she would be liable to a term in the penitentiary. Laboriously his slow brain had worked it all out. A talk with Jim Budd had confirmed his conclusions. He knew that she had taken this risk in order to save him. He was bowed down with his unworthiness, with shame that he had dragged her into this horrible tangle. He was convinced that Jack Flatray would get at the truth, and already he was resolved to come forward and claim the whole affair as his work.

"I've been apologizing to Mr. Morse for insulting him, dad," the girl said immediately.

Her father passed a bony hand slowly across his unshaven chin. "That's right, honey. If you done him a meanness, you had ought to say so."

"She has said so very handsomely, Mr. Lee," spoke up Morse.

"I've been warning him, dad, that he ought to be more careful how he rides around alone, with the cattlemen feeling the way they do."

"It's a fact they feel right hot under the collar. You're ce'tainly a temptation to them, Mr. Morse," the girl's father agreed.

The mine owner shifted the subject of conversation. He was not a man of many impulses, but he yielded to one now.

"Can't we straighten out this trouble between us, Mr. Lee? You think I've done you an injury. Perhaps I have. If we both mean what's right, we can get together and fix it up in a few minutes."

The old Southerner stiffened and met him with an eye of jade. "I ain't asking any favors of you, Mr. Morse. We'll settle this matter some day, and settle it right. But you can't buy me off. I'll not take a bean from you."

The miner's eyes hardened. "I'm not trying to buy you off. I made a fair offer of peace. Since you have rejected it, there is nothing more to be said." With that he bowed stiffly and walked away, leading his horse.

Lee's gaze followed him and slowly the eyes under the beetled brows softened.

"Mebbe I done wrong, honey. Mebbe I'd ought to have given in. I'm too proud to compromise when he's got me beat. That's what's ailin' with me. But I reckon I'd better have knuckled under."

The girl slipped her arm through his. "Sometimes I'm just like that too, daddy. I've just got to win before I make up. I don't blame you a mite, but, all the same, we should have let him fix it up."

It was characteristic of them both that neither thought of reversing the decision he had made. It was done now, and they would abide by the results. But already both of them half regretted, though for very different reasons. Lee was thinking that for Melissy's sake he should have made a friend of the man he hated, since it was on the cards that within a few days she might be in his power. The girl's feeling, too, was unselfish. She could not forget the deep hunger for friendship that had shone in the man's eyes. He was alone in the world, a strong man surrounded by enemies who would probably destroy him in the end. There was stirring in her heart a sweet womanly pity and sympathy for the enemy whose proffer of friendship had been so cavalierly rejected.

The sight of a horseman riding down the trail from the Flagstaff mine shook Melissy into alertness.

"Look, dad. It's Mr. Norris," she cried.

Morse, who had not yet recognized him, swung to the saddle, his heart full of bitterness. Every man's hand was against his, and every woman's. What was there in his nature that turned people against him so inevitably? There seemed to be some taint in him that corroded all natural human kindness.

A startled oath brought him from his somber reflections. He looked up, to see the face of a man with whom in the dead years of the past he had been in bitter feud.

Neither of them spoke. Morse looked at him with a face cold as chiselled marble and as hard. The devil's own passion burned in the storm-tossed one of the other.

Norris was the first to break the silence.

"So it was all a lie about your being killed, Dick Bellamy."

The mine owner did not speak, but the rigor of his eyes did not relax.

"Gave it out to throw me off your trail, did you? Knew mighty well I'd cut the heart out of the man who shot poor Shep." The voice of the cattle detective rang out in malignant triumph. "You guessed it c'rect, seh. Right here's where the Boone-Bellamy feud claims another victim."

The men were sitting face to face, so close that their knees almost touched. As Norris jerked out his gun Bellamy caught his wrist. They struggled for an instant, the one to free his arm, the other to retain his grip. Bellamy spurred his horse closer. The more powerful of the two, he slowly twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner's heart. His enemy's finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed the hand. The weapon jumped out of line, went clattering down into the dust from the palsied fingers.

Lee ran forward and pushed between the men.

"Here. Ain't you boys got ary bettah sense than to clinch like wildcats?" he demanded, jerking one of the horses away by the bridle. "No, you don't, Phil. I'll take keer of this gun for the present." It was noticeable that Beauchamp Lee's speech grew more after the manner of the plantations when he became excited.

The cowpuncher, white with anger, glared at his enemy and poured curses at him, the while he nursed his strained wrist. For the moment he was impotent, but he promised himself vengeance in full when they should meet again.

"That'll be enough from you now, Phil," said the old ex-Confederate good-naturedly, leading him toward the house and trying to soothe his malevolent chagrin.

Bellamy turned and rode away. At the corner of the corral he met Jack Flatray riding up.

"Been having a little difference of opinion with our friend, haven't you, seh?" the deputy asked pleasantly.

"Yes." Bellamy gave him only the crisp monosyllable and changed the subject immediately. "What about this stage robbery? Have you been able to make anything of it, Mr. Flatray?"

"Why, yes. I reckon we'll be able to land the miscreant mebbe, if things come our way," drawled the deputy. "Wouldn't it be a good idea to offer a reward, though, to keep things warm?"

"I thought of that. I made it a thousand dollars. The posters ought to be out to-day on the stage."

"Good enough!"

"Whom do you suspect?"

Jack looked at him with amiable imperturbability. "I reckon I better certify my suspicions, seh, before I go to shouting them out."

"All right, sir. Since I'm paying the shot, it ought to entitle me to some confidence. But it's up to you. Get back the twenty thousand dollars, that's all I ask, except that you put the fellow behind the bars of the penitentiary for a few years."

Flatray gave him an odd smile which he did not understand.

"I hope to be able to accommodate you, seh, about this time to-morrow, so far as getting the gold goes. You'll have to wait a week or two before the rest of your expectations get gratified."

"Any reasonable time. I want to see him there eventually. That's all."

Jack laughed again, without giving any reason for his mirth. That ironic smile continued to decorate his face for some time. He seemed to have some inner source of mirth he did not care to disclose.



CHAPTER IX

THE DANGER LINE

Though Champ Lee had business in Mesa next day that would not be denied, he was singularly loath to leave the ranch. He wanted to stay close to Melissy until the denouement of the hunt for the stage robber. On the other hand, it was well known that his contest with Morse for the Monte Cristo was up for a hearing. To stay at home would have been a confession of his anxiety that he did not want to make. But it was only after repeated charges to his daughter to call him up by telephone immediately if anything happened that he could bring himself to ride away.

He was scarcely out of sight when a Mexican vaquero rode in with the information that old Antonio, on his way to the post at Three Pines with a second drove of sheep, had twisted his ankle badly about fifteen miles from the ranch. After trying in vain to pick up a herder at Mesa by telephone, Melissy was driven to the only feasible course left her, to make the drive herself in place of Antonio. There were fifteen hundred sheep in the bunch, and they must be taken care of at once by somebody competent for the task. She knew she could handle them, for it had amused her to take charge of a herd often for an hour or two at a time. The long stretch over the desert would be wearisome and monotonous, but she had the slim, muscular tenacity of a half-grown boy. It did not matter what she wanted to do. The thing to which she came back always was that the sheep must be taken care of.

She left directions with Jim for taking care of the place, changed to a khaki skirt and jacket, slapped a saddle on her bronco, and disappeared across country among the undulations of the sandhills. A tenderfoot would have been hopelessly lost in the sameness of these hills and washes, but Melissy knew them as a city dweller does his streets. Straight as an arrow she went to her mark. The tinkle of distant sheep-bells greeted her after some hours' travel, and soon the low, ceaseless bleating of the herd.

The girl found Antonio propped against a pinon tree, solacing himself philosophically with cigarettes. He was surprised to see her, but made only a slight objection to her taking his place. His ankle was paining him a good deal, and he was very glad to get the chance to pull himself to her saddle and ride back to the ranch.

A few quick words sent the dog Colin out among the sheep, by now scattered far and wide over the hill. They presently came pouring toward her, diverged westward, and massed at the base of a butte rising from a dry arroyo. The journey had begun, and hour after hour it continued through the hot day, always in a cloud of dust flung up by the sheep, sometimes through the heavy sand of a wash, often over slopes of shale, not seldom through thick cactus beds that shredded her skirt and tore like fierce, sharp fingers at her legging-protected ankles. The great gray desert still stretched before her to the horizon's edge, and still she flung the miles behind her with the long, rhythmic stride that was her birthright from the hills. A strong man, unused to it, would have been staggering with stiff fatigue, but this slender girl held the trail with light grace, her weight still carried springily on her small ankles.

Once she rested for a few minutes, flinging herself down into the sand at length, her head thrown back from the full brown throat so that she could gaze into the unstained sky of blue. Presently the claims of this planet made themselves heard, for she, too, was elemental and a creature of instinct. The earth was awake and palpitating with life, the low, indefatigable life of creeping things and vegetation persisting even in this waste of rock and sand.

But she could not rest long, for Diablo canyon must be reached before dark. The sheep would be very thirsty by the time they arrived, and she could not risk letting them tear down the precipitous edge among the sharp rocks in the dark. Already over the sand stretches a peculiar liquid glow was flooding, so that the whole desert seemed afire. The burning sun had slipped behind a saddle of the purple peaks, leaving a brilliant horizon of many mingled shades.

It was as she came forward to the canyon's edge in this luminous dusk that Melissy became aware of a distant figure on horseback, silhouetted for a moment against the skyline. One glance was all she got of it, for she was very busy with the sheep, working them leisurely toward the black chasm that seemed to yawn for them. High rock walls girt the canyon, gigantic and bottomless in the gloom. A dizzy trail zigzagged back and forth to the pool below, and along this she and the collie skilfully sent the eager, thirsty animals.

The mass of the sheep were still huddled on the edge of the ravine when there came the thud of horses' hoofs and the crack of revolvers, accompanied by hoarse, triumphant yells and cries. Melissy knew instantly what it was—the attack of cattlemen upon her defenseless flock. They had waited until the sheep were on the edge of the precipice, and now they were going to drive the poor creatures down upon the rocks two hundred feet below. Her heart leaped to her throat, but scarce more quickly than she upon a huge boulder bordering the trail.

"Back! Keep back!" she heard herself crying, and even as she spoke a bullet whistled through the rim of her felt hat.

Standing there boldly, unconscious of danger, the wind draped and defined the long lines of her figure like those of the Winged Victory.

The foremost rider galloped past, waving his sombrero and shooting into the frightened mass in front of him. Within a dozen feet of her he turned his revolver upon the girl, then, with an oath of recognition, dragged his pony back upon its haunches. Another horse slithered into it, and a third.

"It's 'Lissie Lee!" a voice cried in astonishment; and another, with a startled oath, "You're right, Bob!"

The first rider gave his pony the spur, swung it from the trail in a half-circle which brought it back at the very edge of the ravine, and blocked the forward pour of terror-stricken sheep. Twice his revolver rang out. The girl's heart stood still, for the man was Norris, and it seemed for an instant as if he must be swept over the precipice by the stampede. The leaders braced themselves to stop, but were slowly pushed forward toward the edge. One of the other riders had by this time joined the daring cowpuncher, and together they stemmed the tide. The pressure on the trail relaxed and the sheep began to mill around and around.

It was many minutes before they were sufficiently quieted to trust upon the trail again, but at last the men got them safely to the bottom, with the exception of two or three killed in the descent.

Her responsibility for the safety of the sheep gone, the girl began to crawl down the dark trail. She could not see a yard in front of her, and at each step the path seemed to end in a gulf of darkness. She could not be sure she was on the trail at all, and her nerve was shaken by the experience through which she had just passed. Presently she stopped and waited, for the first time in her life definitely and physically afraid. She stood there trembling, a long, long time it seemed to her, surrounded by the impenetrable blackness of night.

Then a voice came to her.

"Melissy!"

She answered, and the voice came slowly nearer.

"You're off the trail," it told her presently, just before a human figure defined itself in the gloom.

"I'm afraid," she sobbed.

A strong hand came from nowhere and caught hers. An arm slipped around her waist.

"Don't be afraid, little girl. I'll see no harm comes to you," the man said to her with a quick, fierce tenderness.

The comfort of his support was unspeakable. It stole into her heart like water to the roots of thirsty plants. To feel her head against his shoulder, to know he held her tight, meant safety and life. He had told her not to be afraid, and she was so no longer.

"You shot at me," she murmured in reproach.

"I didn't know. We thought it was Bellamy's herd. But it's true, God forgive me! I did."

There was in his voice the warm throb of emotion, and in his eyes something she had never seen before in those of any human being. Like stars they were, swimming in light, glowing with the exultation of the triumph he was living. She was a splendid young animal, untaught of life, generous, passionate, tempestuous, and as her pliant, supple body lay against his some sex instinct old as creation stirred potently within her. She had found her mate. It came to her as innocently as the same impulse comes to the doe when the spring freshets are seeking the river, and as innocently her lips met his in their first kiss of surrender. Something irradiated her, softened her, warmed her. Was it love? She did not know, but as yet she was still happy in the glow of it.

Slowly, hand in hand, they worked back to the trail and down it to the bottom of the canyon. The soft velvet night enwrapped them. It shut them from the world and left them one to one. From the meeting palms strange electric currents tingled through the girl and flushed her to an ecstasy of emotion.

A camp fire was already burning cheerfully when they reached the base of the descent. A man came forward to meet them. He glanced curiously at the girl after she came within the circle of light. Her eyes were shining as from some inner glow, and she was warm with a soft color that vitalized her beauty. Then his gaze passed to take in with narrowed lids her companion.

"I see you found her," he said dryly.

"Yes, I found her, Bob."

He answered the spirit of Farnum's words rather than the letter of them, nor could he keep out of his bearing and his handsome face the exultation that betrayed success.

"H'mp!" Farnum turned from him and addressed the girl: "I suppose Norris has explained our mistake and eaten crow for all of us, Miss Lee. I don't see how come we to make such a blame' fool mistake. It was gitting dark, and we took your skirt for a greaser's blanket. It's ce'tainly on us."

"Yes, he has explained."

"Well, there won't any amount of explaining square the thing. We might 'a' done you a terrible injury, Miss Lee. It was gilt-edged luck for us that you thought to jump on that rock and holler."

"I was thinking of the sheep," she said.

"Well, you saved them, and I'm right glad of it. We ain't got any use for Mary's little trotter, but your father's square about his. He keeps them herded up on his own range. We may not like it, but we ce'tainly aren't going to the length of attackin' his herd." Farnum's gaze took in her slender girlishness, and he voiced the question in his mind. "How in time do you happen to be sheep-herding all by your lone a thousand miles from nowhere, Miss Lee?"

She explained the circumstances after she had moved forward to warm herself by the fire. For already night was bringing a chill breeze with it. The man cooking the coffee looked up and nodded pleasantly, continuing his work. Norris dragged up a couple of saddle blankets and spread them on the ground for her to sit upon.

"You don't have to do a thing but boss this outfit," he told her with his gay smile. "You're queen of the range to-night, and we're your herders or your punchers, whichever you want to call us. To-morrow morning two of us are going to drive these sheep on to the trading post for you, and the other one is going to see you safe back home. It's all arranged."

They were as good as his word. She could not move from her place to help herself. It was their pleasure to wait upon her as if she had really been a queen and they her subjects. Melissy was very tired, but she enjoyed their deference greatly. She was still young enough to find delight in the fact that three young and more or less good-looking men were vying with each other to anticipate her needs.

Like them, she ate and drank ravenously of the sandwiches and the strong coffee, though before the meal was over she found herself nodding drowsily. The tactful courtesy of these rough fellows was perfect. They got the best they had for her of their blankets, dragged a pinon root to feed the glowing coals, and with cheerful farewells of "Buenos Noches" retired around a bend in the canyon and lit another fire for themselves.

The girl snuggled down into the warmth of the blankets and stretched her weary limbs in delicious rest. She did not mean to go to sleep for a long time. She had much to think about. So she looked up the black sheer canyon walls to the deep blue, starry sky above, and relived her day in memory.

A strange excitement tingled through her, born of shame and shyness and fear, and of something else she did not understand, something which had lain banked in her nature like a fire since childhood and now threw forth its first flame of heat. What did it mean, that passionate fierceness with which her lips had clung to his? She liked him, of course, but surely liking would not explain the pulse that her first kiss had sent leaping through her blood like wine. Did she love him?

Then why did she distrust him? Why was there fear in her sober second thought of him? Had she done wrong? For the moment all her maiden defenses had been wiped out and he had ridden roughshod over her reserves. But somewhere in her a bell of warning was ringing. The poignant sting of sex appeal had come home to her for the first time. Wherefore in this frank child of the wilderness had been born a shy shame, a vague trembling for herself that marked a change. At sunrise she had been still treading gayly the primrose path of childhood; at sunset she had entered upon her heritage of womanhood.

The sun had climbed high and was peering down the walls of the gulch when she awoke. She did not at once realize where she was, but came presently to a blinking consciousness of her surroundings. The rock wall on one side was still shadowed, while the painted side of the other was warm with the light which poured upon it. The Gothic spires, the Moorish domes, the weird and mysterious caves, which last night had given more than a touch of awe to her majestic bedchamber, now looked a good deal less like the ruins of mediaeval castles and the homes of elfin sprites and gnomes.

"Buenos dios, muchacha," a voice called cheerfully to her.

She did not need to turn to know to whom it belonged. Among a thousand she would have recognized its tone of vibrant warmth.

"Buenos," she answered, and, rising hurriedly, she fled to rearrange her hair and dress.

It was nearly a quarter of an hour later that she reappeared, her thick coils of ebon-hued tresses shining in the sun, her skirt smoothed to her satisfaction, and the effects of feminine touches otherwise visible upon her fresh, cool person.

"Breakfast is served," Norris sang out.

"Dinner would be nearer it," she laughed. "Why in the world didn't you boys waken me? What time is it, anyhow?"

"It's not very late—a little past noon maybe. You were all tired out with your tramp yesterday. I didn't see why you shouldn't have your sleep out."

He was pouring a cup of black coffee for her from the smoky pot, and she looked around expectantly for the others. Simultaneously she remembered that she had not heard the bleating of the sheep.

"Where are the others—Mr. Farnum and Sam? And have you the sheep all gagged?" she laughed.

He gave her that odd look of smoldering eyes behind half-shut lids.

"The boys have gone on to finish the drive for you. They started before sun-up this morning. I'm elected to see you back home safely."

"But——"

Her protest died unspoken. She could not very well frame it in words, and before his bold, possessive eyes the girl's long, dark lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the hot blood was beating. Nevertheless, the feeling existed that she wished one of the others had stayed instead of him. It was born, no doubt, partly of the wave of shyness running through her, but partly too of instinctive maidenly resistance to something in his look, in the assurance of his manner, that seemed to claim too much. Last night he had taken her by storm and at advantage. Something of shame stirred in her that he had found her so easy a conquest, something too of a new vague fear of herself. She resented the fact that he could so move her, even though she still felt the charm of his personal presence. She meant to hold herself in abeyance, to make sure of herself and of him before she went further.

But the cowpuncher had no intention of letting her regain so fully control of her emotions. Experience of more than one young woman had taught him that scruples were likely to assert themselves after reflection, and he purposed giving her no time for that to-day.

He did not count in vain upon the intimacy of companionship forced upon them by the circumstances, nor upon the skill with which he knew how to make the most of his manifold attractions. His role was that of the comrade, gay with good spirits and warm with friendliness, solicitous of her needs, but not oppressively so. If her glimpse of him at breakfast had given the girl a vague alarm, she laughed her fears away later before his open good humor.

There had been a time when he had been a part of that big world "back in the States," peopled so generously by her unfettered imagination. He knew how to talk, and entertainingly, of books and people, of events and places he had known. She had not knowledge enough of life to doubt his stories, nor did she resent it that he spoke of this her native section with the slighting manner of one who patronized it with his presence. Though she loved passionately her Arizona, she guessed its crudeness, and her fancy magnified the wonders of that southern civilization from which it was so far cut off.

Farnum had left his horse for the girl, and after breakfast the cowpuncher saddled the broncos and brought them up. Melissy had washed the dishes, filled his canteen, and packed the saddle bags. Soon they were off, climbing slowly the trail that led up the canyon wall. She saw the carcass of a dead sheep lying on the rocks half way down the cliff, and had spoken of it before she could stop herself.

"What is that? Isn't it——?"

"Looks to me like a boulder," lied her escort unblushingly. There was no use, he judged, in recalling unpleasant memories.

Nor did she long remember. The dry, exhilarating sunshine and the sting of gentle, wide-swept breezes, the pleasure of swift motion and the ring of that exultingly boyish voice beside her, combined to call the youth in her to rejoice. Firm in the saddle she rode, as graceful a picture of piquant girlhood as could be conceived, thrilling to the silent voices of the desert. They traveled in a sunlit sea of space, under a sky of blue, in which tenuous cloud lakes floated. Once they came on a small bunch of hill cattle which went flying like deer into the covert of a draw. A rattlesnake above a prairie dog's hole slid into the mesquit. A swift watched them from the top of a smooth rock, motionless so long as they could see. She loved it all, this immense, deserted world of space filled with its multitudinous dwellers.

They unsaddled at Dead Cow Creek, hobbled the ponies, and ate supper. Norris seemed in no hurry to resaddle. He lay stretched carelessly at full length, his eyes upon her with veiled admiration. She sat upright, her gaze on the sunset with its splashes of topaz and crimson and saffron, watching the tints soften and mellow as dusk fell. Every minute now brought its swift quota of changing beauty. A violet haze enveloped the purple mountains, and in the crotch of the hills swam a lake of indigo. The raw, untempered glare of the sun was giving place to a limitless pour of silvery moonlight.

Her eyes were full of the soft loveliness of the hour when she turned them upon her companion. He answered promptly her unspoken question.

"You bet it is! A night for the gods—or for lovers."

He said it in a murmur, his eyes full on hers, and his look wrenched her from her mood. The mask of comradeship was gone. He looked at her hungrily, as might a lover to whom all spiritual heights were denied.

Her sooty lashes fell before this sinister spirit she had evoked, but were raised instantly at the sound of him drawing his body toward her. Inevitably there was a good deal of the young animal in her superbly healthy body. She had been close to nature all day, the riotous passion of spring flowing free in her as in the warm earth herself. But the magic of the mystic hills had lifted her beyond the merely personal. Some sense of grossness in him for the first time seared across her brain. She started up, and her face told him she had taken alarm.

"We must be going," she cried.

He got to his feet. "No hurry, sweetheart."

The look in his face startled her. It was new to her in her experience of men. Never before had she met elemental lust.

"You're near enough," she cautioned sharply.

He cursed softly his maladroitness.

"I was nearer last night, honey," he reminded her.

"Last night isn't to-night."

He hesitated. Should he rush her defenses, bury her protests in kisses? Or should he talk her out of this harsh mood? Last night she had been his. There were moments during the day when she had responded to him as a musical instrument does to skilled fingers. But for the moment his power over her was gone. And he was impatient of delay.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked roughly.

"We'll start at once."

"No."

"Yes."

Frightened though she was, her gaze held steadily to his. It was the same instinct in her that makes one look a dangerous wild beast straight in the eye.

"What's got into you?" he demanded sullenly.

"I'm going home."

"After a while."

"Now."

"I reckon not just yet. It's my say-so."

"Don't you dare stop me."

The passion in him warred with prudence. He temporized. "Why, honey! I'm the man that loves you."

She would not see his outstretched hands.

"Then saddle my horse."

"By God, no! You're going to listen to me."

His anger ripped out unexpectedly, even to him. Whatever fear she felt, the girl crushed down. He must not know her heart was drowned in terror.

"I'll listen after we've started."

He cursed her fickleness. "What's ailin' you, girl? I ain't a man to be put off this way."

"Don't forget you're in Arizona," she warned.

He understood what she meant. In the ranch country no man could with impunity insult a woman.

Standing defiantly before him, her pliant form very straight, the underlying blood beating softly under the golden brown of her cheeks, one of the thick braids of her heavy, blue-black hair falling across the breast that rose and fell a little fast, she was no less than a challenge of Nature to him. He looked into a mobile face as daring and as passionate as his own, warm with the life of innocent youth, and the dark blood mantled his face.

"Saddle the horses," she commanded.

"When I get good and ready."

"Now."

"No, ma'am. We're going to have a talk first."

She walked across to the place where her pony grazed, slipped on the bridle, and brought the animal back to the saddle. Norris watched her fitting the blankets and tightening the cinch without a word, his face growing blacker every moment. Before she could start he strode forward and caught the rein.

"I've got something to say to you," he told her rudely. "You're not going now. So that's all about it."

Her lips tightened. "Let go of my horse."

"We'll talk first."

"Do you think you can force me to stay here?"

"You're going to hear what I've got to say."

"You bully!"

"I'll tell what I know—Miss Hold-up."

"Tell it!" she cried.

He laughed harshly, his narrowed eyes watching her closely. "If you throw me down now, I'll ce'tainly tell it. Be reasonable, girl."

"Let go my rein!"

"I've had enough of this. Tumble off that horse, or I'll pull you off."

Her dark eyes flashed scorn of him. "You coward! Do you think I'm afraid of you? Stand back!"

The man looked long at her, his teeth set; then caught at her strong little wrist. With a quick wrench she freed it, her eyes glowing like live coals.

"You dare!" she panted.

Her quirt rose and fell, the lash burning his wrist like a band of fire. With a furious oath he dropped his hand from the rein. Like a flash she was off, had dug her heels home, and was galloping into the moonlight recklessly as fast as she could send forward her pony. Stark terror had her by the throat. The fear of him flooded her whole being. Not till the drumming hoofs had carried her far did other emotions move her.

She was furious with him, and with herself for having been imposed upon by him. His beauty, his grace, his debonair manner—they were all hateful to her now. She had thought him a god among men, and he was of common clay. It was her vanity that was wounded, not her heart. She scourged herself because she had been so easily deceived, because she had let herself become a victim of his good looks and his impudence. For that she had let him kiss her—yes, and had returned his kiss—she was heartily contemptuous of herself. Always she had held herself with an instinctive pride, but in her passion of abandonment the tears confessed now that this pride had been humbled to the dust.

This gusty weather of the spirit, now of chastened pride and now of bitter anger, carried her even through the group of live-oaks which looked down upon the silent houses of the ranch, lying in a sea of splendid moon-beat. She was so much less confident of herself than usual that she made up her mind to tell her father the whole story of the hold-up and of what this man had threatened.

This resolution comforted her, and it was with something approaching calmness that she rode past the corral fence and swung from the saddle in front of the house.



CHAPTER X

JACK GOES TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS

She trailed the bridle reins, went up the porch steps, and drew off her gauntlets. Her hand was outstretched to open the door when her gaze fell upon a large bill tacked to the wall. Swiftly she read it through, and, having read it, remained in suspended motion. For the first time she fully realized the danger and the penalty that confronted her.

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS Will Be Paid By Thomas L. Morse For the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last. A further reward of $1000 will be paid for the recovery of the bullion stolen.

This was what she read, and her eye was running over it a second time when she heard the jingle of a spur approaching.

"We're red-hot after them, you see, Miss Lee," a mocking voice drawled. "If you want to round up a thousand plunks, all you've got to do is to tell me who Mr. Hold-up is."

He laughed quietly, as if it were a joke, but the girl answered with a flush. "Is that all?"

"That's all."

"If I knew, do you suppose I would tell for five thousand—or ten thousand?"

For some reason this seemed to give him sardonic amusement. "No, I don't suppose you would."

"You'll have to catch him yourself if you want him. I'm not in that business, Mr. Flatray."

"I am. Sorry you don't like the business, Miss Lee." He added dryly: "But then you always were hard to please. You weren't satisfied when I was a rustler."

Her eyes swept him with a look, whether of reproach or contempt he was not sure. But the hard derision of his gaze did not soften. Mentally as well as physically he was a product of the sun and the wind, as tough and unyielding as a greasewood sapling. For a friend he would go the limit, and he could not forgive her that she had distrusted him.

"But mebbe you'd prefer it if I was rustling stages," he went on, looking straight at her.

"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly.

"I want to have a talk with you."

"What about?"

"Suppose we step around to the side of the house. We'll be freer from interruption there."

He led the way, taking her consent for granted. With him he carried a chair for her from the porch.

"If you'll be as brief as possible, Mr. Flatray. I've been in the desert two days and want to change my clothes."

"I'll not detain you. It's about this gold robbery."

"Yes."

She could not take her eyes from him. Something told her that he knew her secret, or part of it. Her heart was fluttering like a caged thrush.

"Shall we begin at the beginning?"

"If you like."

"Or in the middle, say."

"If only you'll begin anywhere," she said impatiently.

"How will this do for a beginning, then? 'One thousand dollars will be paid by Thomas L. Morse for the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last.'"

She was shaken, there was no denying it. He could see the ebb of blood from her cheeks, the sudden stiffening of the slender figure.

She did not speak until she had control of her voice. "Dear me! What has all that to do with me?"

"A good deal, I'm afraid. You know how much, better than I do."

"Perhaps I'm stupid. You'll have to be a great deal clearer before I can understand you."

"I've noticed that it's a lot easier to understand what you want to than what you don't want to."

Sharply a thought smote her. "Have you seen Phil Norris lately?"

"No, I haven't. Do you think it likely that he would confess?"

"Confess?" she faltered.

"I see I'll have to start at the beginning, after all. It's pretty hard to say just where that is. It might be when Morse got hold of your father's claim, or another fellow might say it was when the Boone-Bellamy feud began, and that is a mighty long time ago."

"The Boone-Bellamy feud," echoed the girl.

"Yes. The real name of our friend Norris is Dunc Boone."

"He's no friend of mine." She flamed it out with such intensity that he was surprised.

"Glad to hear it. I can tell you, then, that he's a bad lot. He was driven out of Arkansas after a suspected murder. It was a killing from ambush. They couldn't quite hang it on him, but he lit a shuck to save his skin from lynchers. At that time he was a boy. Couldn't have been more than seventeen."

"Who did he kill?"

"One of the Bellamy faction. The real name of T. L. Morse is——"

"—Richard Bellamy."

"How do you know that?" he asked in surprise.

"I've known it since the first day I met him."

"Known that he was wanted for murder in Arkansas?"

"Yes."

"And you protected him?"

"I had a reason." She did not explain that her reason was Jack Flatray, between whom and the consequences of his rustling she had stood.

He pondered that a moment. "Well, Morse, or Bellamy, told me all about it. Now that Boone has recognized him, the game is up. He's ready to go back and stand trial if he must. I've communicated with the authorities in Arkansas and I'll hear from them in a day or two."

"What has this to do with the hold-up?"

"That's right, the hold-up. Well, this fellow Boone got your father to drinking, and then sprung it on him to rob the stage when the bullion was being shipped. Somehow Boone had got inside information about when this was to be. He had been nosing around up at the mine, and may have overheard something. O' course we know what your father would have done if he hadn't been drinking. He's straight as a string, even if he does go off like powder. But when a man's making a blue blotter of himself, things don't look the same to him. Anyhow he went in."

"He didn't. I can prove he didn't," burst from Melissy's lips.

"Be glad to hear your proof later. He ce'tainly planned the hold-up. Jim Budd overheard him."

"Did Jim tell you that?"

"Don't blame him for that. He didn't mean to tell, but I wound him up so he couldn't get away from it. I'll show you later why he couldn't."

"I'm sure you must have been very busy, spying and everything," she told him bitterly.

"I've kept moving. But to get back to the point. Your father and Boone were on the ground where the stage was robbed either at the time or right after. Their tracks were all over there. Then they got on their horses and rode up the lateral."

"But they couldn't. The ditch was full," broke from the girl.

"You're right it was. You must be some observing to know when that ditch is full and empty to an hour. I reckon you've got an almanac of tides," he said ironically.

She bit her lip with chagrin. "I just happened to notice."

"Some folks are more noticing than others. But you're surely right. They came up the ditch one on each side. Now, why one on each side, do you reckon?"

Melissy hid the dread that was flooding her heart. "I'm sure I don't know. You know everything else. I suppose you do that, too, if they really did."

"They had their reasons, but we won't go into that now. First off when they reach the house they take a bunch of sheep down to the ditch to water them. Now, why?"

"Why, unless because they needed water?"

"We'll let that go into the discard too just now. Let's suppose your father and Boone dumped the gold box down into the creek somewhere after they had robbed the stage. Suppose they had a partner up at the head-gates. When the signal is given down comes the water, and the box is covered by it. Mebbe that night they take it away and bury it somewhere else."

The girl began to breathe again. He knew a good deal, but he was still off the track in the main points.

"And who is this partner up at the canal? Have you got him located too?"

"I might guess."

"Well?"—impatiently.

"A young lady hailing from this hacienda was out gathering flowers all mo'ning. She was in her runabout. The tracks led straight from here to the head-gates. I followed them through the sands. There's a little break in one of the rubber tires. You'll find that break mark every eight feet or so in the sand wash."

"I opened the head-gates, then, did I?"

"It looks that way, doesn't it?"

"At a signal from father?"

"I reckon."

"And that's all the evidence you've got against him and me?" she demanded, still outwardly scornful, but very much afraid at heart.

"Oh, no, that ain't all, Miss Lee. Somebody locked the Chink in during this play. He's still wondering why."

"He dreamed it. Very likely he had been rolling a pill."

"Did I dream this too?" From his coat pocket he drew the piece of black shirting she had used as a mask. "I found it in the room where your father put me up that first night I stayed here. It was your brother Dick's room, and this came from the pocket of a shirt hanging in the closet. Now, who do you reckon put it there?"

For the first time in her life she knew what it was to feel faint. She tried to speak, but the words would not come from her parched throat. How could he be so hard and cruel, this man who had once been her best friend? How could he stand there so like a machine in his relentlessness?

"We—we used to—to play at hold-up when he was a boy," she gasped.

He shook his head. "No, I reckon that won't go. You see, I've found the piece this was torn from, and I found it in your father's coat. I went into his room on tiptoe that same hour. The coat was on the bed. He had gone downstairs for a minute and left it there. Likely he hadn't found a good chance to burn it yet." Taking the two pieces, he fitted them together and held them up. "They match exactly, you see. Did your father used to play with you too when he was a boy?"

He asked this with what seemed to her tortured soul like silken cruelty. She had no answer, none at least that would avail. Desperately she snatched at a straw.

"All this isn't proof. It's mere surmise. Some one's tracks were found by you. How do you know they were father's?"

"I've got that cinched too. I took his boots and measured them."

"Then where's the gold, if he took it? It must be somewhere. Where is it?"

"Now I'm going up to the head of the class, ma'am. The gold—why, that's a dead easy one. Near as I can make out, I'm sitting on it right now."

She gave a startled little cry that died in her throat.

"Yes, it's ce'tainly a valuable wash-stand. Chippendale furniture ain't in it with this kind. I reckon the king of England's is ace high against a straight flush when it bucks up against yours."

Melissy threw up her cards. "How did you find out?" she asked hoarsely.

The deputy forced her to commit herself more definitely. "Find out what?"

"Where I put the box."

"I'll go back and answer some of those other questions first. I might as well own up that I knew all the time your father didn't hold up the stage."

"You did?"

"He's no fool. He wouldn't leave his tracks all over the place where he had just held up a stage. He might jest as well have left a signed note saying he had done it. No, that didn't look like Champ Lee to me. It seemed more likely he'd arrived after the show than before. It wouldn't be like him, either, to go plowing up the side of the ditch, with his partner on the other side, making a trail that a blind man could follow in the night. Soon as I knew Lee and Boone made those tracks, I had it cinched that they were following the lateral to see where the robber was going. They had come to the same conclusion I had, that there wasn't any way of escape except by that empty lateral, assuming it had been empty. The only point was to find out where the hold-up left the lateral. That's why they rode one on each side of it. They weren't missing any bets, you see."

"And that's why they drove the sheep down to water—to hide the wheel-tracks. I couldn't understand that."

"I must 'a' been right on their heels, for they were jest getting the trotters out of the corral when I reached the place where your rig left the water. 'Course I fell back into the brush and circled around so as to hit the store in front."

"But if dad knew all the time, I don't see—surely, he wouldn't have come right after me and made plain the way I escaped."

"That's the point. He didn't know. I reckon he was sort of guessing around in the dark, plumb puzzled; couldn't find the switch at all at first. Then it come to him, and he thought of the sheep to blind the trail. If I'd been half a hour later he would have got away with it too. No, if he had guessed that you were in the hold-up, him and Boone would have hiked right out on a false trail and led us into the Galiuros. Having no notion of it at first, he trails you down."

"And the gold—how did you find that?"

"I knew it was either right around the place or else you had taken it on with you when you went to the head-gates and buried it up there somewhere. Next day I followed your tracks and couldn't find any place where you might have left it. I knew how clever you were by the way you planned your getaway. Struck me as mighty likely that you had left it lying around in plain view somewhere. If you had dumped it out of the box into a sack, the box must be somewhere. You hadn't had time to burn it before the stage got back. I drifted back to your kindling pile, where all the old boxes from the store are lying. I happened to notice a brass tack in one near the end; then the marks of the tack heads where they had pressed against the wood. I figured you might have substituted one box for another, and inside of ten minutes I stumbled against your wash-stand and didn't budge it. Then I didn't have to look any further."

"I've been trying to get a chance to move it and haven't ever found one. You were always coming around the corner on me," she explained.

"Sorry I incommoded you," he laughed. "But it's too heavy for a lady to lift alone, anyhow. I don't see how you managed it this far."

"I'm pretty strong," she said quietly.

She had no hope of escape from the net of evidence in which he had entangled her. It was characteristic of her that she would not stoop to tricks to stir his pity. Deep in her heart she knew now that she had wronged him when she had suspected him of being a rustler. He could not be. It was not in the man's character. But she would ask no mercy of him. All her pride rose to meet his. She would show him how game she could be. What she had sown she would reap. Nor would it have been any use to beseech him to spare her. He was a hard man, she told herself. Not even a fool could have read any weakness in the quiet gray eyes that looked so steadily into hers. In his voice and movements there was a certain deliberation, but this had nothing to do with indecision of character. He would do his duty as he saw it, regardless of whom it might affect.

Melissy stood before him in the unconscious attitude of distinction she often fell into when she was moved, head thrown back so as to bare the rounded throat column, brown little hands folded in front of her, erectly graceful in all her slender lines.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.

His stone-cold eyes met hers steadily. "It ain't my say-so. I'm going to put it up to Bellamy. I don't know what he'll do."

But, cold as his manner was, the heart of the man leaped to her courage. He saw her worn out, pathetically fearful, but she could face him with that still little smile of hers. He longed to take her in his arms, to tell her it would be all right—all right.