As she tore open the flap it came to her with one of her little flashing smiles that she could never have guessed under what circumstances she would read it. By the dim flame of a guttering candle, in a cotton nightgown borrowed from a Mexican menial, a prisoner of the very man who had robbed her and the recipient of a practical confession of love from him not three hours earlier! Surely here was a situation to beggar romance. But before she had finished reading the reality was still more unbelievable.

I have just met for the first time the woman I am going to marry if God is good to one. I am writing this because I want her to know it as soon as I decently can. Of course, I am not worthy of her, but then I don't know any man that is.

So the fact goes—I'm bound to marry her if there's nobody else in the way. This isn't conceit. It is a deep-seated certainty I can't get away from, and don't want to. When she reads this, she will think it a piece of foolish presumption. My hope is she will not always think so. Her Lover,

VAL COLLINS.

Her swift-pulsing heart was behaving very queerly. It seemed to hang delightfully still, and then jump forward with odd little beats of joy. She caught a glimpse of her happy face, and blew out the light for shame, groping her way back to bed with the letter carefully guarded against crumpling by her hand.

Foolish presumption indeed. Why, he had only seen her once, and he said he would marry her with never a by-your-leave! Wasn't that what he had said? She had to strike another match to learn the lines that had not stuck word for word in her mind, and after that another match to get a picture of the scrawl to visualize in the dark.

How dared he take her for granted? But what a masterly way of wooing for the right man! What idiotic folly if he had been the wrong one! Was he, then, the right one? She questioned herself closely, but came to no more definite answer than this—that her heart went glad with a sweet joy to know he wanted to marry her.

She resolved to put him from her mind, and in this resolve she fell at last into smiling sleep.



CHAPTER 19. A VILLON OF THE DESERT

When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidents connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a kind of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had this twentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily the divinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he was what he was, it also held as many of his black moods.

The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. When York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found the bars into the pasture let clown, and the whole remunda kicking up its heels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that it took two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour to cut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout the process Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.

Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle, wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. "What's the matter, Reilly?"

"Was I saying anything was the matter?"

"You've been looking it right hard. Ain't you man enough to say it instead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks—like letting down the corral-bars?"

Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then descended with truculent defiance from the fence.

"Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what I think; and if ye think I ain't got the nerve—"

His master encouraged him with ironic derision. "That's right, Reilly. Who's afraid? Cough it up and show York you're game."

"By thunder, I AM game. I've got a kick coming, sorr."

"Yes?" Leroy rolled and lit a cigarette, his black eyes fixed intently on the malcontent. "Well, register it on the jump. I've got to be off."

"That's the point." The curly-headed Neil had lounged up to his comrade's support. "Why have you got to be off? We don't savvy your game, cap."

"Perhaps you would like to be major-domo of this outfit, Neil?" scoffed his chief, eying him scornfully.

"No, sir. I ain't aimin' for no such thing. But we don't like the way things are shaping. What does all this here funny business mean, anyhow?" His thumb jerked toward Collins, already mounted and waiting for Leroy to join him. "Two days ago this world wasn't big enough to hold him and you. Well, I git the drop on him, and then you begin to cotton up to him right away. Big dinner last night—champagne corks popping, I hear. What I want to know is what it means. And here's this Miss Mackenzie. She's good for a big ransom, but I don't see it ambling our way. It looks darned funny."

"That's the ticket, York," derided Leroy. "Come again. Turn your wolf loose."

"Oh! I ain't afraid to say what I think."

"I see you're not. You should try stump-speaking, my friend. There's a field fox you there."

"I'm asking you a question, Mr. Leroy."

"That's whatever," chipped in Reilly.

"Put a name to it."

"Well, I want to know what's the game, and where we come in."

"Think you're getting the double-cross?" asked Leroy pleasantly, his vigilant eyes covering them like a weapon.

"Now you're shouting. That's what I'd like right well to know. There he sits"—with another thumbjerk at Collins—"and I'm a Chink if he ain't carryin' them same two guns I took offen him, one on the train and one here the other day. I ain't sayin' it ain't all right, cap. But what I do say is—how about it?"

Leroy did some thinking out loud. "Of course I might tell you boys to go to the devil. That's my right, because you chose me to run this outfit without any advice from the rest of you. But you're such infants, I reckon I had better explain. You're always worrying those fat brains of yours with suspicions. After we stuck up the Limited you couldn't trust me to take care of the swag. Reilly here had to cook up a fool scheme for us all to hide it blindfold together. I told you straight what would happen, and it did. When Scott crossed the divide we were in a Jim Dandy of a hole. We had to have that paper of his to find the boodle. Then Hardman gets caught, and coughs up his little recipe for helping to find hidden treasure. Who gets them both? Mr. Sheriff Collins, of course. Then he comes visiting us. Not being a fool, he leaves the documents behind in a safety-deposit vault. Unless I can fix up a deal with him, Mr. Reilly's wise play buncoes us and himself out of thirty thousand dollars."

"Why don't you let him send for the papers first?"

"Because he won't do it. Threaten nothing! Collins ain't that kind of a hairpin. He'd tell us to shoot and be damned."

"So you've got it fixed with him?" demanded Neil.

"You've a head like a sheep, York," admired Leroy. "YOU don't need any brick-wall hints to hit you. As your think-tank has guessed, I have come to an understanding with Collins."

"But the gyurl—I allow the old major would come down with a right smart ransom."

"Wrong guess, York. I allow he would come down with a right smart posse and wipe us off the face of the earth. Collins tells me the major has sent for a couple of Apache trailers from the reservation. That means it's up to us to hike for Sonora. The only point is whether we take that buried money with us or leave it here. If I make a deal with Collins, we get it. If I don't, it's somebody else's gold-mine. Anything more the committee of investigation would like to know?" concluded Leroy, as his cold eyes raked them scornfully and came to rest on Reilly.

"Not for mine," said Neil, with an apologetic laugh. "I'm satisfied. I just wanted to know. And I guess Cork corroborates."

Reilly growled something under his breath, and turned to hulk away.

"One moment. You'll listen to me, now. You have taken the liberty to assume I was going to sell you out. I'll not stand that from any man alive. To-morrow night I'll get back from Tucson. We'll dig up the loot and divide it. And right then we quit company. You go your way and I go mine." And with that as a parting shot, Leroy turned on his heel and went direct to his horse.

Alice Mackenzie might have searched the West with a fine-tooth comb and not found elsewhere two such riders for an escort as fenced her that day. Physically they were a pair of superb animals, each perfect after his fashion. If the fair-haired giant, with his lean, broad shoulders and rippling flow of muscles, bulked more strikingly in a display of sheer strength, the sinewy, tigerish grace of the dark Apollo left nothing to be desired to the eye. Both of them had been brought up in the saddle, and each was fit to the minute for any emergency likely to appear.

But on this pleasant morning no test of their power seemed likely to arise, and she could study them at her ease without hindrance. She had never seen Leroy look more the vagabond enthroned. For dress, he wore the common equipment of Cattleland—jingling spurs, fringed chaps, leather cuffs, gray shirt, with kerchief knotted loosely at the neck, and revolver ready to his hand. But he carried them with an air, an inimitable grace, that marked him for a prince among his fellows. Something of the kind she hinted to him in jesting paradoxical fashion, making an attempt to win from his sardonic gloom one of his quick, flashing smiles.

He countered by telling her what he had heard York say to Reilly of her. "She's a princess, Cork," York had said. "Makes my Epitaph gyurl look like a chromo beside her. Somehow, when she looks at a fellow, he feels like a whitewashed nigger."

All of them laughed at that, but both Leroy and the sheriff tried to banter her by insisting that they knew exactly what York meant.

"You can be very splendid when you want to give a man that whitewashed feeling; he isn't right sure whether he's on the map or not," reproached the train-robber.

She laughed in the slow, indolent way she had, taking the straw hat from her dark head to catch better the faint breath of wind that was soughing across the plains.

"I didn't know I was so terrible. I don't think you ever had any awe of anybody, Mr. Leroy." Her soft cheek flushed in unexpected memory of that moment when he had brushed aside all her maiden reserves and ravished mad kisses from her. "And Mr. Collins is big enough to take care of himself," she added hastily, to banish the unwelcome recollection.

Collins, with his eyes on the light-shot waves that crowned her vivid face, wondered whether he was or not. If she had been a woman to desire in the queenly, half-insolent indifference of manner with which she had first met him, how much more of charm lay in this piquant gaiety, in the warm sweetness of her softer and more pliant mood! It seemed to him she had the gift of comradeship to perfection.

They unsaddled and ate lunch in the shade of the live-oaks at El Dorado Springs, which used to be a much-frequented watering-hole in the days when Camp Grant thrived and mule-skinners freighted supplies in to feed Uncle Sam's pets. Two hours later they stopped again at the edge of the Santa Cruz wash, two miles from the Rocking Chair Ranch.

It was while they were resaddling that Collins caught sight of a cloud of dust a mile or two away. He unslung his field-glasses, and looked long at the approaching dust-swirl. Presently he handed the binoculars to Leroy.

"Five of them; and that round-bellied Papago pony in front belongs to Sheriff Forbes, or I'm away wrong."

Leroy lowered the glasses, after a long, unflurried inspection. "Looks that way to me. Expect I'd better be burning the wind."

In a few sentences he and Collins arranged a meeting for next day up in the hills. He trailed his spurs through the dust toward Alice Mackenzie, and offered her his brown hand and wistful smile irresistible. "Good-by. This is where you get quit of me for good."

"Oh, I hope not," she told him impulsively. "We must always be friends."

He laughed ruefully. "Your father wouldn't indorse those unwise sentiments, I reckon—and I'd hate to bet your husband would," he added audaciously, with a glance at Collins. "But I love to hear you say it, even though we never could be. You're a right game, stanch little pardner. I'll back that opinion with the lid off."

"You should be a good judge of those qualities. I'm only sorry you don't always use them in a good cause."

He swung himself to his saddle. "Good-by."

"Good-by—till we meet again."

"And that will be never. So-long, sheriff. Tell Forbes I've got a particular engagement in the hills, but I'll be right glad to meet him when he comes."

He rode up the draw and disappeared over the brow of the hillock. She caught another glimpse of him a minute later on the summit of the hill beyond. He waved a hand at her, half-turning in his saddle as he rode.

Presently she lost him, but faintly the wind swept back to her a haunting snatch of uncouth song:

"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee, In my narrow grave just six by three,"

Were the words drifted to her by the wind. She thought it pathetically likely he might get the wish of his song.

To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with his posse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, he had followed Miss Mackenzie's trail into the hills and found her at a mountain ranch-house. She had been there a couple of days, and was about to set out for the Rocking Chair with the owner of the place, when he arrived and volunteered to see her as far as her uncle's ranch.

"I reckon there ain't any use asking you if you seen anything of Wolf Leroy's outfit," said Forbes, a weather-beaten Westerner with a shrewd, wrinkled face.

"No, I reckon there's no use asking me that," returned Collins, with a laugh that deceptively seemed to include the older man in the joke.

"We're after them for rustling a bunch of Circle 33 cows. Well, I'll be moving. Glad you found the lady, Val. She don't look none played out from her little trek across the desert. Funny, ain't it, how she could have wandered that far and her afoot?"

The Arizona sun was setting in its accustomed blaze of splendor, when Val Collins and Alice Mackenzie put their horses again toward the ranch and the rainbow-hued west. In his contented eyes were reflected the sunshine and a serenity born of life in the wide, open spaces. They rode in silence for long, the gentle evening breeze blowing in soughs.

"Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? He might have been anything—and it has come to this, that he is hunted like a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would give anything to save him."

He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. "Can't be done. Good qualities bulge out all over him, but they don't count for anything. 'Unstable as water.' That's what's the matter with him. He is the slave of his own whims. Hence he is only the splendid wreck of a man, full of all kinds of rich outcropping pay-ore that pinch out when you try to work them. They don't raise men gamer, but that only makes him a more dangerous foe to society. Same with his loyalty and his brilliancy. He's got a haid on him that works like they say old J. E. B. Stuart's did. He would run into a hundred traps, but somehow he always worked his men out of them. That's Leroy, too. If he had been an ordinary criminal he would have been rounded up years ago. It's his audacity, his iron nerve, his good horse-sense judgment that saves his skin. But he's certainly up against it at last."

"You think Sheriff Forbes will capture him?"

He laughed. "I think it more likely he'll capture Forbes. But we know now where he hangs out, and who he is. He has always been a mystery till now. The mystery is solved, and unless he strikes out for Sonora, Leroy is as good as a dead man."

"A dead man?"

"Does he strike you as a man likely to be taken alive? I look to see a dramatic exit to the sound of cracking Winchesters."

"Yes, that would be like him," she confessed with shudder. "I think he was made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won't be one worthy of the best in him."

"I guess he does have more moments set to music than most of us, and I'll bet, too, he has hidden way in him a list of 'Thou shalt nots.' I read a book once by a man named Stevenson that was sure virgin gold. He showed how every man, no matter how low he falls, has somewhere in him a light that burns, some rag of honor for which he is still fighting I'd hate to have to judge Leroy. Some men, I reckon, have to buck against so much in themselves that even failure is a kind of success for them."

"Yet you will go out to hunt him down?" she' said, marveling at the broad sympathy of the man.

"Sure I will. My official duty is to look out for society. If something in the machine breaks loose and goes to ripping things to pieces, the engineer has to stop the damage, even if he has to smash the rod that's causing the trouble."

The ponies dropped down again into the bed of the wash, and plowed across through the heavy sand. After they had reached the solid road, Collins resumed conversation at a new point.

"It's a month and a day since I first met you Miss Mackenzie," he said, apparently apropos of nothing.

She felt her blood begin to choke. "Indeed!"

"I gave you a letter to read when I was on the train."

"A letter!" she exclaimed, in well-affected surprise.

"Did you think it was a book of poems? No, ma'am, it was a letter. You were to read it in a month. Time was up last night. I reckon you read it."

"Could I read a letter I left at Tucson, when it was a hundred miles away?" she smiled with sweet patronage.

"Not if you left it at Tucson," he assented, with an answering smile.

"Maybe I DID lose it." She frowned, trying to remember.

"Then I'll have to tell you what was in it."

"Any time will do. I dare say it wasn't important."

"Then we'll say THIS time."

"Don't be stupid, Mr. Collins. I want to talk about our desert Villon."

"I said in that letter—"

She put her pony to a canter, and they galloped side by side in silence for half a mile. After she had slowed down to a walk, he continued placidly, as if oblivious of an interruption:

"I said in that letter that I had just met the young lady I was expecting to marry."

"Dear me, how interesting! Was she in the smoker?"

"No, she was in Section 3 of the Pullman."

"I wish I had happened to go into the other Pullman, but, of course, I couldn't know the young lady you were interested in was riding there."

"She wasn't."

"But you've just told me—"

"That I said in the letter you took so much trouble to lose that I expected to marry the young woman passing under the name of Miss Wainwright."

"Sir!"

"That I expected—"

"Really, I am not deaf, Mr. Collins."

"—expected to marry her, just as soon as she was willing."

"Oh, she is to be given a voice in the matter, is she?"

"Ce'tainly, ma'am."

"And when?"

"Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time."

"It can't be too soon for me," she flashed back, sweeping him with proud, indignant eyes.

"But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait."

"No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all."

He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.

"Aren't you going to speak?" she flamed.

"I've decided to wait."

"Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you."

"Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you—"

"No, sir, I won't—not if you were the last man on earth," she interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. "I never was so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so—so outrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seated certainty you can't get away from."

He had her fairly. "Then you DID read the letter."

"Yes, sir, I read it—and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never seen its like."

"Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think," he drawled.

Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her bronco the spur.

When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the alley.

"It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumble life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expect they could put some of these romances out of business." Miss Mackenzie's covert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.

"All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to the roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too—the best in the territory," he continued patriotically. "She ain't so great as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the git-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morn till dine."

He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.

"Some folks don't like it—call it adobe-town, and say it's full of greasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is good enough for me."

She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount, he said:

"I'll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably I won't see you again before I leave, but I'm hoping to meet you again in Tucson one of these days. Good-by."

She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed and indignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke even when it was against herself.

"I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one of the subjects seems to be closed I'll probably never find out," she told herself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.

Next moment she was in the arms of her father.



CHAPTER 20. BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY

To minimize the risk, Megales and Carlo left the prison by the secret passage, following the fork to the river bank and digging at the piled-up sand till they had forced an exit. O'Halloran met them here with horses, and the three men followed the riverwash beyond the limits of the town and cut across by a trail to a siding on the Central Mexican Pacific tracks. The Irishman was careful to take no chances, and kept his party in the mesquit till the headlight of an approaching train was visible.

It drew up at the siding, and the three men boarded one of the two cars which composed it. The coach next the engine was occupied by a dozen trusted soldiers, who had formerly belonged to the bodyguard of Megales. The last car was a private one, and in it the three found Henderson, Bucky O'Connor, and his little friend, the latter still garbed as a boy.

Frances was exceedingly eager to don again the clothes proper to her sex, and she had promised herself that, once habited as she desired, nothing could induce her ever to masquerade again. Until she met and fell in love with the ranger she had thought nothing of it, since it had been merely a matter of professional business to which she had been forced. Indeed, she had sometimes enjoyed the humor of the deception. It had lent a spice o enjoyment to a life not crowded with it. But after she met Bucky there had grown up in her a new sensitiveness. She wanted to be womanly, to forget her turbid past and the shifts to which she had sometimes been put. She had been a child; she was now a woman. She wanted to be one of whom he need be in no way ashamed.

When their train began to pull out of the depot at Chihuahua she drew a deep sigh of relief.

"It's good to get away from here back to the States. I'm tired of plots and counterplots. For the rest of my life I want to be just a woman," she said to Bucky.

The young man smiled. "I reckon I must quit trying to make you a gentleman. Fact is, I don't want you to be one any more."

She slanted a look at him to see what that might mean and another up the car to make sure that Henderson was out of hearing.

"It was rather hopeless, wasn't it?" she smiled. "We'll do pretty well if we succeed in making me a lady in course of time. I've a lot to learn, you know."

"Well, you got lots of time to learn it," he replied cheerfully. "And I've got a notion tucked away in the back of my haid that you haven't got such a heap to study up. Mrs. Mackenzie will put you next to the etiquette wrinkles where you are shy."

A shadow fell on the piquant, eager face beside him. "Do you think she will love me?"

"I don't think. I know. She can't help it."

"Because she is my mother? Oh, I hope that is true."

"No, not only because she is your mother."

She decided to ask for no more reasons. Henderson, pleased at the wide stretch of plain as only one who had missed the open air for many years could be, was on the observation platform in the rear of the car, one glance at his empty seat showed her. There was no safety for her shyness in the presence of that proverbial three which makes a crowd, and she began to feel her heart again in panic as once before. She took at once the opening she had given.

"I do need a mother so much, after growing up like Topsy all these years. And mine is the dearest woman in the world. I fell in love with her before, and I did not know who she was when I was at he ranch."

"I'll agree to the second dearest in the world, but I reckon you shoot too high when you say the plumb dearest."

"She is. We'll quarrel if you don't agree," trying desperately to divert him from the topic she knew he meant to pursue. For in the past two days he had been so busy helping O'Halloran that he had not even had a glimpse of her. As a consequence of which each felt half-dubious of the other's love, and Frances felt wholly shy about expressing her own or even listening to his.

"Well, we're due for a quarrel, I reckon. But we'll postpone it till we got more time to give it." He drew a watch from his pocket and glanced at it "In less than fifteen minutes Mike and our two friends who are making their getaway will come in that door Henderson just went out of. That means we won't get a chance to be alone together, for about two days. I've got something to say to you, Curly Haid, that won't keep that long with out running my temperature clear up. So I'm allowing to say it right now immediate. No, you don't need to turn them brown appealers on me. It won't do a mite of good. It's Bucky to the bat and he's bound to make a hit or strike out."

"I think I hear Mr. Henderson coming," murmured Frances, for lack of something more effective to say.

"Not him. He's hogtied to the scenery long enough to do my business. Now, it won't take me long if I get off right foot first. You read my letter, you said?"

"Which letter?" She was examining attentively the fringe of the sash she wore.

"Why, honey, that love-letter I wrote you. If there was more than one it must have been wrote in my sleep, for I ce'tainly disremember it."

He could just hear her confused answer: "Oh, yes, I read that. I told you that before."

"What did you think? Tell me again."

"I thought you misspelled feelings."

"You don't say. Now, ain't that too bad? But, girl o' mine, I expect you were able to make it out, even if I did get the letters to milling around wrong. I meant them feelings all right. Outside of the spelling, did you have any objections to them,

"How can I remember what you wrote in that letter several days ago?"

"I'll bet you know it by heart, honey, and, if you don't, you'll find it in your inside vest pocket, tucked away right close to your heart."

"It isn't," she denied, with a blush.

"Sho! Pinned to your shirt then, little pardner. I ain't particular which. Point is, if you need to refresh that ailin' memory of yours, the document is—right handy. But you don't need to. It just says one little sentence over and over again. All you have got to do is to say one little word, and you don't have to say it but once."

"I don't understand you," her lips voiced.

"You understand me all right. What my letter said was 'I love you,' and what you have got to say is: 'Yes'."

"But that doesn't mean anything."

"I'll make out the meaning when you say it."

"Do I have to say it?"

"You have to if you feel it."

Slowly the big brown eyes came up to meet his bravely. "Yes, Bucky."

He caught her hands and looked down into her pure, sweet soul.

"I'm in luck," he breathed deeply. "In golden luck to have you look at me twice. Are you sure?"

"Sure. I loved you that first day I met you. I've loved you every day since," she confessed simply.

Full on the lips he kissed her.

"Then we'll be married as soon as we reach the Rocking Chair."

"But you once said you didn't want to be my husband," she taunted sweetly. "Don't you remember? In the days when we were gipsies."

"I've changed my mind. I want to, and I'm in a hurry."

She shook her head. "No, dear. We shall have to wait. It wouldn't be fair to my mother to lose me just as soon as she finds me. It is her right to get acquainted with me just as if I belonged to her alone. You understand what I mean, Bucky. She must not feel as if she never had found me, as if she never had been first with me. We can love each other more simply if she doesn't know about you. We'll have it for a secret for a month or two."

She put her little hand on his arm appealingly to win his consent. His eyes rested on it curiously, Then he took it in his big brown one and turned it palm up. Its delicacy and perfect finish moved him, for it seemed to him that in the contrast between the two hands he saw in miniature the difference of sex. His showed strength and competency and the roughness that comes of the struggle of life. But hers was strangely tender and confiding, compact of the qualities that go to make up the strength of the weak. Surely he deserved the worst if he was not good to her, a shield and buckler against the storms that must beat against them in the great adventure they were soon to begin together.

Reverently he raised the little hand and kissed its palm.

"Sure, sweetheart I had forgotten about your mother's claim. We can wait, I reckon," he added with a smile. "You must always set me straight when I lose the trail of what's right, Curly Haid. You are to be a guiding-star to me."

"And you to me. Oh, Bucky, isn't it good?"

He kissed her again hurriedly, for the train was jarring to a halt. Before he could answer in words, O'Halloran burst into the coach, at the head of his little company.

"All serene, Bucky. This is the last scene, and the show went without a hitch in the performance anywhere."

Bucky smiled at Frances as he answered his enthusiastic friend:

"That's right. Not a hitch anywhere."

"And say, Bucky, who do you think is in the other coach dressed as one of the guards?"

"Colonel Roosevelt," the ranger guessed promptly.

"Our friend Chaves. He's escaping because he thinks we'll have him assassinated in revenge," the big Irishman returned gleefully. "You should have seen his color, me bye, when he caught sight of me. I asked him if he'd been reduced to the ranks, and he begged me not to tell you he was here. Go in and devil him."

Bucky glanced at his lover. "No, I'm so plumb contented I haven't the heart."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At the Rocking Chair Ranch there was bustle and excitement. Mexicans scrubbed and scoured under the direction of Alice and Mrs. Mackenzie, and vaqueros rode hither and thither on bootless errands devised by their nervous master. For late that morning a telephone call from Aravaipa had brought Webb to the receiver to listen to a telegram. The message was from Bucky, then on the train on his way home.

"The best of news. Reach the Rocking Chair tonight."

That was the message which had disturbed the serenity of big Webb Mackenzie and had given to the motherly heart of his wife an unusual flutter. The best of news it could not be, for the ranger had already written them of the confession of Anderson, which included the statement of the death of their little daughter. But at least he might bring the next best news, information that David Henderson was free at last and his long martyrdom ended.

So all day hurried preparations were being made to receive the honored guests with a fitting welcome. The Rocking Chair was a big ranch, and its hospitality was famous all over the Southwest. It was quite unnecessary to make special efforts to entertain, but Webb and his wife took that means of relieving the strain on them till night.

Higher crept the hot sun of baked Arizona. It passed the zenith and began to descend toward the purple hills in the west, went behind them with a great rainbow splash of brilliancy peculiar to that country Dusk came, and died away in the midst of a love-concert of quails. Velvet night, with its myriad stars, entranced the land and made magic of its hills and valleys.

For the fiftieth time Webb dragged out his watch and consulted it.

"I wish that young man had let us know which way he was coming, so I could go and meet them. If they come by the river they should be in the Box canyon by this time. But if I was to ride out, like as not they would come by the mesa," he sputtered.

"What time is it, Webb?" asked his wife, scarcely less excited.

He had to look again, so absent-minded had been his last glance at the watch. "Nine-fifteen. Why didn't I telephone to Rogers and ask him to find out which way they were coming? Sometimes I'm mighty thick-headed."

As Mackenzie had guessed, the party was winding its way through the Box Canyon at that time of speaking. Bucky and Frances led the way, followed by Henderson and the vaquero whom Mackenzie had telephoned to guide them from Aravaipa.

"I reckon this night was made for us, Curly Haid. Even good old Arizona never turned out such a one before. I expect it was ordered for us ever since it was decided we belonged to each other. That may have been thousands of years ago." Bucky laughed, to relieve the tension, and looked up at the milky way above. "We're like those stars, honey. All our lives we have been drifting around, but all the time it had been decided by the God-of-things-as-they-are that our orbits were going to run together and gravitate into the same one when the right time came. It has come now."

"Yes, Bucky," she answered softly. "We belong, dear."

"Hello, here's the end of the canon. The ranch lies right behind that spur."

"Does it?" Presently she added: "I'm all a-tremble, Bucky. To think I'm going to meet my father and my mother for the first time really, for I don't count that other time when we didn't know. Suppose they shouldn't like me."

"Impossible. Suppose something reasonable," her lover replied.

"But they might not. You think, you silly boy, that because you do everybody must. But I'm so glad I'm clothed and in my right mind again. I couldn't have borne to meet my mother with that boys suit on. Do you think I look nice in this? I had to take what I could find ready-made, you know."

Unless his eyes were blinded by the glamour of love, he saw the sweetest vision of loveliness he had known. Such a surpassing miracle of soft, dainty curves, such surplusage of beauty in bare throat, speaking eye, sweet mouth, and dimpled cheeks! But Bucky was a lover, and perhaps no fair judge, for in that touch of vagueness, of fairy-land, lent by the moonlight, he found the world almost too beautiful to believe. Did she look NICE? How beggarly words were to express feelings, after all.

The vaquero with them rode forward and pointed to the valley below, where the ranch-house huddled in a pellucid sea of moonlight.

"That's the Rocking Chair, sir."

Presently there came a shout from the ranch, and a man galloped toward them. He passed Bucky with a wave of his hand and made directly for Henderson.

"Dave! Dave, old partner," he cried, leaping from his horse and catching the other's hand. "After all these years you've risen from the dead and come back to me." His voice was broken with emotion.

"Come! Let's canter forward to the ranch," said Bucky to Frances and the vaquero, thinking it best to leave the two old comrades together for a while.

Mrs. Mackenzie and Alice met them at the gate. "Did you bring him? Did you bring Dave?" the older lady asked eagerly.

"Yes, we brought him," answered Bucky, helping Frances to dismount.

He led the girl to her mother. "Mrs. Mackenzie, can you stand good news?"

She caught at the gate. "What news? Who is this lady?"

"Her name is Frances."

"Frances what?"

"Frances Mackenzie. She is your daughter, returned, after all these years, to love and be loved."

The mother gave a little throat cry, steadied herself, and fell into the arms of her daughter. "Oh, my baby! My baby! Found at last."

Quietly Bucky slipped away to the stables with the ponies. As quietly Alice disappeared into the house. This was sacred ground, and not even their feet should rest on it just now.

When Bucky returned to the house, he found his sweetheart sitting between her father and mother, each of whom was holding one of her hands. Henderson had retired to clean himself up. Happy tears were coursing down the cheeks of the mother, and Webb found it necessary to blow his nose frequently. He jumped up at sight of the ranger.

"Young man, you're to blame for this. You've found my friend and you've found my daughter. Brought them both back to us on the same day. What do you want? Name it, and it's yours, if I can give it."

Bucky looked at Frances with a smile in his eyes. He knew very well what he wanted, but he was under bonds not to name it yet.

"I'll set you up in the cattle business, sir. I'll buy you sheep, if you prefer. I'll get you an interest in a mine. Put a name to what you want."

"I'm no robber. You paid the expenses of my trip. That's all I want right now."

"It's not all you'll get. Do you think I'm a cheap piker? No, sir. You've got to let me grub-stake you." Mackenzie thumped a clinched fist down on the table.

"All right, seh. You're the doctor. Give me an interest in that map and I'll prospect the mine this summer, if I can locate it."

"Good enough, and I'll finance the proposition. You and Dave can take half-shares in the property. In the meantime, are you open to an engagement?"

"Depends what it is," replied Bucky cautiously.

"My foreman's quit on me. Gone into business for himself. I'm looking for a good man. Will you be my major-domo?"

Bucky's heart leaped. He had been thinking of how he must report almost immediately to HurryUp Millikan, of the rangers. Now, he could resign from that body and stay near his love. Certainly things were coming his way.

"I'd like to try it, seh," he answered. "I may not make good, but I sure would like to have a chance at it."

"Make good! Of course you'll make good. You're the best man in Arizona, sir," cried Webb extravagantly. He wheeled on his new-found daughter. "Don't you think so, Frankie?"

Frances blushed, but answered bravely: "Yes, sir. He makes everything right when he takes hold of it."

"Good. We're not going to let him get away from us after making us so happy, are we, mother? This young man is going to stay right here. We never had but one son, and we are going to treat him as much like one as we can. Eh, mother?"

"If he will consent, Webb." She went up to the ranger and kissed his tanned cheek. "You must pardon an old woman whom you've made very happy."

Again Bucky's laughing blue eyes met the brown ones of his sweetheart.

"Oh, I'll consent, all right, and I reckon, ma'am, it's mighty good of you to treat me so white. I'll sure try to please you."

Webb thumped him on the back. "Now, you're shouting. We want you to be one of us, young man."

Once more that happy, wireless message of eyes followed by O'Connor's assent. "That's what I want myself, seh."

Bucky found a surprise waiting for him at the stables. A heavy hand descended upon his shoulder. He whirled, and looked up into the face of Sheriff Collins.

"You here, Val?" he cried in surprise.

"That's what. Any luck, Bucky?"

They went out and sat down on the big rocks back of the corral. Here each told the other his story, with certain reservations. Collins had just got back from Epitaph, where he had been to get the fragments of paper which told the secret of the buried treasure. He was expecting to set out in the early morning to meet Leroy.

"I'll go with you," said Bucky immediately.

Val shook his head. "No, I'm to go alone. That's the agreement."

"Of course if that's the agreement." Nevertheless, the ranger formed a private intention not to be far from the scene of action.



CHAPTER 21. THE WOLF PACK

"Good evening, gentlemen. Hope I don't intrude on the festivities."

Leroy smiled down ironically on the four flushed, startled faces that looked up at him. Suspicion was alive in every rustle of the men's clothes. It breathed from the lowering countenances. It itched at the fingers longing for the trigger. The unending terror of a bandit's life is that no man trusts his fellow. Hence one betrays another for fear of betrayal, or stabs him in the back to avoid it.

The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the first inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting voice. Now, as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the back of a chair and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they looked the picture of schoolboys caught by their master in a conspiracy. How long had he been there? How much had he heard? Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they were, his confident contempt still cowed the very men who were planning his destruction. A minute before they had been full of loud threats and boastings; now they could only search each other's faces sullenly for a cue.

"Celebrating Chaves' return from manana land, I reckon. That's the proper ticket. I wonder if we couldn't afford to kill another of Collins' fatted calves."

Mr. Hardman, not enjoying the derisive raillery, took a hand in the game. "I expect the boys hadn't better touch the sheriff's calves, now you and him are so thick."

"We're thick, are we?" Leroy's indolent eyes narrowed slightly as they rested on him.

"Ain't you? It sure seemed that way to me when I looked out of that mesquit wash just above Eldorado Springs and seen you and him eating together like brothers and laughing to beat the band. You was so clost to him I couldn't draw a bead on him without risking its hitting you."

"Spying, eh?"

"If that's the word you want to use, cap. And you were enjoying yourselves proper."

"Laughing, were we? That must have been when he told me how funny you looked in the 'altogether' shedding false teeth and information about hidden treasure."

"Told you that, did he?" Mr. Hardman incontinently dropped repartee as a weapon too subtle, and fell back on profanity.

"That's right pat to the minute, cap, what you say about the information he leaks," put in Neil. "How about that information? I'll be plumb tickled to death to know you're carrying it in you vest pocket."

"And if I'm not?"

"Then ye are a bigger fool than I had expected sorr, to come back here at all," said the Irishman truculently.

"I begin to think so myself, Mr. Reilly. Why keep faith with a set of swine like you?"

"Are you giving it to us that you haven't got those papers?"

Leroy nodded, watching them with steady, alert eyes. He knew he stood on the edge of a volcano that might explode at any moment.

"What did I tell yez?" Reilly turned savagely to the other disaffected members of the gang. "Didn't I tell yez he was selling us out?"

Somehow Leroy's revolver seemed to jump to his hand without a motion on his part. It lay loosely in his limp fingers, unaimed and undirected.

"SAY THAT AGAIN, PLEASE."

Beneath the velvet of Leroy's voice ran a note more deadly than any threat could have been. It rang a bell for a silence in which the clock of death seemed to tick. But as the seconds fled Reilly's courage oozed away. He dared not accept the invitation to reach for his weapon and try conclusions with this debonair young daredevil. He mumbled a retraction, and flung, with a curse, out of the room.

Leroy slipped the revolver back in his holster and quoted, with a laugh:

"To every coward safety, And afterward his evil hour."

"What's that?" demanded Neil. "I ain't no coward, even if Jay is. I don't knuckle under to any man. You got a right to ante up with some information. I want to know why you ain't got them papers you promised to bring back with you."

"And I, too, senor. I desire to know what it means," added Chaves, his eyes glittering.

"That's the way to chirp, gentlemen. I haven't got them because Forbes blundered on us, and I had to take a pasear awful sudden. But I made an appointment to meet Collins to-morrow."

"And you think he'll keep it?" scoffed Neil.

"I know he will."

"You seem to know a heap about him," was the significant retort.

"Take care, York."

"I'm not Hardman, cap. I say what I think.

"And you think?" suggested Leroy gently.

"I don't know what to think yet. You're either a fool or a traitor. I ain't quite made up my mind. When I find out you'll ce'tainly hear from me straight. Come on, boys." And Neil vanished through the door.

An hour later there came a knock at Leroy's door. Neil answered his permission to enter, followed by the other trio of flushed beauties. To the outlaw chief it was at once apparent with what Dutch courage they had been fortifying themselves to some resolve. It was characteristic of him, though he knew on how precarious a thread his life was hanging, that disgust at the foul breaths with which they were polluting the atmosphere was his first dominant emotion.

"I wish, Lieutenant Chaves, next time you emigrate you'd bring another brand of poison out to the boys. I can't go this stuff. Just remember that, will you?"

The outlaw chief's hard eye ran over the rebels and read them like a primer They had come to depose him certainly, to kill him perhaps. Though this last he doubted. It wouldn't be like Neil to plan his murder, and it wouldn't be like the others to give him warning and meet him in the open. Warily he stood behind the table, watching their awkward embarrassment with easy assurance. Carefully he placed face downward on the table the Villon he had been reading, but he did it without lifting his eyes from them.

"You have business with me, I presume."

"That's what we have," cried Reilly valiantly, from the rear.

"Then suppose we come to it and get the room aired as soon as possible," Leroy said tartly.

"You're such a slap-up dude you'd ought to be a hotel clerk, cap. You're sure wasted out here. So we boys got together and held a little election. Consequence is, we—fact is, we—"

Neil stuck, but Reilly came to his rescue.

"We elected York captain of this outfit."

"To fill the vacancy created by my resignation. Poor York! You're the sacrifice, are you? On the whole, I think you fellows have made a wise choice. York's game, and he won't squeal on you, which is more than I could say of Reilly, or the play actor, or the gentlemen from Chihuahua. But you want to watch out for a knife in the dark, York. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' you know."

"We didn't come here to listen to a speech, cap, but to notify you we was dissatisfied, and wouldn't have you run the outfit any longer," explained Neil.

"In that event, having heard the report of the committee, if there's no further new business, I declare this meeting adjourned sine die. Kindly remove the perfume tubs, Captain Neil, at your earliest convenience."

The quartette retreated ignominiously. They had come prepared to gloat over Leroy's discomfiture, and he had mocked them with that insolent ease of his that set their teeth in helpless rage.

But the deposed chief knew they had not struck their last blow. Throughout the night he could hear the low-voiced murmur of their plottings, and he knew that if the liquor held out long enough there would be sudden death at Hidden Valley before twenty-four hours were up. He looked carefully to his rifle and his revolvers, testing several shells to make sure they had not been tampered with in his absence. After he had made all necessary preparations, he drew the blinds of his window and moved his easy-chair from its customary place beside the fire. Also he was careful not to sit where an shadow would betray his position. Then back he went to his Villon, a revolver lying on the table within reach.

But the night passed without mishap, and with morning he ventured forth to his meeting with the sheriff. He might have slipped out from the back door of his cabin and gained the canyon, by circling unobserved, up the draw and over the hogback, but he would not show by these precautions any fear of the cutthroats with whom he had to deal. As was his scrupulous custom, he shaved and took his morning bath before appearing outdoors. In all Arizona no trimmer, more graceful figure of jaunty recklessness could be seen than this one stepping lightly forth to knock at the bunk-house door behind which he suspected were at least two men determined on his death by treachery.

Neil came to the door in answer to his knock and within he could see the villainous faces at bloodshot eyes of two of the others peering at him.

"Good mo'ning, Captain Neil. I'm on my way to keep that appointment I mentioned last night I'd ce'tainly be glad to have you go along. Nothing like being on the spot to prevent double-crossing."

"I'm with you in the fling of a cow's tail. Come on, boys."

"I think not. You and I will go alone."

"Just as you say. Reilly, I guess you better saddle Two-step and the Lazy B roan."

"I ain't saddling ponies for Mr. Leroy," returned Reilly, with thick defiance.

Neil was across the room in two strides. "When I tell you to do a thing, jump! Get a move on and saddle those broncs."

"I don't know as—"

"Vamos!"

Reilly sullenly slouched out.

"I see you made them jump," commented the former captain audibly, seating himself comfortably on a rock. "It's the only way you'll get along with them. See that they come to time or pump lead into them. You'll find there's no middle way."

Neil and Leroy had hardly passed beyond the rock-slide before the others, suspicion awake in their sodden brains, dodged after them on foot. For three miles they followed the broncos as the latter picked their way up the steep trail that led to the Dalriada Mine.

"If Mr. Collins is here, he's lying almighty low," exclaimed Neil, as he swung from his pony at the foot of the bluff from the brow of which the gray dump of the mine straggled down like a Titan's beard.

"Right you are, Mr. Neil."

York whirled, revolver in hand, but the man who had risen from behind the big boulder beside the trail was resting both hands on the rock before him.

"You're alone, are you?" demanded York.

"I am."

Neil's revolver slid back into its holster. "Mornin', Val. What's new down at Tucson?" he said amiably.

"I understood I was to meet you alone, Mr. Leroy," said the sheriff quickly, his blue-gray eyes on the former chief.

"That was the agreement, Mr. Collins, but it seems the boys are on the anxious seat about these little socials of ours. They've embraced the notion that I'm selling them. I hated to have them harassed with doubts, so I invited the new majordomo of the ranch to come with me. Of cou'se, if you object—"

"I don't object in the least, but I want him to understand the agreement. I've got a posse waiting at Eldorado Springs, and as soon as I get back there we take the trail after you. Bucky O'Connor is at the head of the posse."

York grinned. "We'll be in Sonora then, Val. Think I'm going to wait and let you shoot off my other fingers?"

Collins fished from his vest pocket the papers he had taken from Scott hat and from Webster. "I think I'll be jogging along back to the springs. I reckon these are what you want."

Leroy took them from him and handed them to Neil. "Don't let us detain you any longer, Mr. Collins. I know you're awful busy these days."

The sheriff nodded a good day, cut down the hill on the slant, and disappeared in a mesquit thicket, from the other side of which he presently emerged astride a bay horse.

The two outlaws retraced their way to the foot of the hill and remounted their broncos.

"I want to say, cap, that I'm eating humble-pie in big chunks right this minute," said Neil shamefacedly, scratching his curly poll and looking apologetically at his former chief. "I might 'a' knowed you was straight as a string, all I've seen of you these last two years. If those coyotes say another word, cap—"

An exploding echo seemed to shake the mountain, and then another. Leroy swayed in the saddle, clutching at his side. He pitched forward, his arms round the horse's neck, and slid slowly to the ground.

Neil was off his horse in an instant, kneeling beside him. He lifted him in his arms and carried him behind a great outcropping boulder.

"It's that hound Collins," he muttered, as he propped the wounded man's head on his arm. "By God, I didn't think it of Val."

Leroy opened his eyes and smiled faintly. "Guess again, York."

"You don't mean—"

He nodded. "Right this time—Hardman and Chaves and Reilly. They shot to get us both. With us out of the way they could divide the treasure between them."

Neil choked. "You ain't bad hurt, old man. Say you ain't bad hurt, Phil."

"More than I can carry, York; shot through and through. I've been doubtful of Reilly for a long time."

"By the Lord, if I don't get the rattlesnake for this!" swore Neil between his teeth. "Ain't there nothin' I can do for you, old pardner?"

In sharp succession four shots rang out. Neil grasped his rifle, leaning forward and crouching for cover. He turned a puzzled face toward Leroy. "I don't savvy. They ain't shooting at us."

"The sheriff," explained Leroy. "They forgot him, and he doubled back on them."

"I'll bet Val got one of them," cried Neil, his face lighting.

"He's got one—or he's quit living. That's a sure thing. Why don't you circle up on them from behind, York?"

"I hate to leave you, cap—and you so bad. Can't I do a thing for you?"

Leroy smiled faintly. "Not a thing. I'll be right here when you get back, York."

The curly-headed young puncher took Leroy's hand in his, gulping down a boyish sob. "I ain't been square with you, cap. I reckon after this—when you git well—I'll not be such a coyote any more."

The dying man's eyes were lit with a beautiful tenderness. "There's one thing you can do for me, York.... I'm out of the game, but I want you to make a new start.... I got you into this life, boy. Quit it, and live straight. There's nothing to it, York."

The cowboy-bandit choked. "Don't you worry about me, cap. I'm all right. I'd just as lief quit this deviltry, anyhow."

"I want you to promise, boy." A whimsical, half-cynical smile touched Leroy's eyes. "You see, after living like a devil for thirty years, I want to die like a Christian. Now, go, York."

After Neil had left him, Leroy's eyes closed. Faintly he heard two more shots echoing down the valley, but the meaning of them was already lost to his wandering mind.

Neil dodged rapidly round the foot of the mountain with intent to cut off the bandits as they retreated. He found the sheriff crouching behind a rock scarce two hundred yards from the scene of the murder. At the same moment another shot echoed from well over to the left.

"Who can that be?" Neil asked, very much puzzled.

"That's what's worrying me, York," the sheriff returned.

Together they zigzagged up the side of the mountain. Twice from above there came sounds of rifle shots. Neil was the first to strike the trail to the mine. None too soon for as he stepped upon it, breathing heavily from his climb, Reilly swung round a curve and whipped his weapon to his shoulder. The man fired before York could interfere and stood watching tensely the result of his shot. He was silhouetted against the skyline, a beautiful mark, but Neil did not cover him. Instead, he spoke quietly to the other.

"Was it you that killed Phil, Reilly?"

The man whirled and saw Neil for the first time. His answer was instant. Flinging up his rifle, he pumped a shot at York.

Neil's retort came in a flash. Reilly clutched at his heart and toppled backward from the precipice upon which he stood. Collins joined the cowpuncher and together they stepped forward to the point from which Reilly had plunged down two hundred feet to the jagged rocks below.

At the curve they came face to face with Bucky O'Connor. Three weapons went up quicker than the beating of an eyelash. More slowly each went down again.

"What are you doing here, Bucky?" the sheriff asked.

"Just pirootin' around, Val. It occurred to me Leroy might not mean to play fair with you, so I kinder invited myself to the party. When I heard shooting I thought it was you they had bushwhacked, so I sat in to the game."

"You guessed wrong, Bucky. Reilly and the others rounded on Leroy. While they were at it they figured to make a clean job and bump off York, too. From what York says Leroy has got his."

The ranger turned a jade eye on the outlaw. "Has Mr. Neil turned honest man, Val? Taken him into your posse, have you?" he asked, with an edge of irony in his voice.

The sheriff laid a hand on the shoulder of the man who had been his friend before he turned miscreant.

"Don't you worry about Neil, Bucky," he advised gently. "It was York shot Reilly, after York had cut loose at him, and I shouldn't wonder if that didn't save your life. Neil has got to stand the gaff for what he's done, but I'll pull wires to get his punishment made light."

"Killed Reilly, did he?" repeated O'Connor. "I got Anderson back there."

"That makes only one left to account for. I wonder who he is?" Collins turned absent-mindedly to Neil. The latter looked at him out of an expressionless face. Even though his confederate had proved traitor he would not betray him.

"I wonder," he said.

Bucky laughed. "Made a mistake that time, Val."

"I plumb forgot the situation for a moment," the sheriff grinned. "Anyhow, we better be hittin' his trail."

"How about Phil?" Neil suggested.

"That's right. One of us has ce'tainly got to go back and attend to him."

"You and Neil go back. I'll follow up this gentleman who is escaping," the ranger said.

And so it was arranged. The two men returned from their grim work of justice to the place where the outlaw chief had been left. His eyes lit feebly at sight of them.

"What news, York?" he asked.

"Reilly and Hardman are killed. How are you feelin', cap?" The cow-puncher knelt beside the dying outlaw and put an arm under his head.

"Shot all to pieces, boy. No, I got no time to have you play doctor with me." He turned to Collins with a gleam of his unconquerable spirit. "You came pretty near making a clean round-up, sheriff. I'm the fourth to be put out of business. You'd ought to be content with that. Let York here go."

"I can't do that, but I'll do my best to see he gets off light."

"I got him into this, sheriff. He was all right before he knew me. I want him to get a chance now."

"I wish I could give him a pardon, but I can't do it. I'll see the governor for him though."

The wounded man spoke to Collins alone for a few minutes, then began to wander in his mind He babbled feebly of childhood days back in his Kentucky home. The word most often on his lips was "Mother." So, with his head resting on Neil's arm and his hand in that of his friend, he slipped away to the Great Beyond.



CHAPTER 22. FOR A GOOD REASON

The young ladies, following the custom of Arizona in summer, were riding by the light of the stars to avoid the heat of the day. They rode leisurely, chatting as their ponies paced side by side. For though they were cousins they were getting acquainted with each other for the first time. Both of them found this a delightful process, not the less so because they were temperamentally very different. Each of them knew already that they were going to be great friends. They had exchanged the histories of their lives, lying awake girl fashion to talk into the small hours, each omitting certain passages, however, that had to do with two men who were at that moment approaching nearer every minute to them.

Bucky O'Connor and Sheriff Collins were returning to the Rocking Chair Ranch from Epitaph, where they had just been to deposit twenty-seven thousand dollars and a prisoner by the name of Chaves. Just at the point where the road climbed from the plains and reached the summit of the first stiff hill the two parties met and passed. The ranger and the sheriff reined in simultaneously. Yet a moment and all four of them were talking at once.

They turned toward the ranch, Bucky and Frances leading the way. Alice, riding beside her lover in the darkness, found the defenses upon which she had relied begin to fail her. Nevertheless, she summoned them to her support and met him full armed with the evasions and complexities of her sex.

"This is a surprise, Mr. Collins," he was informed in her best society voice.

"And a pleasure?"

"Of course. But I'm sorry that father has been called to Phoenix. I suppose you came to tell him about your success."

"To brag about it," he corrected. "But not to your father—to his daughter."

"That's very thoughtful of you. Will you begin now?"

"Not yet. There is something I have to tell you, Miss Mackenzie."

At the gravity in his voice the lightness slipped from her like a cloak.

"Yes. Tell me your news. Over the telephone all sorts of rumors have come to us. But even these were hearsay."

"I thought of telephoning you the facts. Then I decided to ride out and tell you at once. I knew you would want to hear the story at first hand."

Her patrician manner was gone. Her eyes looked their thanks at him. "That was good of you. I have been very anxious to get the facts. One rumor was that you have captured Sir Leroy. Is it true?"

It seemed to her that his look was one of grave tenderness. "No, that is not true. You remember what we said of him—of how he might die?"

"He is dead—you killed him," she cried, all the color washed from her face.

"He is dead, but I did not kill him."

"Tell me," she commanded.

He told her, beginning at the moment of his meeting with the outlaws at the Dalriada dump and continuing to the last scene of the tragedy. It touched her so nearly that she could not hear him through dry-eyed.

"And he spoke of me?" She said it in a low voice, to herself rather than to him.

"It was just before his mind began to wander—almost his last conscious thought. He said that when you heard the news you would remember. What you were to remember he didn't say. I took it you would know."

"Yes. I was to remember that he was not all wolf to me." She told it with a little break of tears in her voice.

"Then he told me to tell you that it was the best way out for him. He had come to the end of the road, and it would not have been possible for him to go back." Presently Collins added gently: "If you don't mind my saying so, I think he was right. He was content to go, quite game and steady in his easy way. If he had lived, there could have been no going back for him. It was his nature to go the limit. The tragedy is in his life, not in his death."

"Yes, I know that, but it hurts one to think it had to be—that all his splendid gifts and capabilities should end like this, and that we are forced to see it is best. He might have done so much."

"And instead he became a miscreant. I reckon there was a lack in him somewhere."

"Yes, there was a great lack in him somewhere."

They were silent for a time. She broke it to ask about York Neil.

"You wouldn't send him to prison after doing what he did, would you?"

"Meaning what?"

"You say yourself he helped you against the other outlaws. Then he showed you where to start in finding the buried money. He isn't a bad man. You know how he stood by me when I was a prisoner," she pleaded.

He nodded. "That goes a long way with me, Miss Mackenzie. The governor is a right good friend of mine. I meant to ask him for a pardon. I reckon Neil means to live straight from now on. He promised Leroy he would. He's only a wild cow-puncher gone wrong, and now he's haided right he'll pull up and walk the narrow trail."

"But can you save him from the penitentiary?"

Collins smiled. "He saved me the trouble. Coming through the Canon Del Oro in the night, he ducked. I reckon he's in Mexico now."

"I'm glad."

"Well, I ain't sorry myself, though I helped Bucky hunt real thorough for him."

"Father will be pleased to know you got the treasure back," Alice said presently, after they had ridden a bit in silence.

"And your father's daughter, Miss Alice—is she pleased?"

"What pleases father pleases me." Her voice, cool as the plash of ice water, might have daunted a less resolute man. But this one had long since determined the manner of his wooing and was not to be driven from it.

"I'm glad of that. Your father's right friendly to me," he announced, with composure.

"Indeed!"

"Sho! I ain't going to run away and hide because you look like you don't know I'm in Arizona. What kind of a lover would I be if I broke for cover every time you flashed those dark eyes at me?"

"Mr. Collins!"

"My friends call me Val," he suggested, smiling.

"I was going to ask, Mr. Collins, if you think you can bully me."

"It might be a first rate thing for you if I did, Miss Mackenzie. All your life you haven't done anything but trample on sissy boys. Now, I expect I'm not a sissy boy, but a fair imitation of a man, and I shouldn't wonder but you'd find me some too restless for a door-mat." His maimed hand happened to be resting on the saddle horn as he spoke, and the story of the maiming emphasized potently the truth of his claim.

"Don't you assume a good deal, Mr. Collins, when you imply that I have any desire to master you?"

"Not a bit," he assured her cheerfully. "Every woman wants to boss the man she's going to marry, but if she finds she can't she's glad of it, because then she knows she's got a man."

"You are quite sure I am going to marry you?" she asked gently—too gently, he thought.

"I'm only reasonably sure," he informed her. "You see, I can't tell for certain whether your pride or your good sense is the stronger."

She caught a detached glimpse of the situation, and it made for laughter.

"That's right, I want you should enjoy it," he said placidly.

"I do. It's the most absurd proposal—I suppose you call it a proposal—that ever I heard."

"I expect you've heard a good many in your time.

"We'll not discuss that, if you please."

"I AM more interested in this one," he agreed.

"Isn't it about time to begin on Tucson?"

"Not to-day, ma'am. There are going to be a lot of to-morrows for you and me, and Tucson will have to wait till then."

"Didn't I give you an answer last week?"

"You did, but I didn't take it. Now I'm ready for your sure-enough answer."

She flashed a look at him that mocked his confidence. "I've heard about the vanity of girls, but never in my experience have I met any so colossal as this masculine vanity now on exhibit. Do you really think, Mr. Collins, that all you have to do to win a woman is to look impressive and tell her that you have decided to marry her?"

"Do I look as if I thought that?" he asked her.

"It is perfectly ridiculous—your absurd attitude of taking everything for granted. Well, it may be the Tucson custom, but where I come from it is not in vogue."

"No, I reckon not. Back there a boy persuades girl he loves her by ruining her digestion with candy and all sorts of ice arrangements from soda-fountain. But I'm uncivilized enough to assume you're a woman of sense and not a spoiled schoolgirl."

The velvet night was attuned to the rhythm of her love. She felt herself, in this sea of moon romance, being swept from her moorings. Star-eyed, she gazed at him while she still fought again his dominance.

"You ARE uncivilized. Would you beat me when I didn't obey?" she asked tremulously.

He laughed in slow contentment. "Perhaps; but I'd love you while I did it."

"Oh, you would love me." She looked across under her long lashes, not as boldly as she would have liked, and her gaze fell before his. "I haven t heard before that that was in the compact you proposed. I don't think you have remembered to mention it."

He swung from the saddle and put a hand to her bridle rein.

"Get down," he ordered.

"Why?"

"Because I say so. Get down."

She looked down at him, a man out of a thousand and for her one out of a hundred million. Before she was conscious of willing it she stood beside him. He trailed the reins of the ponies, and in two strides came back to her.

"What—do you—want?"

"I want you, girl." His arm swept round her, and he held her while he looked down into her shining eyes. "So I haven't told you that I love you. Did you need to be told?"

"We must go on," she murmured weakly. "Frances and Lieutenant O'Connor—"

"—Have their own love-affairs to attend to.

"We'll manage ours and not intrude."

"They might think—"

He laughed in deep delight, "—that we love each other. They're welcome to the thought. I haven't told you that I love you, eh? I tell you now. It's my last trump, and right here I table it. I'm no desert poet, but I love you from that dark crown of yours to those little feet that tap the floor so impatient sometimes. I love you all the time, no matter what mood you're in—when you flash dark angry eyes at me and when you laugh in that slow, understanding way nobody else in God's world has the trick of. Makes no difference to me whether you're glad or mad, I want you just the same. That's the reason why I'm going to make you love me."

"You can't do it." Her voice was very low and not quite steady.

"Why not—I'll show you."

"But you can't—for a good reason."

"Put a name to it."

"Because. Oh, you big blind man—because I love you already." She burlesqued his drawl with a little joyous laugh: "I reckon if you're right set on it I'll have to marry you, Val Collins."

His arm tightened about her as if he would hold her against the whole world. His ardent eyes possessed hers. She felt herself grow faint with a poignant delight. Her lips met his slowly in their first kiss.

THE END