"I don't believe he was rustling at all."

"Course you don't believe it. That proves just what I was saying."

"Jim doesn't believe it, either."

"Yeager's opinion don't have any weight with me. I want to tell you right now that the boys are getting mighty leary of Jim. He's getting too thick with that Bear Creek bunch."

"Brill Healy, I never saw anybody so bigoted and pig-headed as you are," the girl spoke out angrily. "Any one with eyes in his head could see that Jim is as straight as a string. He couldn't be crooked if he tried. Long as you've known him I should think you wouldn't need to be told that."

"Oh, you say so," he growled sullenly.

"Everybody says so. Jim Yeager of all men," she scoffed. Then, with a flash of angry eyes at him, "How would you like it if your friends rounded on you? By all accounts, you're not quite a plaster saint. I've heard stories."

"What about?"

"Oh, gambling and drinking. What of it? That's your business. One doesn't have to believe all the talk that is flying around." She spoke with a kind of fine scorn, for she was a girl of large generosities.

"We've all got enemies, I reckon," he said sulkily.

"You're Phil's friend, and mine, too, of course. I dare say you have your faults like other men, but I don't have to listen to people while they try to poison my mind against you. What's more, I don't."

She had been agile-minded enough to shift the attack and put him upon the defensive, but now Healy brought the question back to his original point.

"That's all very well, Phyl, but we weren't talking about me, but about you. When you found this Keller making his escape you buckled in and helped him. You tied up his wound and took him to Yeager's and lied for him to us. That's bad enough, but later you did a heap worse."

"In saving him from being lynched by you?"

"Before that you made a fuss about him and had to tie up his wounds. I had a cut on my cheek, but I notice you didn't tie it up!"

"I'm surprised at you, Brill. I didn't think you were so small; and just because I didn't let a wounded man suffer."

"You can put it that way if you want to," he laughed unpleasantly.

Her passion flared again. "You and your insinuations! Who made you the judge over my actions? You talk as if you were my father. If you've got to reform somebody, let it be yourself."

"I'm the man that is going to be your husband," he said evenly. "That gives me a right."

"Never! Don't think it," she flung back. "I'd not marry you if you were the last man on earth."

"You'll see. I'll not let a scoundrel like Keller come between us. No, nor Yeager, either. Nor Buck Weaver himself. I notice he was right attentive before he went home."

Resentment burned angrily on her cheek. "Anybody else?" she asked quietly.

"That's all for just now. You're a natural-born flirt, Phyllis. That's what's the matter with you."

"Thank you, Mr. Healy. You're the only one of my friends that has been so honest with me," she assured him sweetly.

"I'm the only one of them that is going to marry you. Don't think I'll let Keller butt in. Not on your life."

Her rage broke bounds. "I never in my life heard of anything so insolent. Never! You'll not let me do this or that. Who are you, Brill Healy?"

"I've told you. I'm the man that means to marry you," he persisted doggedly.

"You never will. I'm not thinking of marrying, but when I do I'll not ask for your indorsement. Be sure of that."

"I'll not stand it! He'd better look out!"

"Who do you mean?"

"Keller, that's who I mean. This thing is hanging over his head yet. He's got to come through with proofs he ain't a rustler, or he's got to pull his freight out of the Malpais country."

"And if he won't?"

"We'll finish that little business you interrupted," he told her, riding his triumph roughshod over her feelings.

"You wouldn't, Brill! Not when there is a doubt about it. Jim says he is innocent, and I believe he is. Surely you wouldn't!"

"You'll see."

"If you do I'll never speak to you again! Never, as long as I live; and I'll never rest till I have you in the penitentiary for his murder!" she cried tensely.

"And yet you don't care anything about him. You've just been kind to him out of charity," he mocked.

For some minutes they had seen Seven Mile Ranch lying below them in the faint twilight. They rode the rest of the way in silence, each of them too bitter for speech. When they reached the house, she swung from the saddle and he kept his seat, for both of them considered her supper invitation and his acceptance cancelled.

He bowed ironically and turned to leave.

"Just a moment, Brill," called an excited voice. "I've got a piece of news that will make you sit up."

The speaker was the young mule skinner known as Cuffs. He came running out to the porch and fired his bolt.

"The First National Bank at Noches was held up two hours ago, and the robbers got away with their loot after shooting three or four men!"

"Two hours ago," the girl repeated. "You got it over the phone, of course."

"Yep. Slim called me up just now. He got back right this minute from following their trail. They lost the fellows in the hills. Four of 'em, Slim says, and he thinks they're headed this way."

"What makes him think so?" asked Healy.

"He figures they are Bear Creek men. One of them was recognized. It was that fellow Keller."

"Keller!" Phyllis and Healy cried the word together.

Cuffs nodded. "Slim says he can swear to his hawss, and he's plumb sure about the man, too. He wants we should organize a posse and nail them as they go into the Pass for Bear Creek. He figures we'll have time to do it if we jump. Noches is fifty-five miles from here, and about forty from the Pass.

"With their bronchs loaded they can't make it in much less than five hours. That gives us most three hours to reach the Pass and stop them. What think, Brill? Can we make it?"

"We'll try damned hard. I'm not going to let Mr. Rustler Keller slip through my fingers again!" Healy cried triumphantly.

"I don't believe it was Bear Creek men at all. I'm sure it wasn't Mr. Keller," Phyllis cried, with a face like parchment.

There was an unholy light of vindictive triumph in Healy's face. "We'll show you about that, Miss Missouri. Get the boys together, Cuffs. Call up Purdy and Jim Budd and Tom Dixon on the phone. Rustle up as many of the boys as you can. Start 'em for the Pass just as soon as they get here. I'm going right up there now. Probably I can't stop them, but I may make out who they are. Notify Buck Weaver, so he can head them off if they try to cross the Malpais. And get a move on you. Hustle the boys right along."

And with that he put spurs to his horse and galloped off.



CHAPTER XIX

THE ROAN WITH THE WHITE STOCKINGS

Unerringly rode Healy through the tangled hills toward a saddle in the peaks that flared vivid with crimson and mauve and topaz. A man of moods, he knew more than one before he reached the Pass for which he was headed. Now he rode with his eyes straight ahead, his face creased to a hard smile that brought out its evil lines. Now he shook his clenched fist into the air and cursed.

Or again he laughed exultingly. This was when he remembered that his rival was trapped beyond hope of extrication.

While the sky tints round the peaks deepened to purple with the coming night he climbed canons, traversed rock ridges, and went down and up rough slopes of shale. Always the trail grew more difficult, for he was getting closer to the divide where Bear Creek heads. He reached the upper regions of the pine gulches that seamed the hills with wooded crevasses, and so came at last to Gregory's Pass.

Here, close to the yellow stars that shed a cold wintry light, he dismounted and hobbled his horse. After which he found a soft spot in the mossy rocks and fell asleep. He was a light sleeper, and two hours later he awakened. Horses were laboring up the Pass.

He waited tensely, rifle in both hands, till the heads of the riders showed in the moonlight. Three—four—five of them he counted. The men he saw were those he expected, and he lowered his rifle at once.

"Hello, Cuffs! Purdy! That you, Tom? Well, you're too late."

"Too late," echoed little Purdy.

"Yep. Didn't get here in time myself to see who any of them were except the last. It was right dark, and they were most through before I reached here."

"But you knew one," Purdy suggested.

Healy looked at him and nodded. "There were four of them. I crept forward on top of that flat rock just as the last showed up. He was ridin' a hawss with four white stockings."

"A roan, mebbe," Tom put in quickly.

"You've said it, Tom—a roan, and it looked to me like it was wounded. There was blood all over the left flank."

"O' course Keller was riding it," Purdy ventured.

"Rung the bell at the first shot," Healy answered grimly.

"The son of a gun!"

"How long ago was it, Brill?" asked another.

"Must a-been two hours, anyhow."

"No use us following them now, then."

"No use. They've gone to cover."

They turned their horses and took the back trail. The cow ponies scrambled down rocky slopes like cats, and up steep inclines with the agility of mountain goats. The men rode in single file, and conversation was limited to disjointed fragments jerked out now and again. After an hour's rough going they reached the foothills, where they could ride two abreast. As they drew nearer to the ranch country, now one and now another turned off with a shout of farewell.

Healy accepted Purdy's invitation, and dismounted with him at the Fiddleback. Already the first glimmering of dawn flickered faintly from the serrated range. The men unsaddled, watered, fed, and then walked stiffly to the house. Within five minutes both of them lay like logs, dead to the world, until Bess Purdy called them for breakfast, long after the rest of the family had eaten.

"What devilment you been leading paw into, Brill?" demanded Bess promptly when he appeared in the doorway. "Dan says it was close to three when you got home."

She flung her challenge at the young man with a flash of smiling teeth. Bess was seventeen, a romp, very pretty, and hail-fellow-well-met with every range rider in a radius of thirty miles.

"We been looking for a beau for you, Bess," Healy immediately explained.

Miss Purdy tossed her head. "I can find one for myself, Brill Healy, and I don't have to stay out till three to get him, either."

"Come right to your door, do they?" he asked, as she helped him to the ham and eggs.

"Maybe they do, and maybe they don't."

"Well, here's one come right in the middle of the night. Somehow, I jest couldn't make out to wait till morning, Bess."

"Oh, you," she laughed, with a demand for more of this sort of chaffing in her hazel eyes.

At this kind of rough give and take he was an adept. After breakfast he stayed and helped her wash the dishes, romping with her the whole time in the midst of gay bursts of laughter and such repartee as occurred to them.

He found his young hostess so entertaining that he did not get away until the morning was half gone. By the time he reached Seven Mile the sun was past the meridian, and the stage a lessening patch of dust in the distance.

Before he was well out of the saddle, Phyllis Sanderson was standing in the doorway of the store, with a question in her eyes.

"Well?" he forced her to say at last.

Leisurely he turned, as if just aware of her presence.

"Oh, it's you. Mornin', Phyl."

"What did you find out?"

"I met your friend."

"What friend?"

"Mr. Keller, the rustler and bank robber," he drawled insolently, looking full in her face.

"Tell me at once what you found out."

"I found Mr. Keller riding a roan with four white stockings and a wound on its flank."

She caught at the jamb. "You didn't, Brill!"

"I ce'tainly did," he jeered.

"What—what did you do?" Her lips were white as her cheeks.

"I haven't done, anything—yet. You see, I was alone. The other boys hadn't arrived then."

"And he wasn't alone?"

"No; he had three friends with him. I couldn't make out whether any more of them were college chums of yours."

Without another word, she turned her back on him and went into the store. All night she had lain sleepless and longed for and dreaded the coming of the day. Over the wire from Noches had come at dawn fuller details of the robbery, from her brother Phil, who was spending two or three days in town.

It appeared that none of the wounded men would die, though the president had had a narrow escape. Posses had been out all night, and a fresh one was just starting from Noches. It was generally believed, however, that the bandits would be able to make good their escape with the loot.

Her father was absent, making a round of his sheep camps, and would not be back for a week. Hence her hands were very full with the store and the ranch.

She busied herself with the details of her work, nodded now and again to one of the riders as they drifted in, smiled and chatted as occasion demanded, but always with that weight upon her heart she could not shake off. Now, and then again, came to her through the window the voices of Public Opinion on the porch. She made out snatches of the talk, and knew the tide was running strongly against the nester. The sound of Healy's low, masterful voice came insistently. Once, as she looked through the window, she saw a tilted flask at his lips.

Suddenly she became aware, without knowing why, that something was happening, something that stopped her heart and drew her feet swiftly to the door.

Conversation had ceased. All eyes were deflected to a pair of riders coming down the Bear Creek trail with that peculiar jog that is neither a run nor a walk. They seemed quite at ease with the world. Speech and laughter rang languid and carefree. But as they swung from the saddles their eyes swept the group before them with the vigilance of searchlights in time of war.

Brill Healy leaned forward, his right hand resting lightly on his thigh.

"So you've come back, Mr. Keller," he said.

"As you see."

"But not on that roan of yours, I notice."

"You notice correctly, seh."

"Now I wonder why." Healy spoke with a drawl, but his eyes glittered menacingly.

"I expect you know why, Mr. Healy," came the quiet retort.

"Meaning?"

"That the roan was stolen from the pasture two nights ago. Do you happen to know the name of the thief?"

The cattleman laughed harshly, but behind his laughter lay rising anger. "So that's the story you're telling, eh? Sounds most as convincing as that yarn about the pocketknife you picked up."

"I'm not quite next to your point. Have I got to explain to you why I do or don't ride a certain horse, seh?"

"It ain't necessary. We all know why. You ain't riding it because there is a bullet wound in the roan's flank that might be some hard to explain."

"I don't know what you mean. I haven't seen the horse for two days. It was stolen, as I say. Apparently you know a good deal about that roan. I'd be right pleased to hear what you know, Mr. Healy."

"Glad to death to wise you, Mr. Keller. That roan was in Noches yesterday, and you were on its back."

The nester shook his head. "No, I reckon not."

Yeager broke in abruptly: "What have you got up your sleeve, Brill? Spit it out."

"Glad to oblige you, too, Jim. The First National at Noches was held up yesterday, about half-past three or four, by some masked men. Slim and Jim Budd were around and recognized that roan and its rider."

"You mean——"

"You've guessed it, Jim. I mean that your friend, the rustler, is a bank robber, too."

"Yesterday, you say, at four o'clock?"

"About four, yes."

Yeager's face cleared. "Then that lets him out. I was with him yesterday all day."

"Any one else with him?"

"No. We were alone."

"Where?"

"Out in the hills."

"Didn't happen to meet a soul all day maybe?"

"No; what of it?"

Healy barked out again his hard laugh of incredulity. "Go slow, Jim. That ain't going to let him out. It's going to let you in."

Yeager took a step toward him, fists clenched, and eyes flashing. "I'll not stand for that, Brill."

Healy waved him aside. "I've got no quarrel with you, Jim. I ain't making any charges against you to-day. But when it comes to Mr. Keller, that's different." His gaze shifted to the nester and carried with it implacable hostility. "I back my play. He's not only a rustler, he's a bank robber, too. What's more, he'll never leave here alive, except with irons on his wrists!"

"Have you a warrant for my arrest, Mr. Healy?" inquired Keller evenly.

"Don't need one. Furthermore, I'd as lief take you in dead as alive. You cayn't hide behind a girl's skirts this time," continued Healy. "You've got to stand on your own legs and take what's coming. You're a bad outfit. We know you for a rustler, and that's enough. But it ain't all. Yesterday you gave us surplusage when you shot up three men in Noches. Right now I serve notice that you've reached the limit."

"You serve notice, do you?"

"You're right, I do."

"But not legal notice, Mr. Healy."

At sight of his enemy standing there so easy and undisturbed, facing death so steadily and so alertly, Brill's passion seethed up and overflowed. Fury filmed his eyes. He saw red. With a jerk, his revolver was out and smoking. A stop watch could scarce have registered the time before Keller's weapon was answering.

But that tenth part of a second made all the difference. For the first heavy bullet from Healy's .44 had crashed into the shoulder of his foe. The shock of it unsteadied the nester's aim. When the smoke cleared it showed the Bear Creek man sinking to the ground, and the right arm of the other hanging limply at his side.

At the first sound of exploding revolvers, Phyllis had grown rigid, but the fusillade had not died away before she was flying along the hall to the porch.

Brill Healy's voice, cold and cruel, came to her in even tones:

"I reckon I've done this job right, boys. If he hadn't winged me, and if Jim hadn't butted in, I'd a-done it more thorough, though."

Yeager was bending over the man lying on the ground. He looked up now and spoke bitterly: "You've murdered an innocent man. Ain't that thorough enough for you?"

Then, catching sight of Cuffs on the porch of the house, Yeager issued orders sharply: "Get on my horse and ride like hell for Doc Brown! Bob, you and Luke help me carry him into the house. What room, Phyl?"

"My room, Jim. Oh, Cuffs, hurry, please!" With that she was gone into the house to make ready the bed for the wounded man.

Healy picked up the revolver that had fallen from his hand, and slid it back into the holster.

"That's right, boys. Take him in and let Phyl patch up the coyote if she can. I reckon this time, she'll have her hands plumb full. Beats all how a decent girl can take up with a ruffian and a scoundrel."

"That will be enough from you, seh," Yeager told him sharply.

Purdy nodded. "Jim's right, Brill. This man has got what was coming to him. It ain't proper to jump him right now, when he's down and out."

"Awful tender-hearted you boys are. Come to that, I've got a pill in me, too, but of course that don't matter," Healy retorted.

"If he dies you'll have another in you, seh," Yeager told him quietly, meeting his eyes steadily for an instant. "Steady, Bob. You take his feet. That's right."

They carried the nester to the bedroom of Phyllis and laid him down gently on the bed. His eyes opened and he looked about him as if to ask where he was. He seemed to understand what had happened, for presently he smiled faintly at his friend and said:

"Beat me to it, Jim. I'm bust up proper this time."

"He shot without giving warning."

Keller moved his head weakly in dissent. "No, I knew just when he was going to draw, but I had to wait for him."

The big, husky plainsmen undressed him with the tenderness of women, and did their best with the help of Aunt Becky, to take care of his wounds temporarily. After these had been dressed Phyllis and the old colored woman took charge of the nursing and dismissed all the men but Yeager.

It would be many hours before Doctor Brown arrived, and it took no critical eyes to see that this man was stricken low. All the supple strength and gay virility were out of him. Three of the bullets had torn through him. In her heavy heart the girl believed he was going to die. While Yeager was out of the room she knelt down by the bedside, unashamed, and asked for his life as she had never prayed for anything before.

By this time his fever was high and he was wandering in his head. The wild look of delirium was in his eyes, and faint weak snatches of irrelevant speech on his lips. His moans stabbed her heart. There was nothing she could do for him but watch and wait and pray. But what little was to be done in the way of keeping his hot head cool with wet towels her own hands did jealously. Jim and Aunt Becky waited on her while she waited on the sick man.

About midnight the doctor rode up. All day and most of the night before he had been in the saddle. Cuffs had found him across the divide, nearly forty miles away, working over a boy who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. But he brought into the sick room with him that manner of cheerful confidence which radiates hope. You could never have guessed that he was very tired, nor, after the first few minutes, did he know it himself. He lost himself in his case, flinging himself into the breach to turn the tide of what had been a losing battle.



CHAPTER XX

YEAGER RIDES TO NOCHES

Jim Yeager had not watched through the long day and night with Phyllis without discovering how deeply her feelings were engaged. His unobtrusive readiness and his constant hopefulness had been to her a tower of strength during the quiet, dreadful hours before the doctor came.

Once, during the night, she had followed him into the dark hall when he went out to get some fresh cold water, and had broken down completely.

"Is he—is he going to die?" she besought of him, bursting into tears for the first time.

Jim patted her shoulder awkwardly. "Now, don't you, Phyl. You got to buck up and help pull him through. Course he's shot up a heap, but then a man like him can stand a lot of lead in his body. There aren't any of these wounds in a vital place. Chief trouble is he's lost so much blood. That's where his clean outdoor life comes in to help build him up. I'll bet Doc Brown pulls him through."

"Are you just saying that, Jim, or do you really think so?"

"I'm saying it, and I think it. There's a whole lot in gaming a thing out. What we've got to do is to think he's going to make it. Once we give up, it will be all off."

"You are such a help, Jim," she sighed, dabbing at her eyes with her little handkerchief. "And you're the best man."

"That's right. I'll be the best man when we pull off that big wedding of yours and his."

Her heart went out to him with a rush. "You're the only friend both of us have," she cried impulsively.

With the coming of Doctor Brown, Jim resigned his post of comforter in chief, but he stayed at Seven Mile until the crisis was past and the patient on the mend. Next day Slim, Budd, and Phil Sanderson rode in from Noches. They were caked with the dust of their fifty-mile ride, but after they had washed and eaten, Yeager had a long talk with them. He learned, among other things, that Healy had telephoned Sheriff Gill that Keller was lying wounded at Seven Mile, and that the sheriff was expecting to follow them in a few hours.

"Coming to arrest Brill for assault with intent to kill, I reckon," Yeager suggested dryly.

Phil turned on him petulantly. "What's the use of you trying to get away with that kind of talk, Jim? This fellow Keller was recognized as one of the robbers."

"That ain't what Slim has just been telling, Phil. He says he recognized the hawss, and thinks it was Keller in the saddle. Now, I don't think anything about it. I know Keller was with me in the hills when this hold-up took place."

"You're his friend, Jim," the boy told him significantly.

"You bet I am. But I ain't a bank robber, if that's what you mean, Phil."

His clear eyes chiselled into those of the boy and dominated him.

"I didn't say you were," Phil returned sulkily. "But I reckon we all recall that you lied for him once. Whyfor would it be a miracle if you did again?"

Jim might have explained, but did not, that it was not for Keller he had lied. He contented himself with saying that the roan with the white stockings had been stolen from the pasture before the holdup. He happened to know, because he was spending the night in Keller's shack with him at the time.

Slim cut in, with drawling sarcasm: "You've got a plumb perfect alibi figured out for him, Jim. I reckon you've forgot that Brill saw him riding through the Pass with the rest of his outfit."

"Brill says so. I say he didn't," returned Yeager calmly.

Toward evening Gill arrived and formally put Keller under arrest. Practically, it amounted only to the precaution of leaving a deputy at the ranch as a watch, for one glance had told the sheriff that the wounded man would not be in condition to travel for some time.

It was the following day that Yeager saddled and said good-by to Phyllis.

"I'm going to Noches to see if I cayn't find out something. It don't look reasonable to me that those fellows could disappear, bag and baggage, into a hole and draw it in after them."

"What about Brill's story that he saw them at the Pass?" the girl asked.

"He may have seen four men, but he ce'tainly didn't see Larrabie Keller. My notion is, Brill lied out of whole cloth, but of course I'm not in a position to prove it. Point is, why did he lie at all?"

Phyllis blushed. "I think I know, Jim."

Yeager smiled. "Oh, I know that. But that ain't, to my way of thinking, motive enough. I mean that a white man doesn't try to hang another just because he—well, because he cut him out of his girl."

"I never was his girl," Phyllis protested.

"I know that, but Brill couldn't get it through his thick head till a stone wall fell on him and give him a hint."

"What other motive are you thinking of, Jim?"

He hesitated. "I've just been kinder milling things around. Do you happen to know right when you met Brill the day of the robbery?"

"Yes. I looked at my watch to see if we would be in time for supper. It was five-thirty."

"And the robbery was at three. The fellows didn't get out of town till close to three-thirty, I reckon," he mused aloud.

"What has that got to do with it? You don't mean that——" She stopped with parted lips and eyes dilating.

He shook his head. "I've got no right to mean that, Phyllie. Even if I did have a kind of notion that way I'd have to give it up. Brill's got a steel-bound, copper-riveted alibi. He couldn't have been at Noches at three o'clock and with you two hours later, fifty-five miles from there. No hawss alive could do it."

"But, Jim—why, it's absurd, anyway. We've known Brill always. He couldn't be that kind of a man. How could he?"

"I didn't say he could," returned her friend noncommittally. "But when it comes to knowing him, what do you know about him—or about me, say? I might be a low-lived coyote without you knowing it. I might be all kinds of a devil. A good girl like you wouldn't know it if I set out to keep it still."

"I could tell by looking at you," she answered promptly.

"Yes, you could," he derided good-naturedly. "How would you know it? Men don't squeal on each other."

"Do you mean that Brill isn't—what we've always thought him?"

"I'm not talking about Brill, but about Jim Yeager," he evaded. "He'd hate to have you know everything that's mean and off color he ever did."

"I believe you must have robbed the bank yourself, Jim," she laughed. "Are you a rustler, too?"

He echoed her laugh as he swung to the saddle. "I'm not giving myself away any more to-day."

Brill Healy rode up, his arm in a sling. Deep rings of dissipation or of sleeplessness were under his eyes. He looked first at Yeager and then at the young woman, with an ugly sneer. "How's your dear patient, Phyl?"

"He is better, Brill," she answered quietly, with her eyes full on him. "That is, we hope he is better. The doctor isn't quite sure yet."

"Some of us don't hope it as much as the rest of us, I reckon."

She said nothing, but he read in her look a contempt that stung like the lash of a whip.

"He'll be worse again before I'm through with him," the man cried, with a furious oath.

Phyllis measured him with her disdainful eye, and dismissed him. She stepped forward and shook hands with Yeager.

"Take care of yourself, Jim, and don't spare any expense that is necessary," she said.

For a moment she watched her friend canter off, then turned on her heel, and passed into the house, utterly regardless of Healy.

Yeager reached Noches late, for he had unsaddled and let his horse rest at Willow Springs during the heat of the broiling day.

After he had washed and had eaten, Yeager drifted to the Log Cabin Saloon and gambling house. Here was gathered the varied and turbulent life of the border country. Dark-skinned Mexicans rubbed shoulders with range riders baked almost as brown by the relentless sun. Pima Indians and Chinamen and negroes crowded round the faro and dice tables. Games of monte and chuckaluck had their devotees, as had also roulette and poker.

It was a picturesque scene of strong, untamed, self-reliant frontiersmen. Some of them were outlaws and criminals, and some were as simple and tender-hearted as children. But all had become accustomed to a life where it is possible at any moment to be confronted with sudden death.

A man playing the wheel dropped a friendly nod at Jim. He waited till the wheel had stopped and saw the man behind it rake in his chips before he spoke. Then, as he scattered more chips here and there over the board, he welcomed Yeager with a whoop.

"Hi there, Malpais! What's doing in the hills these yere pleasant days?"

"A little o' nothin', Sam. The way they're telling it you been having all the fun down here."

Sam Wilcox gathered the chips pushed toward him by the croupier and cashed in. He was a heavy-set, bronzed man, with a bleached, straw-colored mustache. Taking his friend by the arm, he led him to one end of the bar that happened for the moment to be deserted.

"Have something, Jim. Oh, I forgot. You're ridin' the water wagon and don't irrigate. More'n I can say for some of you Malpais lads. Some of them was in here right woozy the other day."

"The boys will act the fool when they hit town. Who was it?"

"Slim and Budd and young Sanderson."

"Was Phil Sanderson drunk?" Yeager asked, hardly surprised, but certainly troubled.

"I ain't sure he was, but he was makin' the fur fly at the wheel, there. Must have dropped two hundred dollars."

Jim's brows knit in a puzzled frown. He was wondering how the boy had come by so much money at a time.

"Who was he trailin' with?"

"With a lad called Spiker, that fair-haired guy sitting in at the poker table. He's another youngster that has been dropping money right plentiful."

"Who is he?"

"He's what they call a showfer. He runs one o' these automobiles; takes parties out in it."

"Been here long? Looks kind o' like a tinhorn gambler."

"Not long. He's thick with some of you Malpais gents. I've seen him with Healy a few."

"Oh, with Healy."

Jim regarded the sportive youth more attentively, and presently dropped into a vacant seat beside him, buying twenty dollars worth of chips.

Spiker was losing steadily. He did not play either a careful or a brilliant game. Jim, playing very conservatively, and just about holding his own, listened to the angry bursts and the boastings of the man next him, and drew his own conclusions as to his character. After a couple of hours of play the Malpais man cashed in and went back to the hotel where he was putting up.

He slept till late, ate breakfast leisurely, and after an hour of looking over the paper and gossiping with the hotel clerk about the holdup he called casually upon the deputy sheriff. Only one thing of importance he gleaned from him. This was that the roan with the white stockings had been picked up seven miles from Noches the morning after the holdup.

This put a crimp in Healy's story of having seen Keller in the Pass on the animal. Furthermore, it opened a new field for surmise. Brill Healy said that he had seen the horse with a wound in its flank. Now, how did he know it was wounded, since Slim had not mentioned this when he had telephoned? It followed that if he had not seen the broncho—and that he had seen it was a sheer physical impossibility—he could know of the wound only because he was already in close touch with what had happened at Noches.

But how could he be aware of what was happening fifty miles away? That was the sticker Jim could not get around. His alibi was just as good as that of the horse. Both of them rested on the assumption that neither could cover the ground between two given points in a given time. There was one other possible explanation—that Healy had been in telephonic communication with Noches before he met Phyllis. But this seemed to Jim very unlikely, indeed. By his own story he had been cutting trail all afternoon and had seen nobody until he met Phyllis.

Yeager called on the cashier, Benson, later in the day, and had a talk with him and with the president, Johnson. Both of these were now back at their posts, though the latter was not attempting much work as yet. Jim talked also with many others. Some of them had theories, but none of them had any new facts to advance.

The young cattleman put up at the same hotel as Spiker and struck up a sort of intimacy with him. They sometimes loafed together during the day, and at night they were always to be seen side by side at the poker table.



CHAPTER XXI

BREAKING DOWN AN ALIBI

Keller found convalescence under the superintendence of Miss Sanderson one of the great pleasures of his life. Her school was out for the summer and she was now at home all day. He had never before found time to be lazy, and what dreaming he had done had been in the stress of action. Now he might lie the livelong day and not too obviously watch her brave, frank youth as she moved before him or sat reading. For the first time in his life he was in love!

But as the nester grew better he perceived that she was withdrawing herself from him. He puzzled over the reason, not knowing that her brother, Phil, was troubling her with flings and accusations thrown out bitterly because his boyish concern for her good name could find no gentler way to express itself.

"They're saying you're in love with the fellow—and him headed straight for the pen," he charged.

"Who says it, Phil?" she asked quietly, but with flaming cheeks.

He smote his fist on the table. "It don't matter who says it. You keep away from him. Let Aunt Becky nurse him. You haven't any call to wait on him, anyhow. If he's got to be nursed by one of the family, I'll do it."

He tried to keep his word, and as a result of it the wounded man had to endure his sulky presence occasionally. Keller was man of the world enough to be amused at his attitude, and yet was interested enough in the lad's opinion of him to keep always an even mood of cheerful friendliness. There was a quantity of winsome camaraderie about him that won its way with Phil in spite of himself. Moreover, all the boy in him responded to the nester's gameness, the praises of which he heard on all sides.

"I see you have quite made up your mind I'm a skunk," the wounded man told him amiably.

"You robbed the bank at Noches and shot up three men that hadn't hurt you any," the boy retorted defiantly.

"Not unless Jim Yeager is a liar."

"Oh, Jim! No use going into that. He's your friend. I don't know why, but he is."

"And you're Brill Healy's. That's why you won't tell that he was carrying your sister's knife the day I saw you and him first."

The boy flashed toward the bed startled eyes. Keller was looking at him very steadily.

"Who says he had Phyl's knife?"

"Hadn't he?"

"What difference does that make, anyhow? I hear you're telling that you found the knife beside the dead cow. You ain't got any proof, have you?" challenged young Sanderson angrily.

"No proof," admitted the other.

"Well, then." Phil chewed on it for a moment before he broke out again: "I reckon you cayn't talk away the facts, Mr. Keller. We caught you in the act—caught you good. By your own story, you're the man we came on. What's the use of you trying to lay it on me and Brill?"

"Am I trying to lay it on you?"

"Looks like. On Brill, anyhow. There's nothing doing. Folks in this neck of the woods is for him and against you. Might as well sabe that right now," the lad blurted.

"I sabe that some of them are," the other laughed, but not with quite his usual debonair gayety. For he did not at all like the way things looked.

But though Phil had undertaken to do all the nursing that needed to be done by the family, he was too much of an outdoors dweller to confine himself for long to the four walls of a room. Besides, he was often called away by the work of looking after the cattle of the ranch. Moreover, both he and his father were away a good deal arranging for the disposal of their sheep. At these times her patient hoped, and hoped in vain, that Phyllis would take her brother's place.

Came a day when Keller could stand it no longer. In Becky's absence, he made shift to dress himself, bit by bit, lying on the bed in complete exhaustion after the effort of getting into each garment. He could scarce finish what he had undertaken, but at last he was clothed and ready for the journey. Leaning on a walking stick, he dragged himself into the passage and out to the porch, where Phyllis was sitting alone.

She gave a startled cry at sight of him standing there, haggard and white, his clothes hanging on his gaunt frame much as if he had been a skeleton.

"What are you doing?" she cried, running to his aid.

After she had got him into her chair, he smiled up at her and panted weakly. He was leaning back in almost complete exhaustion.

"You wouldn't come to see me, so—I came—to see you," he gasped out, at last.

"But—you shouldn't have! You might have done yourself a great injury. It's—it's criminal of you."

"I wanted to see you," he explained simply.

"Why didn't you send for me?"

"There wasn't anybody to send. Besides, you wouldn't have stayed. You never do, now."

She looked at him, then looked away. "You don't need me now—and I have my work to do."

"But I do need you, Phyllie."

It was the first time he had ever spoken the diminutive to her. He let out the word lingeringly, as if it were a caress. The girl felt the color flow beneath her dusky tan. She changed the subject abruptly.

"None of the boys are here. How am I to get you back to your room?"

"I'll roll a trail back there presently, ma'am."

She looked helplessly round the landscape, in hope of seeing some rider coming to the store. But nobody was in sight.

"You had no business to come. It might have killed you. I thought you had better sense," she reproached.

"I wanted to see you," he parroted again.

Like most young women, she knew how to ignore a good deal. "You'll have to lean on me. Do you think you can try it now?"

"If I go, will you stay with me and talk?" he bargained.

"I have my work to do," she frowned.

"Then I'll stay here, thank you kindly." He settled back into the chair and let her have his gay smile. Nevertheless, she saw that his lips were colorless.

"Yes, I'll stay," she conceded, moved by her anxiety.

"Every day?"

"We'll see."

"All right," he laughed weakly. "If you don't come, I'll take a pasear and go look for you." She helped him to his feet and they stood for a moment facing each other.

"You must put your hand on my shoulder and lean hard on me," she told him.

But when she saw the utter weakness of him, her arm slipped round his waist and steadied him.

"Now then. Not too fast," she ordered gently.

They went back very slowly, his weight leaning on her more at every step. When they reached his room, Keller sank down on the bed, utterly exhausted. Phyllis ran for a cordial and put it to his lips. It was some time before he could even speak.

"Thank you. I ain't right husky yet," he admitted.

"You mustn't ever do such a thing again," she charged him.

"Not ever?"

"Not till the doctor says you're strong enough to move."

"I won't—if you'll come and see me every day," he answered irrepressibly.

So every afternoon she brought a book or her sewing, and sat by him, letting Phil storm about it as much as he liked. These were happy hours. Neither spoke of love, but the air was electrically full of it. They laughed together a good deal at remarks not intrinsically humorous, and again there were conversational gaps so highly charged that she would rush at them as a reckless hunter takes a fence.

As he got better, he would be propped up in bed, and Aunt Becky would bring in tea for them both. If there had been any corner of his heart unwon it would have surrendered then. For to a bachelor the acme of bliss is to sit opposite a girl of whom he is very fond, and to see her buttering his bread and pouring his tea with that air of domesticity that visualizes the intimacy of which he has dreamed. Keller had played a lone hand all his turbulent life, and this was like a glimpse of Heaven let down to earth for his especial benefit.

It was on such an occasion that Jim Yeager dropped in on them upon his return from Noches. He let his eyes travel humorously over the room before he spoke.

"Why for don't I ever have the luck to be shot up?" he drawled.

"Oh, you Jim!" Keller called a greeting from the bed. Phyllis came forward, and, with a heightened color, shook hands with him.

"You'll sit down with us and have some tea, Jim," she told him.

"Me? I'm no society Willie. Don't know the game at all, Phyl. Besides, I'm carrying half of Arizona on my clothes. It's some dusty down in the Malpais."

Nevertheless he sat down, and, over the biscuits and jam, told the meagre story of what he had found out.

The finding of the stocking-footed roan near Noches so soon after the robbery disposed of Healy's lie, though it did not prove that Keller had not been riding it at the time of the holdup. As for Healy, Yeager confessed he saw no way of implicating him. His alibi was just as good as that of any of them.

But there was one person his story did involve, and that was Spiker, the tinhorn, tenderfoot sport of Noches. During the absence of this young man at the gaming table, Jim and his friend, Sam Weaver, had got into his room with a skeleton key and searched it thoroughly. They had found, in a suit case, a black mask, a pair of torn and shiny chaps, a gray shirt, a white, dusty sombrero, much the worse for wear, and over three hundred dollars in bills.

"What does he pretend his business is?" Keller asked, when Jim had finished.

"Allows he's a showfer. Drives folks around in a gasoline wagon. That's the theory, but I notice he turned down a mining man who wanted to get him to run him into the hills on Monday. Said he hadn't time. The showfer biz is a bluff, looks like."

The nester made no answer. His eyes, narrowed to slits, were gazing out of the window absently. Presently he came from deep thought to ask Yeager to hand him the map he would find in his inside coat pocket. This he spread out on the bed in front of him. When at last he looked up he was smiling.

"I reckon it's no bluff, Jim. He's a chauffeur, all right, but he only drives out select outfits."

"Meaning?"

The map lying in front of Keller was one of Noches County. The nester located, with his index finger, the town of that name, and traced the road from it to Seven Mile. Then his finger went back to Noches, and followed the old military road to Fort Lincoln, a route which almost paralleled the one to the ranch.

The eyes of Phyllis were already shining with excitement. She divined what was coming.

"Is this road still travelled, Jim?"

"It goes out to the old fort. Nobody has lived there for most thirty years. I reckon the road ain't travelled much."

"Strikes through Del Oro Canon, doesn't it, right after it leaves Noches?"

"Yep."

"I reckon, Jim, your friend, Spiker, drove a party out that way the afternoon of the holdup," the nester drawled smilingly. "By the way, is your friend in the lockup?"

"He sure is. The deputy sheriff arrested him same night we went through his room."

"Good place for him. Well, it looks like we got Mr. Healy tagged at last. I don't mean that we've got the proof, but we can prove he might have been on the job."

"I don't see it, Larry. I reckon my head's right thick."

"I see it," spoke up Phyllis quickly.

Keller smiled at her. "You tell him."

"Don't you see, Jim? The motor car must have been waiting for them somewhere after they had robbed the bank," she explained.

"At the end of Del Oro Canon, likely," suggested the nester.

She nodded eagerly. "Yes, they would get into the canon before the pursuit was in sight. That is why they were not seen by Slim and the rest of the posse."

Yeager looked at her, and as he looked the certainty of it grew on him. His mind began to piece out the movements of the outlaws from the time they left Noches. "That's right, Phyl. His car is what he calls a hummer. It can go like blazes—forty miles an hour, he told me. And the old fort road is a dandy, too."

"They would leave the automobile at Willow Creek, and cut across to the Pass," she hazarded.

"All but Brill. Being bridlewise, he rode right for Seven Mile to make dead sure of his alibi, whilst the others made their getaway with the loot. When he happened to meet you on the way, he would be plumb tickled, for that cinched things proper for him. You would be a witness nobody could get away from."

"And what about their hawsses? Did they bring the bronchs in the car, too?" drawled Keller, an amused flicker in his eyes.

The others, who had been swimming into their deductions so confidently, were brought up abruptly. Phyllis glanced at Jim and looked foolish.

"The bronchs couldn't tag along behind at a forty per clip. That's right," admitted Yeager blankly.

"I hadn't thought about that. And they had to have their horses with them to get from Willow Creek to the Pass. That spoils everything," the girl agreed.

Then, seeing her lover's white teeth flashing laughter at her, she knew he had found a way round the difficulty. "How would this do, partners—just for a guess: The car was waiting for them at the end of the Del Oro Canon. They dumped their loot into it, then unsaddled and threw all the saddles in, too. They gave the bronchs a good scare, and started them into the hills, knowing they would find their way back home all right in a couple of days. At Willow Creek they found hawsses waiting for them, and Mr. Spiker hit the back trail for Noches, with his car, and slid into town while everybody was busy about the robbery."

"Sure. That would be the way of it," his friend nodded. "All we got to do now is to get Spiker to squeal."

"If he happens to be a quitter."

"He will—under pressure. He's that kind."

A knock came on the door, and Tom Benwell, the store clerk, answered her summons to come in.

"It's Budd, Miss Phyl. He came to see about getting-that stuff you was going to order for a dress for his little girl," the storekeeper explained.

Phyllis rose and followed the man back to the store. When she had gone, Jim stepped to the door and shut it. Returning, he sat down beside the bed.

"Larry, I didn't tell all I know. That hat in Spiker's room had the initials P.S. written on the band. What's more, I knew the hat by a big coffee stain splashed on the crown. It happens I made that stain myself on the round-up onct when we were wrastling and I knocked the coffeepot over."

Keller looked at his friend gravely. "It was Phil Sanderson's hat?"

Yeager nodded assent. "He must have loaned his old hat to Spiker for the holdup."

"You didn't turn the hat over to the sheriff?"

"Not so as you could notice it. I shoved it in my jeans and burnt it over my camp fire next day."

"This mixes things up a heap. If Phil is in this thing—and it sure looks that way—it ties our hands. I'd like to have a talk with Spiker before we do anything."

"What's the matter with having a talk with Phil? Why not shove this thing right home to him?"

The nester shook his head. "Let's wait a while. We don't want to drive Healy away yet. If the kid's in it he would go right to Healy with the whole story."

Yeager swore softly. "It's all Brill's fault. He's been leading Phil into devilment for two years now."

"Yes."

"And all the time been playing himself for the leader of us fellows that are against the rustlers and that Bear Creek outfit," continued Jim bitterly. "Why, we been talking of electing him sheriff. Durn his forsaken hide, he's been riding round asking the boys to vote for him on a promise to clean out the miscreants."

"You can oppose him, of course. But we have no absolute proof against him yet. We must have proof that nobody can doubt."

"I reckon. And'll likely have to wait till we're gray."

"I don't think so. My guess is that he's right near the end of his rope. We're going to make a clean-up soon as I get solid on my feet."

"And Phil? What if we catch him in the gather, and find him wearing the bad-man brand?"

Keller's eyes met those of his friend. "There never was a rodeo where some cattle didn't slip through unnoticed, Jim."



CHAPTER XXII

SURRENDER

The weeks slipped away and brought with them healing to the wounded man at Seven Mile. He moved from the bed where at first he had spent his days to a lounge in the living room, and there, from the bay window, he could look out at the varied life of the cattle country. Men came and went in the dust of the drag drive, their approach heralded by the bawl of thirsty cattle. Others cantered up and bought tobacco and canned goods. The stage arrived twice a week with its sack of mail, and always when it did Public Opinion gathered upon the porch of the store, as of yore. Phil Sanderson he saw often, Yeager sometimes, and once or twice he caught a glimpse of Healy's saturnine face.

A scarcity of beef and a sharp rise in prices brought the round-up earlier than usual. Every spare man was called upon to help comb the hills for the wild steers that ran the wooded water-sheds, as untamed as the deer and the lynx. Even the storekeeper, Benwell, was pressed into the service. 'Rastus and the nester were the only men about the place, the deputy sheriff having been recalled to Noches on the collapse of Healy's story.

The removal to a distance of the rest of her admirers did not have the effect of throwing Keller alone with Phyllis more often. The young mistress of the ranch invited Bess Purdy to visit her, and now he never saw her except in the presence of her other guest.

Bess took him in at once, evidencing her approval of him by entering upon a spirited war of repartee with him. She had not been in the house twenty-four hours before she had unbosomed herself of a derisive confidence.

"I don't believe you're a bank robber, at all! I don't believe you are even a rustler! You're a false alarm!"

Both Keller and Miss Sanderson smiled at the daring of the girl's challenge. But the former defended himself with apparent heat.

"What makes you think so? Why should you undermine my reputation with such an assertion? You can't talk that way about me without proving it, Miss Purdy."

"Well, I don't. You don't look it."

"I can't help that. You ask Mr. Healy. He'll tell you I am."

"You'll need a better witness than Brill before I'll believe it."

"And I thought you were going to like me," he lamented.

"I like a lot of people who aren't ruffians, but of course I can't admire you so much as if you were a really truly bad man."

"But if I promise to be one?"

"Oh, anybody can promise," she flung back, eyes bubbling with laughter.

"Wait till I get on my feet again."

A youth galloped up to the house in a cloud of alkali dust.

"There's Cuffs," announced Phyllis, smiling at Bess.

That young woman blushed a little, supposed, aloud, she must go out to see him, and withdrew in seeming reluctance.

"He wants Bess to go with him to the Frying Pan dance. He sent a note over from the round-up to ask her. She hasn't had a chance yet to tell him that she would," explained her friend.

"How will he take her?" asked the nester, his eyes quickening.

"In the surrey, I suppose. Why?"

"The surrey will hold four."

She made no pretense of not understanding. Her look met his in a betrayal of the pleasure his invitation gave her. Yet she shook her head.

"No, thank you."

"But why—if I may ask?"

"Ah! But you mayn't," she smiled.

He considered that. "You like to dance."

"Most girls do."

"Then it is because of me," he soliloquized aloud.

"Please," she begged lightly.

"My reputation, I suppose."

She began to roll up the embroidery upon which she was busy. But he got to the door before her.

"No, you don't."

"You are not going to make me tell you why I can't go with you, are you?"

"That, to start with. Then I'm going to make you tell me some other things."

"But if I don't want to tell?" Her eyes were wide open with surprise, for he had never before taken the masterful line with her. Deep down, she liked it; but she had no intention of letting him know so.

"There are times not to tell, and there are times to tell. This will be one of the last kind, Phyllis."

She tried mockery. "When you throw a big chest like that I suppose you always get what you want."

"You act right funny, girl. I never see you alone any more. We haven't had a good talk for more than a week. Now, why?"

She thought of telling him she had been too busy; then, moved by an impulse of impatience, met his gaze fully, and told him part of the truth.

"I should think you would understand that a girl has to be careful of what she does!"

"You mean about us being friends?"

"Oh, we can be friends, but——If you can't see it, then I can't tell you," she finished.

"I can see it, I reckon. You saved my life, and I expect some human cat got his claws out and said it was because you were fond of me.

"Then you saved it again by your nursing. No two ways about that. Doc Brown says you and Jim did. I was so sick folks knew it had to be. But now I'm getting well, you have to show them you're not interested in me. Isn't that about it?"

"Yes."

"But you don't have to show me, too, do you?"

"Am I not—courteous?"

"I ain't worrying any about your courtesy. But, look here, Phyllie. Have you forgotten what happened in the kitchen that night you helped me to escape?"

She flashed him one look of indignant reproach. "I should think you would be the last person in the world to remind me of it."

"I've got a right to mention it because I've asked you a question since that ain't been answered. That week's been up ten days."

"I'm not going to answer it now."

And with that she slipped past him and from the room.

He ran a hand through his curls and voiced his perplexity. "Now, if a woman ain't the strangest ever. Just as a fellow is ready to tell her things, she gets mad and hikes."

Nevertheless he smiled, not uncheerfully. What experience he had had with young women told him the signs were not hopeless for his success. He was not sure of her, not by a good deal. He had captured her imagination. But to win a girl's fancy is not the same as to storm her heart. He often caught himself wondering just where he stood with her. For himself, he knew he was fathoms deep in love.

She was in his thoughts when he fell asleep.

He awoke in the darkness, and sat upright in the bed, a feeling of calamity oppressing him. Something pungent tickled his nostrils.

A faint crackling sounded in the air.

Swiftly he slipped on such clothes as he needed and stepped into the passage. A heavy smoke was pouring up the back stairway. He knocked insistently upon the door where Phyllis and her guest were sleeping.

"What is it?" a voice demanded.

"Get up and dress, Miss Sanderson! The house is on fire! You have plenty of time, I think. If there's any hurry I'll let you know after I've looked."

He went down the front stairs and found that the fire was in the back part of the house. Already volumes of smoke with spitting tongues of flame were reaching toward the foot of the stairs. He ran up to the room where the girls were dressing, and called to them:

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

The door opened, to show him two very pale girls, each carrying a bundle of clothes. They were only partially dressed, but wrappers covered their disarray. Keller went to the clothes closet, emptied it with a sweep and lift of his arm, and returned, to lead the way downstairs.

"Take a breath before you start. The smoke's bad, but there is no real danger," he told them as he plunged forward.

At the foot of the stairs he stopped to see that they were following him closely, then flung open the outer door and let in a rush of cool, sweet air. In another moment they were outside, safe and unhurt.

Phyllis drew a long breath before she said:

"The house is gone!"

"If there is anything you want particularly from the living room I can get in through the window," Keller told her.

She shuddered. Flame jets were already shooting out here and there. "I wouldn't let you go back for the world. We didn't get out too soon."

"No," he agreed.

A sniveling voice behind them broke in: "Where is Mr. Phil? I yain't seen him yet."

Larrabie swung round on 'Rastus like a flash. "What do you mean? He's at the round-up, of course."

The little fellow began to bawl: "No, sah. He done come home late last night. Aftah you-all had gone to bed. He's in his room, tha's where he is."

Phyllis caught at the arm of Keller to steady her. She was colorless to the lips.

"Oh, God! Oh, God!" she cried faintly.

The nester pushed her gently into the arms of her guest.

"Take care of her, Bess. I'll get Phil."

He ran round the house to the back. The bedroom occupied by young Sanderson was on the first floor. The ranger caught up a stick, smashed the window, and tore out the frame by main strength. Presently he was inside, groping through the dense smoke toward the bed.

Flames leaped at him from out of it like darting serpents. His hair, his face, his clothes, caught fire before he had discovered that the bed had been used, but was now empty. The door into the hall was open, and through it were pouring billows of smoke. Evidently Phil must have tried to escape that way and been overpowered.

The young man caught up a towel and wrapped it around his throat and mouth, then plunged forward into the caldron of the passage. The smoke choked him and the intense heat peeled his face and made the endurance of it an agony.

He stumbled over something soft, and discovered with his hands that it was a body. Smothered and choked, half frantic with the heat, he struggled back into the bedroom with his burden.

Somehow he reached the window, stumbled through it, and dragged the inanimate body after him. Then, with Phil in his arms, he reeled forward into the fresh air beyond.

With a cry Phyllis broke from Bess and ran toward him. But before she had reached the rescuer and the rescued, Keller went down in total collapse. He, too, was unconscious when she knelt beside him and began with her hands to crush out the smoldering fire in his clothes.

He opened his eyes and smiled faintly when he saw who it was.

"How's the boy?" he asked.

"He is breathing," cried Bess joyfully, from where she was bending over Sanderson.

"You go attend to him. I'm all right now."

"Are you truly?"

"Truly."

He proved it by sitting up, and presently by rising and joining with her the group gathered around Phil. For Aunt Becky had now emerged from her cabin and taken charge of affairs.

Phil was supported to the bunk house and put to bed by Keller and 'Rastus. It was already plain that he would be none the worse for his adventure after a night's good sleep. Aunt Becky applied to his case the homely remedies she had used before, while the others stood around the bed and helped as best they could. Strangely enough, he was not burned at all. In this he had escaped better than Keller, whose hair and eyebrows and skin were all the worse for singeing.

The nester noticed that Phyllis, in handing a bowl of water to Bess, used awkwardly her left hand. The right one, he observed, was held with the palm concealed against the folds of her skirt.

Presently Phyllis, her anxiety as to Phil relieved, left Aunt Becky and Bess to care for him, while she went out to make arrangements for disposing of the party until morning. The nester followed her into the night and walked beside her toward the house of the foreman. The darkness was lit up luridly by the shooting flames of the burning house.

"The store isn't going to catch fire. That's one good thing," Keller observed, by way of comfort.

"Yes." There was a catch in her voice, for all the little treasures of her girlhood, gathered from time to time, were going up in smoke.

"You're insured, I reckon?"

"Yes."

"Well, it might be worse."

She thought of the narrow escape Phil had had, and nodded.

"You'll have to sleep in the bunk house. Take any of the beds you like. Bess and I will put up at the foreman's," she explained.

As is the custom among bachelors who attend to their own domestic affairs, they found the bed just as the foreman had stepped out of it two weeks before. While Keller held the lantern, Phyllis made it up, and again he saw that she was using her right hand very carefully and flinching when it touched the blankets. Putting the lantern down on the table, he walked up to her.

"I'll make the bed."

She stepped back, with a little laugh. "All right."

He made it, then turned to her at once.

"I want to see your hand."

She gave him the left one, even as he had done on the occasion of their second meeting. He took it, and kept it.

"Now the other."

"What do you want with it?"

"Never mind." He reached down and drew it from the folds of her skirt, where it had again fallen. Very gently he turned it so that the palm was up. Ugly blisters and a red seam showed where she had burned herself. He looked at her without speaking.

"It's nothing," she told him, a little hysterically.

For an instant her mind flashed back to the time when Buck Weaver had drawn the cactus spines out of that same hand.

His voice was rough with feeling. "I can see it isn't. And you got it for me—putting out the fire in my clothes. I reckon I cayn't thank you, you poor little tortured hand." He lifted the fingers to his lips and kissed them.

"Don't," she cried brokenly.

"Has it got to be this way always, Phyllie—you giving and me taking?" His hand tightened on hers ever so slightly, and a spasm of pain shot across her face. He looked at the burned fingers again tenderly. "Does it hurt pretty bad, girl?"

"I wish it was ten times as bad!" she broke out, with a sob. "You saved Phil's life—at the risk of your own. I wish I could tell you how I feel, what I think of you, how splendid you are." In default of which ability, she began to cry softly.

He wasted no more time. He did not ask her whether he might. With a gesture, his arm went around her and drew her to him.

"Let me tell what I think of you, instead, girl o' mine. I cayn't tell it, either, for that matter, but I reckon I can make out to show you, honey."

"I didn't mean—that way," she protested, between laughter and tears.

"Well, that's the way I mean."

Neither spoke again for a minute. Than: "Do you really—love me?" she murmured.

"What do you think?" He laughed with the sheer unconquerable boyish delight in her.

"I think you're pretending right well," she smiled.

"If I am making believe."

"If you are." Her arms slipped round his neck with a swift impulse of love. "But you're not. Tell me you're not, Larry."

He told her, in the wordless way lovers have at command, the way that is more convincing than speech.

So Phyllis, from the troubled waters of doubt, came at last to safe harborage.



CHAPTER XXIII

AT THE RODEO

There was an exodus from Seven Mile the second day after the fire. Keller went up Bear Creek, Phyllis accepted the invitation of Bess to stay with her at the Fiddleback, and her brother returned to the round-up.

The riders were now combing the Lost Creek watershed. Phil knew the camp would be either at Peaceful Valley or higher up, near the headwaters of the creek. Before he reached the valley the steady bawl of cattle told him that the outfit was camped there. He topped the ridge and looked down upon Cattleland at its busiest. Just below him was the remuda, the ponies grazing slowly toward the hills under the care of three half-grown boys.

Beyond were the herded cattle. Here all was activity. Within the fence of riders surrounding the wild creatures the cutting out and the branding were being pushed rapidly forward. Occasionally some leggy steer, tail up and feet pounding, would make a dash to break the cordon. Instantly one of the riders would wheel in chase, head off the animal, and drive it back.

Brill Healy, boss of the rodeo by election, was in charge. He was an expert handler of cattle, one of the best in the country. It was his nature to seek the limelight, though it must be said for him that he rose to his responsibilities. The owners knew that when he was running the round-up few cattle would slip through the net he wound around them.

"Hello, Brill!" shouted the young man as he rode up.

"Hello, son! Too bad about the fire. I'll want to hear about it later. Looking for a job?" he flung hurriedly over his shoulder. For he had not even a minute to spare.

"I reckon."

Phil did not wait to be assigned work, but joined the calf branders.

Not until night had fallen and they were gathered round in a semicircle leaning against their saddles did Phil find time to tell the story of the fire. There was some haphazard comment when he had finished, after which Slim spoke.

"So the nester hauled you out. Ce'tainly looks like he's plumb game. You said he was afire when he got you into the open, didn't you, Phil?"

The boy nodded. "And all in. He fainted right away."

"With him still burning away like the doctor's fire there," murmured Healy ironically, with a slight gesture toward the cook.

Phil looked at him angrily. "I didn't say that. Some one put the fire out."

"Oh, some one! Might a man ask who?"

Phil had not had any intention of telling, but he found himself letting Healy have it straight.

"Phyllis."

"About what I thought!" Healy said it significantly, and with a malice that overrode his discretion.

"What do you mean?" demanded the boy fiercely.

"I ain't said anything, have I?" Healy came back smoothly.

Yeager's quiet voice broke the silence that followed, while Phil was trying to voice the resentment in him.

"You mean what we're all thinking, Brill, I reckon—that she is the sort to forget herself when somebody needs her help. Ain't that it?"

The eyes of the two met steadily in a clash of wills. Healy's gave way for the time, not because he was mastered, but because he did not wish to alienate the rough, but fair-minded, men sitting around.

"You're mighty good at explaining me to the boys, Jim. I expect that is what I mean," he answered sullenly.

"Sure," put in Purdy, with amiable intent.

"But when it comes to Mr. Keller I can explain myself tol'able well. I don't need any help there, Jim, not even if he is yore best friend."

"If you've got anything to say against him, I'll ask you to say it when I'm not around," broke in Phil. "You'll recollect, please, that he's my friend, too."

"That so? Since, when, Phil?" the rodeo boss retorted sarcastically.

"Since he went into the fire after me and saved my life. Think I'm a coyote to round on him? I tell you he's a white man clear through. In my opinion, he's neither a rustler nor a bank robber." He was flushed and excited, but his gaze met that of his former friend and challenged him defiantly.

Healy's eyes narrowed. He gazed at the boy darkly, as if he meant to read him through and through. For years he had dominated Phil, had shaped him to his ends, had led him into wild, lawless courses after him. Now the anchors were dragging. He was losing control of him. He resolved to turn the screws on him, but not at this time and place.

"I've always been considered a full-grown man, Phil. What I think I aim to say out loud when the notion hits me. That being so, I go on record as having an opinion about Keller. You think he's on the square, and you give him a whitewashed certificate as a bony-fidy Sunday-school scholar.

"Different here. I think him a coyote and a crook, and so I say it right out in meeting. Any objections?" The gaze of the boss shifted from Sanderson to Yeager, and fastened.

"None in the world. You think what you like, Brill, and we'll stick to our opinions," Yeager replied cheerfully.

"And when I get good and ready I'll act on mine," Healy replied with an evil grin.

"If you find it right convenient. I expect Keller ain't exactly a wooden cigar Indian. Maybe he'll have a say-so in what's doing," suggested Yeager.

"About as much as he had last time," sneered the round-up boss. With which he rose, stretched himself, and gave orders. "Time to turn in, boys. We're combing Old Baldy to-morrow, remember."

"And Old Baldy's sure a holy terror," admitted Slim.

"Come three more days and we'd ought to be through. I'm not going to grieve any when we are. This high life don't suit me too durned well," put in Benwell.

"Yet when you come here first you was a right sick man, Tom. Now, you're some healthy. Don't that prove the outside of a hawss is good for the inside of a man, like the docs say?" grinned Purdy.

"Tom's notion of real living is sassiety with a capital S," explained Cuffs. "You watch him cut ice at the Frying Pan dance next week. He'll be the real-thing lady-killer. All you lads going, I reckon. How about you, Jim?"

Yeager said he expected to be there.

"With yore friend the rustler?" asked Healy insolently over his shoulder.

"I haven't got any friend that's a rustler."

"I'm speaking of Mr. Larrabie Keller." There was a slurring inflection on the prefix.

"He'll be there, I shouldn't wonder."

"I'd wonder a heap," retorted Healy. "You'll see he won't show his face there."

"That's where you're wrong, Brill. He told me he was going," spoke up Phil triumphantly.

"We'll see. He's wise to the fact that this country knows him for an out-and-out crook. He'll stay in his hole."

"You going, Slim?" asked Purdy amiably, to turn the conversation into a more pacific channel.

"Sure," answered that young giant, getting lazily to his feet. "Well, sons, the boss is right. Time to pound our ears."

They rolled themselves in their blankets, the starry sky roofing their bedroom. Within five minutes every man of them was asleep except the night herders—and one other.

Healy lay a little apart from the rest, partially screened by some boxes of provisions and a couple of sacks of flour. His jaw was clamped tight. He looked into the deep velvet sky without seeing. For a long time he did not move. Then, noiselessly, he sat up, glanced around carefully to make sure he was not observed, rose, and stole into the darkness, carrying with him his saddle and bridle.

One of his ponies was hobbled in the mesquite. Swiftly he saddled. Leading the animal very carefully so as to avoid rustling the brush, he zigzagged from the camp until he had reached a safe distance. Here he swung himself on and rode into the blur of night, at first cautiously, but later with swift-pounding hoofs. He went toward the northwest in a bee line without hesitation or doubt. Only when the lie of the ground forced a detour did he vary his direction.

So for hours he travelled until he reached a canon in which squatted a little log cabin. He let his voice out in the howl of a coyote before he dismounted. No answer came, save the echo from the cliff opposite. Again that mournful call sounded, and this time from the cabin found an answer.

A man came sleepily to the door and peered out. "Hello! That you, Brill?"

Healy swung off, trailed his rein, and followed the man into the cabin. "Don't light up, Tom. No need."

For ten minutes they talked in low tones. Healy emerged from the cabin, remounted, and rode back to the cow camp. He reached it just as the first, faint streaks of gray tinged the eastern sky.

Silently he unsaddled, hobbled his pony, and carried his saddle back to the place where he had been lying. Once more he lay down, glanced cautiously round to see all was quiet, and fell asleep as soon as his head touched the saddle.



CHAPTER XXIV

MISSING

From all over the Malpais country, from the water-sheds where Bear and Elk and Cow creeks head, from the halfway house far out in the desert where the stage changes horses, men and women dribbled to the Frying Pan for the big dance after the round-up. Great were the preparations. Many cakes and pies and piles of sandwiches had been made ready. Also there was a wash boiler full of coffee and a galvanized tub brimming with lemonade. For the Frying Pan was doing itself proud.

Phil and his sister drove over together. The boy had asked Bess to go with him, but Cuffs had beaten him to it. The distance was only twenty-five miles, a neighborly stroll in that country of wide spaces and desert stretches filled with absentees.

When Phyllis came into the big room where the dancing was in progress, her dark eye swept the room without finding him for whom she looked. There were many there she knew, not more than two or three whom she had never met, but among them all she looked at none who was a magnet for her eyes. Keller had not yet arrived.

Before she had taken her seat she had three engagements to dance. Jim Yeager had waylaid her; so, too, had Slim and Curly. She waltzed first with Phil, and after he had done his duty he left her to the besiegings of half a score of riders for various ranches who came and went and came again. She joked with them, joined the merry banter that went on, laughed at them when they grew sentimental, always with a sprightly devotion to the matter in hand.

Nevertheless, though they did not know it, her mind was full of him who had not yet appeared. Why was he late? Could he have missed the way by any chance? And later—as the hours passed without bringing him—could anything have happened to him? More than once her troubled gaze fell upon Brill Healy with a brooding question in it. The man had received only the day before his party's nomination for sheriff, and he was doing the gracious to all the women and children.

He had many of the qualities that make for popularity, even though he was often overbearing, revengeful, and sullen. When he chose he could be hail fellow well met in a way Malpais found flattering to its vanity. Now he was apparently having the time of his life. Wherever he moved an eddy of laughter and gayety went with him. The eyes of men as well as women admiringly followed his dark, lithe, picturesque figure.

Phyllis had declined to dance with him, giving as an excuse a full programme, and for an instant his face had blazed with the suppressed rage in him. He had bowed and swaggered away with a malicious sneer. Her judgment told her it was folly to connect this man with the absence of her lover, but that look of malevolent triumph had none the less shaken her heart. What had he meant? It seemed less a threat for the future than a gloating over some evil already done.

When she could endure them no longer she carried her fears to Jim Yeager. They were dancing, but she made an excuse of fatigue to drop out.

"First time I ever knew you to play out at a dance, Phyl," he rallied her.

"It isn't that. I want to say something to you," she whispered.

He had a guess what it was, for his own mind was not quite easy.

"Do you think anything could have happened, Jim?" she besought pitifully when for a moment they were alone in a corner.

"What could have happened, Phyllie? Do you reckon he fell off his hawss, and him a full-size man?" he scoffed.

"Yes, but—you don't know how Brill looked at me. I'm afraid."

"Oh, Brill!" His voice held an edge of scorn, but none the less it concealed a real fear. He was making as much concession to it as to her when he added lightly: "Tell you what I'll do, Phyl. I'll saddle up and take a look back over the Bear Creek trail. Likely I'll meet him, and we'll come in together."

Her eyes met his, and he needed no other thanks. "You'll lose the dance," was her only comment.

Jim followed the road until it branched off to join the Bear Creek trail. Here he deflected toward the mountains, taking the zigzag path that ran like a winding thread among the rocks as it mounted. Now for the first time there came to him the faint rhythmic sound of a galloping horse's hoofs. He did not stop, and as he picked his way among the rocks he heard for some time no more of it.

"Mr. Hurry-up-like-hell kept the road, I reckon," Jim ruminated aloud, and even as he spoke he caught again the echo of an iron shoe striking a rock.

He stopped and listened. Some one was climbing the trail behind him.

"Mebbe he's a friend, and then mebbe he isn't. We'll let him have the whole road to himself, eh, Keno?"

Yeager guided his pony to the left, and took up a position behind some huge bowlders from whence he could see without being seen. The pursuer toiled into sight, a slim, wiry youth on a buckskin. He came forward out of the shadows into the fretted moonlight.

Yeager gave a glad whoop of recognition. "Hi-yi, Phil!"

"You're there, are you? Did I scare you off the trail, Jim?"

"That's whatever, boy. What are you doing here?"

"Sis sent me. She got worried again, and we figured I'd better join you."

"I reckon there's nothing serious the matter. Still, it ain't like Larry to say he would come and then not show up."

"Brill is back there bragging about it." Phil nodded his head toward the lights of the Frying Pan glimmering far below. "Says he knew the waddy wouldn't show his head. You don't reckon, Jim, he's turned a trick on Keller, do you?"

"That's what we have got to find out, Phil."

"Looks funny he'd be so durned sure when we all know how game Keller is," the boy reflected aloud.

"I don't expect you're armed, Phil?" Jim put the statement as a question.

"Nope. Are you?"

"No, I ain't. Didn't think of it when I started. Oh, well, we'll make out. Like enough there will be no need of guns."

A gray light was sifting into the sky, and still they rode, winding up toward the peaks of the divide. Jim, leading the way, drew rein and pointed to a cactus bush beside the trail. Among its spines lay a gray felt hat. From it his eye wandered to the very evident signs of a struggle that had taken place. Moss and cactus had been trampled down by boot heels. To the cholla hung here and there scraps of cloth. A blood splash stared at them from an outcropping slope of rock.

Jim swung from the saddle and rescued the hat from the spines. Inside the sweat band were the initials L.K. Silently he handed the hat to Phil.

"It's his hat," the boy cried.

"It's his hat," Jim agreed. "They must have laid for him here. He put up a good scrap. Notice how that cholla is cut to ribbons. Point is, what did they do to him?"

They searched the ground thoroughly, and discovered no body hidden in the brush.

"They've taken him away. Likely he's alive," Yeager decided aloud at last.

"Brill couldn't have been in this. He was at the Frying Pan before I was."

"I reckon he ordered it done. If that's correct they will be holding Larry till Brill gets there to give further orders."

Phil entered an objection. "That doesn't look to me like Brill's way. He's not scared of any man that lives. When he squares accounts with Keller he'll be on the job himself."

"That's so, too," admitted Yeager. "Still, I figure this is Healy's work. Maybe he gave out there was to be no killing. He was at the ranch himself, big as coffee, so as to be sure of his alibi."

"What does he care about an alibi? When he gets ready to go gunnin' after Keller he won't care if the whole Malpais sees him. There's something in this I don't sabe."

"There sure is. We've got to run the thing down muy pronto. No use both of us going ahead without arms, Phil. My notion is this: You burn a shuck back to the Frying Pan and round up some of our friends on the q.t. Don't let Brill get a notion of what's in the air. Better make straight for Gregory's Pass. I'm going to follow this trail we've cut and see what's doing. Once I find out I'll double back to the Pass and meet you. Bring along an extra gun for me."

"I don't reckon I will, Jim. What's the matter with me going on instead of you? I can follow this trail good as you can. I announce right here that I'm not going back. I've got first call on this job. Keller went into the fire after me. I'm going to follow this trail to hell if I have to."

Yeager tried persuasion, argument, appeal. The lad was as fixed as Gibraltar.

"I'm not going to go buttin' in where I'm not wanted any more than you would, Jim. I'll play this hand out with a cool head, but I'm going to play it my ownself."

"All right. It's your say-so. I'll admit you've got a claim. But you want to remember one thing—if anything happens to you I cayn't square it with Phyl. Go slow, boy!"

Without more words they parted, Jim to ride swiftly back for help, and young Sanderson to push on up the trail with his eyes glued to it. Ever since he could swing himself to a saddle he had been a vaquero in the cow country.

He was therefore an expert at reading the signs left by travellers. What would have been invisible to a tenderfoot offered evidence to him as plain as the print on a primer. Mile after mile he covered with a minute scrutiny that never wavered.



CHAPTER XXV

LARRY TELLS A BEAR STORY

Keller rode blithely down the piney trail while the sun flung its brilliant good-bye over the crotch of the mountains behind which it was slipping. The western sky was a Turner sublimated to the nth degree, a thing magnificent and indescribable. The young man rode with his crisp curls bared to the light, grateful breeze that came like healing from the great peaks. From the joyous, unquenchable youth in him bubbled snatches of song and friendly smiles scattered broadcast over a world that pleased him mightily.

He was going to see his girl, going down to the Frying Pan to take her in his arms and whirl her into the land of romance to the rhythm of the waltz. He wanted to shout it out to the chipmunks and the quails. Ever and again he broke out with a line or two of a melody he had heard once from a phonograph. No matter if he did not get the words exactly. He was sure of the sentiment. So the hills flung back his lusty:

"I love a lassie, A bonnie Hieland lassie, She's as pure as the lily of the dell."

Disaster fell upon him like a bolt out of a June sky. His pony stumbled, went down heavily with its weight on his leg. From the darkness men surged upon him. Rough hands dragged at him. The butt of a weapon crashed down on his hat and stunned him.

He became dimly aware that his leg was free from the horse, that he was struggling blindly to rise against the force that clamped him down. He knew that he reached his feet, that he was lashing out furiously with both hands, that even as he grappled with one assailant a gleam of steel flashed across the moonlight and shot through him with a zigzag pain that blotted out the world.

As his mind swam back to consciousness through troubled waters a far-away voice came out of the fog that surrounded him.

"He's coming to, looks like. I reckon you ain't bust his head, after all, Brad."

Vague, grinning gargoyles mocked him from the haze. Slowly these took form. Features stood out. The masks became faces. They no longer floated detached in space, but belonged definitely to human beings.

"It ain't our fault if you're stove up some, pardner. You're too durned anxious to whip yore weight in wildcats," one of the men grinned.

"Right you are, Tom. He shore hits like a kicking mule," chimed in a third, nursing a cheek that had been cut open to the bone.

A fourth spoke up, a leather-faced vaquero with hard eyes of jade. "No hard feelings, friend. All in the way of business." With which he gave a final tug at the knot that tied the hands of his prisoner.

"I've got Mr. Healy to thank for this, I expect," commented the nester quietly.

"We've got no rope on yore expectations, Mr. Keller; but this outfit doesn't run any information bureau," answered the heavy-set, sullen fellow who had been called Brad.

There were four of them, all masked; but the ranger was sure of one of them, if not two. The first speaker had been Tom Dixon; the last one was Brad Irwin, a rider belonging to the Twin Star outfit.

They helped the bound man to his horse and held a low-voiced consultation. Three of his captors turned their horses toward the south, while Irwin took charge of Keller. With his rifle resting across the horn of his saddle, the man followed his charge up the trail, winding among the summits that stood as sentinels around Gregory's Pass. Through the defile they went, descending into the little-known mountain parks beyond.

This region was the heart of the watershed where Little Goose Creek heads. The peaks rose gaunt above them. Occasionally they glimpsed wide vistas of tangled, wooded canons and hills innumerable as sea billows. Into this maze they plunged ever deeper and deeper. Daylight came, and found them still travelling. The prisoner did not need to be told that this inaccessible country was the lurking place of the rustlers who had preyed so long upon the Malpais district. Nor did he need evidence to connect the sinister figure behind him with the gang of outlaws who rode in and out of these silent places on their nefarious night errands while honest folks kept their beds.

The sun was well up to its meridian before they came through a thick clump of quaking aspens to the mouth of a gulch opening from the end of a little mountain park. On one of the slopes of the gulch a cabin squatted, half hidden by the great boulders and the matting of pine boughs in front. Here Brad swung stiffly from the saddle.

"We'll 'light hyer," he announced.

"Time, too," returned Keller easily. "If anybody asks you, tell them I usually eat breakfast some before ten o'clock."

"You'll do yore eating from now on when I give the word," his guard answered surlily.

He was a big, dark man with a grouch, one who took his duties sourly. Not by any stretch of imagination could he be considered a brilliant conversationalist. What he had to say he growled out audibly enough, but for the rest his opinions had to be cork-screwed out of him in surly monosyllables.

There was a good deal of the cave man about him. The heavy, slouching shoulders, the glare of savagery, the long, hairy arms, all had their primordial suggestion. Given a club and a stone ax, he might have been set back thousands of years with no injustice to his mentality.

The man soon had a fire blazing in the stove, and from it came a breakfast of bacon, black coffee, and biscuits. He freed the hands of the nester and sat opposite him at the table, a revolver by the side of his plate for use in an emergency.

Keller smiled. "This is one of those fashionable dinners where they have extra hardware beside the plates," he suggested.

"Get gay, and I'll blow the top of yore head off!" the cow-puncher swore with gusto.

"Thanks. Under the circumstances, I reckon I'll not get gay. I'm in no hurry to put you in the pen, seh. Plenty of time. I'm going to need the top of my head to testify against you."

Irwin swore violently.

"For two cents I'd pump you full of holes right now," he glared.

Keller laughed, meeting him eye to eye pleasantly.

"Those aren't the orders, friend. I'm to be held here till the boss shows up or gives the signal."

The big jaw of his captor fell from astonishment. "Who told you that?"

The prisoner helped himself to more bacon and laughed again. He had made a guess, but he knew now that he had hit the bull's-eye with his shot in the dark.

"Some things don't need telling. I don't have to be told, for instance, that if things get too hot for Brill Healy he will slide out and leave you to settle the bill with the law."

Irwin's eyes glared angrily at his smiling ones. The unabashed impudence, the unfluttered aplomb, but above all the uncanny prescience of this youth disturbed him because he could not understand them. Moreover, it happened that his suspicious mind had lingered on the chance of a betrayal at the hands of his chief. For which very reason he broke into angry denial.

"That's a lie! Brill ain't that sort. He'd stand pat to a finish." Then, tardily, came the instinct for caution. "And there's nothing to tell, anyways," he finished sulkily.

"Sure. What's a little rustling and a little bank robbing among friends?" Keller wanted to know cheerfully.

For just an instant he thought he had gone too far. The big ruffian opposite choked over his biscuit, the while rage purpled his face. He caught up the revolver, and his fingers itched at the trigger.

His prisoner, leaning back in the chair, held him with quiet, unwavering eyes. "Steady! Steady!" he drawled.

"That will be about enough from you," Irwin let out through set teeth. "You padlock that mouth of yours, mister."

Keller took his advice temporarily, but it was not in him to long repress the spirit of adventure that bubbled in him. The temptation to bait this bear drew him irresistibly. He could not let him alone, the more that he sensed the danger to himself of the prods he sent home through the thick skin.

Lying carelessly on the bed with his head on his arm, or perhaps sitting astride a chair with his hands crossed on the back support, he would smile with childlike innocence and sent his barbs in gayly. And Irwin, murder in his dull brain, would glare at him like a maniac.

"Now would be a good time to blow off the top of my cocoanut," the nester suggested more than once to the infuriated cave man. "I'm allowing, you know, to send you to Yuma as soon as I get out of this. Nothing like grabbing your opportunity by the forelock."

"And when are you expecting to get out of here?" his guard demanded huskily.

Keller waved his hand with airy persiflage. "No exact information obtainable, my friend. Likely to-day. Maybe not till to-morrow. The one dead-sure point is that I'll make my getaway at the right time."

"There's one more dead-sure point—that I'm going to blow holes in you at the right time," retorted the other.

"Like to bet on which of us is a true prophet?"

Brad relapsed into black, sulky silence.

The hours followed each other, and still nobody came to relieve the guard. Keller could not understand the reason for this, any more than he could fathom an adequate one for his abduction. There was of course something behind it—something more potent than mere malice. If the intention had been merely to kill him, the thing could have been done without all this trouble. But though he searched his brain for an explanation, he could not find one that satisfied.

The answer came to him later in the day. In the middle of the afternoon a horse pounded up the draw to the cabin. Irwin went to the door, his eye still on his prisoner, except for a swift glance at the newcomer.

"How's yore five-thousand-dollar beauty, Brad?" inquired a voice that the nester recognized.

"Finer than silk, boss."

The rider swung from the saddle, trailed his rein, and came with jingling spurs into the cabin.

"Good evening, Mr. Keller," he said with derisive respect.

The nester, lying sideways on the bed with his head on his hand, nodded a greeting.

"I didn't know you and Mr. Irwin had doubled up and were bunkies," continued the jubilant voice. "When did you-all patch up the partnership?"

"About eight o'clock last night, Mr. Healy," returned the prisoner, eying him coolly. "And of course I knew it would be a surprise to you when you learned it."

"Expecting to stay long with him?"

"He seems right hospitable, but I don't reckon I'll outstay my welcome."

Healy laughed, with mockery and not amusement. "Brad's such a pressing host there's no telling when he'll let you go."

He was as malevolent as ever, but it was plain to be seen that he was riding high on a wave of triumph. Affairs were plainly going to his liking.

"The way I heard it you were expected down at the Frying Pan last night. Changed yore mind about going, I reckon," he went on insolently.

"I reckon."

"Had business that detained you, maybe."

"You're a good guesser."

"Folks were right anxious down there, according to the say-so that reached me."

Keller's cool eye measured him in silence, at which his enemy laughed contemptuously and turned on his heel.

Healy drew his confederate to one side of the room and held a whispered talk with him. Apparently he did not greatly care whether his foe caught the drift of it or not, for occasionally his voice lifted enough so that scraps of sentences reached the man lounging on the bed.

"—close to two hundred head—by the Mimbres Pass—the boys are ce'tainly pushing the drive—out of danger by midnight—wait for the signal before you turn him loose——"

"So-long, Mr. Keller. I cayn't spare the time to stay longer with you," their owner jeered.

"Just a moment, Mr. Healy. I want to know why you are keeping me here."

The man grinned. "Am I keeping you here, seh? Looks to me like it was Brad that's a-keeping you. Make a break for a getaway, and I'll not do a thing to you. Course I cayn't promise what Brad won't do. He's such a plumb anxious host."

"You're his brains. What you tell him to do he does. I hold you responsible for this!"

"You don't say!"

"And right now I'll add, for all the devilment that has been going on in these parts for years. You've about reached the end of your rope, though."

"I'll bet dollars to doughnuts you reach the end of one inside of forty-eight hours, Mr. Rustler," flashed back Healy.

And with an evil, significant grin he was gone. They heard the sound of retreating hoofs die in the distance.

But his visit had told the prisoner two things. A hurried wholesale drive of rustled cattle was being made across the line into Sonora, and it was being done in such a way as to fasten the suspicion of it upon the nester who had not appeared at the dance and had not been seen since that time. The irony of the thing was superb in its audacity. Healy and his friends would get the profit from the stolen cattle, and they would visit the punishment for the crime upon him. Evidence would be cooked up of course, and the retribution would be so swift that his friends would not be able to save him. This time his enemy would take no chances. He would be wiped out like a troublesome insect. The thing was diabolic in the simplicity of its cleverness.

Keller watched his jailer now like a hawk. He was ready to take the first chance that offered, no matter how slight a one it seemed. But the man was vigilant and wary. He never let his hand wander a foot from the handle of the weapon he carried.

Silently Irwin cooked a second meal. They sat down to it opposite each other, Keller facing the open window. While his jailer plied the knife, his revolver again lay on the oilcloth within reach.

"While I'm your guest and eating at your expense, I want to be properly grateful," the nester told his vis-a-vis. "Some folks might kick because the me-an'-you wasn't more varied, but I ain't that kind. You're doing your best, and nobody could do more."

"The which?" asked Irwin puzzled.

"The me-an'-you. It's French for just plain grub. For breakfast we get bacon and coffee and biscuits. For supper there's a variety. This time it is biscuits and coffee and bacon. To-morrow I reckon——"

Keller stopped halfway in his sentence, but took up his drawling comment again instantly. Only an added sparkle in his eyes betrayed the change that had suddenly wiped out his indolence and left him tense and alert. For while he had been speaking a head had slowly raised itself above the window casement and two eyes had looked in and met his. They belonged to Phil Sanderson.

Never had the brain of the prisoner been more alert. While his garrulous tongue ran aimlessly on, he considered ways and means. The boy held up empty hands to show him that he was unarmed. The nester did not by the flicker of an eyelash betray the presence of a third party to the man at table with him. Nevertheless his chatter became from that moment addressed to two listeners. To one it meant nothing in particular. To the other it was pregnant with meaning.

"No, seh. Some might complain because you ain't better provided with grub and fixings, but what I say is to make out the best we can with what we've got," the slow, drawling voice continued. "Some folks cayn't get along unless things are up to the Delmonico standard. That's plumb foolishness. Reminds me of a friend of mine that happened on a grizzly onct while he was cutting trail.

"Not expecting to meet Mr. Bear, he didn't have any gun along. Mr. Bear was surely on the wah-path that day. He made a bee line for my friend to get better acquainted. Nothing like presence of mind. That cow-puncher got his rope coiled in three shakes of a maverick's tail, his pinto bucking for fair to make his getaway. The rope drapped over Mr. Bear's head just as the puncher and the hawss separated company.

"Things were doing right sudden then. My friend grabbed the end of that rope and twisted it round and round a young live oak. Then he remembered an appointment and lit out, Mr. Bear after him on the jump. Muy pronto that grizzly came up awful sudden. The more he jerked the nearer he was to being choked. You better believe Mr. Puncher was hitting that trail right willing in the meanwhile."