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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Texas Ranger, by William MacLeod Raine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Texas Ranger
+
+Author: William MacLeod Raine
+
+Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4993]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TEXAS RANGER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Weiler
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A TEXAS RANGER
+
+By William MacLeod Raine,
+
+1910
+
+
+FOREWORD TO YE GENTLE READER.
+
+Within the memory of those of us still on the sunny side of forty the
+more remote West has passed from rollicking boyhood to its responsible
+majority. The frontier has gone to join the good Indian. In place of
+the ranger who patrolled the border for “bad men” has come the forest
+ranger, type of the forward lapping tide of civilization. The place
+where I write this--Tucson, Arizona--is now essentially more civilized
+than New York. Only at the moving picture shows can the old West,
+melodramatically overpainted, be shown to the manicured sons and
+daughters of those, still living, who brought law and order to the
+mesquite.
+
+As Arthur Chapman, the Western poet, has written:
+
+  No loopholes now are framing
+  Lean faces, grim and brown;
+  No more keen eyes are aiming
+  To bring the redskin down.
+  The plough team's trappings jingle
+  Across the furrowed field,
+  And sounds domestic mingle
+  Where valor hung its shield.
+  But every wind careering
+  Seems here to breathe a song--
+  A song of brave frontiering--
+  A saga of the strong.
+
+
+
+
+PART I -- THE MAN FROM THE PANHANDLE
+
+(In Which Steve Plays Second Fiddle)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I -- A DESERT MEETING
+
+As she lay crouched in the bear-grass there came to the girl clearly the
+crunch of wheels over disintegrated granite. The trap had dipped into a
+draw, but she knew that presently it would reappear on the winding road.
+The knowledge smote her like a blast of winter, sent chills racing down
+her spine, and shook her as with an ague. Only the desperation of her
+plight spurred her flagging courage.
+
+Round the bend came a pair of bays hitched to a single-seated open rig.
+They were driven by a young man, and as he reached the summit he drew up
+opposite her and looked down into the valley.
+
+It lay in a golden glow at their feet, a basin of pure light and silence
+stretching mile on mile to the distant edge of jagged mountain-line
+which formed its lip. Sunlight strong as wine flooded a clean world, an
+amber Eden slumbering in an unbroken, hazy dream primeval.
+
+“Don't move!”
+
+At the summons the driver swung his head sharply to a picture he will
+never forget. A young woman was standing on the bank at the edge of the
+road covering him with a revolver, having apparently just stepped from
+behind the trunk of the cottonwood beside her. The color had fled her
+cheeks even to the edge of the dull red-copper waves of hair, but he
+could detect in her slim young suppleness no doubt or uncertainty. On
+the contrary, despite her girlish freshness, she looked very much like
+business. She was like some young wild creature of the forest cornered
+and brought to bay, but the very terror in her soul rendered her more
+dangerous. Of the heart beating like a trip-hammer the gray unwinking
+eyes that looked into hers read nothing. She had schooled her taut
+nerves to obedience, and they answered her resolute will steadily
+despite fluttering pulses.
+
+“Don't move!” she said again.
+
+“What do you want?” he asked harshly.
+
+“I want your team,” she panted.
+
+“What for?”
+
+“Never mind. I want it.”
+
+The rigor of his gaze slowly softened to a smile compound both of humor
+and grimness. He was a man to appreciate a piquant situation, none the
+less because it was at his expense. The spark that gleamed in his bold
+eye held some spice of the devil.
+
+“All right. This is your hold-up, ma'am. I'll not move,” he said, almost
+genially.
+
+She was uneasily aware that his surrender had been too tame. Strength
+lay in that close-gripped salient jaw, in every line of the reckless
+sardonic face, in the set of the lean muscular shoulders. She had nerved
+herself to meet resistance, and instead he was yielding with complacent
+good nature.
+
+“Get out!” she commanded.
+
+He stepped from the rig and offered her the reins. As she reached for
+them his right hand shot out and caught the wrist that held the weapon,
+his left encircled her waist and drew her to him. She gave a little cry
+of fear and strained from him, fighting with all her lissom strength to
+free herself.
+
+For all the impression she made the girdle round her waist might have
+been of steel. Without moving, he held her as she struggled, his brown
+muscular fingers slowly tightening round her wrist. Her stifled cry
+was of pain this time, and before it had died the revolver fell to the
+ground from her paralyzed grip.
+
+But her exclamation had been involuntary and born of the soft tender
+flesh. The wild eyes that flamed into his asked for no quarter and
+received none. He drew her slowly down toward him, inch by inch, till
+she lay crushed and panting against him, but still unconquered. Though
+he held the stiff resistant figure motionless she still flashed battle
+at him.
+
+He looked into the storm and fury of her face, hiding he knew not what
+of terror, and laughed in insolent delight. Then, very deliberately, he
+kissed her lips.
+
+“You--coward!” came instantly her choking defiance.
+
+“Another for that,” he laughed, kissing her again.
+
+Her little fist beat against his face and he captured it, but as he
+looked at her something that had come into the girl's face moved his not
+very accessible heart. The salt of the adventure was gone, his victory
+worse than a barren one. For stark fear stared at him, naked and
+unconcealed, and back of that he glimpsed a subtle something that he
+dimly recognized for the outraged maidenly modesty he had so ruthlessly
+trampled upon. His hands fell to his side reluctantly.
+
+She stumbled back against the tree trunk, watching him with fascinated
+eyes that searched him anxiously. They found their answer, and with a
+long ragged breath the girl turned and burst into hysterical tears.
+
+The man was amazed. A moment since the fury of a tigress had possessed
+her. Now she was all weak womanish despair. She leaned against the
+cottonwood and buried her face in her arm, the while uneven sobs shook
+her slender body. He frowned resentfully at this change of front, and
+because his calloused conscience was disturbed he began to justify
+himself. Why didn't she play it out instead of coming the baby act on
+him? She had undertaken to hold him up and he had made her pay forfeit.
+He didn't see that she had any kick coming. If she was this kind of a
+boarding-school kid she ought not to have monkeyed with the buzz-saw.
+She was lucky he didn't take her to El Paso with him and have her
+jailed.
+
+“I reckon we'll listen to explanations now,” he said grimly after a
+minute of silence interrupted only by her sobs.
+
+The little fist that had struck at his face now bruised itself in
+unconscious blows at the bark of the tree. He waited till the staccato
+breaths had subsided, then took her by the shoulders and swung her
+round.
+
+“You have the floor, ma'am. What does this gun-play business mean?”
+
+Through the tears her angry eyes flashed starlike.
+
+“I sha'n't tell you,” she flamed. “You had no right to--How dared you
+insult me as you have?”
+
+“Did I insult you?” he asked, with suave gentleness. “Then if you feel
+insulted I expect you lay claim to being a lady. But I reckon that don't
+fit in with holding up strangers at the end of a gun. If I've insulted
+you I'll ce'tainly apologize, but you'll have to show me I have. We're
+in Texas, which is next door but one to Missouri, ma'am.”
+
+“I don't want your apologies. I detest and hate you,” she cried,
+
+“That's your privilege, ma'am, and it's mine to know whyfor I'm held
+up with a gun when I'm traveling peaceably along the road,” he answered
+evenly.
+
+“I'll not tell you.”
+
+He spoke softly as if to himself. “That's too bad. I kinder hate to take
+her to jail, but I reckon I must.”
+
+She shrank back, aghast and white.
+
+“No, no! You don't understand. I didn't mean to--I only wanted--Why, I
+meant to pay you for the team.”
+
+“I'll understand when you tell me,” he said placidly.
+
+“I've told you. I needed the team. I was going to let you have one of
+our horses and seventy-five dollars. It's all I have with me.”
+
+“One of your horses, you say? With seventy-five dollars to boot? And you
+was intending to arrange the trade from behind that gun. I expect you
+needed a team right bad.”
+
+His steady eyes rested on her, searched her, appraised her, while he
+meditated aloud in a low easy drawl.
+
+“Yes, you ce'tainly must need the team. Now I wonder why? Well, I'd hate
+to refuse a lady anything she wants as bad as you do that.” He swiftly
+swooped down and caught up her revolver from the ground, tossed it into
+the air so as to shift his hold from butt to barrel, and handed it to
+her with a bow. “Allow me to return the pop-gun you dropped, ma'am.”
+
+She snatched it from him and leveled it at him so that it almost touched
+his forehead. He looked at her and laughed in delighted mockery.
+
+“All serene, ma'am. You've got me dead to rights again.”
+
+His very nonchalance disarmed her. What could she do while his low
+laughter mocked her?
+
+“When you've gone through me complete I think I'll take a little pasear
+over the hill and have a look at your hawss. Mebbe we might still do
+business.”
+
+As he had anticipated, his suggestion filled her with alarm. She flew to
+bar the way.
+
+“You can't go. It isn't necessary.”
+
+“Sho! Of course it's necessary. Think I'm going to buy a hawss I've
+never seen?” he asked, with deep innocence.
+
+“I'll bring it here.”
+
+“In Texas, ma'am, we wait on the ladies. Still, it's your say-so when
+you're behind that big gun.”
+
+He said it laughing, and she threw the weapon angrily into the seat of
+the rig.
+
+“Thank you, ma'am. I'll amble down and see what's behind the hill.”
+
+By the flinch in her eyes he tested his center shot and knew it true.
+Her breast was rising and falling tumultuously. A shiver ran through
+her.
+
+“No--no. I'm not hiding--anything,” she gasped.
+
+“Then if you're not you can't object to my going there.”
+
+She caught her hands together in despair. There was about him something
+masterful that told her she could not prevent him from investigating;
+and it was impossible to guess how he would act after he knew. The men
+she had known had been bound by convention to respect a woman's wishes,
+but even her ignorance of his type made guess that this steel-eyed,
+close-knit young Westerner--or was he a Southerner?--would be impervious
+to appeals founded upon the rules of the society to which she had been
+accustomed. A glance at his stone-wall face, at the lazy confidence
+of his manner, made her dismally aware that the data gathered by her
+experience of the masculine gender were insufficient to cover this
+specimen.
+
+“You can't go.”
+
+But her imperative refusal was an appeal. For though she hated him from
+the depths of her proud, untamed heart for the humiliation he had put
+upon her, yet for the sake of that ferocious hunted animal she had left
+lying under a cottonwood she must bend her spirit to win him.
+
+“I'm going to sit in this game and see it out,” he said, not unkindly.
+
+“Please!”
+
+Her sweet slenderness barred the way about as electively as a mother
+quail does the road to her young. He smiled, put his big hands on
+her elbows, and gently lifted her to one side. Then he strode forward
+lightly, with the long, easy, tireless stride of a beast of prey,
+striking direct for his quarry.
+
+A bullet whizzed by his ear, and like a flash of light his weapon was
+unscabbarded and ready for action. He felt a flame of fire scorch his
+cheek and knew a second shot had grazed him.
+
+“Hands up! Quick!” ordered the traveler.
+
+Lying on the ground before him was a man with close-cropped hair and a
+villainous scarred face. A revolver in his hand showed the source of the
+bullets.
+
+Eye to eye the men measured strength, fighting out to the last ditch the
+moral battle which was to determine the physical one. Sullenly, at the
+last, the one on the ground shifted his gaze and dropped his gun with a
+vile curse.
+
+“Run to earth,” he snarled, his lip lifting from the tobacco-stained
+upper teeth in an ugly fashion.
+
+The girl ran toward the Westerner and caught at his arm. “Don't shoot,”
+ she implored.
+
+Without moving his eyes from the man on the ground he swept her back.
+
+“This outfit is too prevalent with its hardware,” he growled. “Chew out
+an explanation, my friend, or you're liable to get spoiled.”
+
+It was the girl that spoke, in a low voice and very evidently under a
+tense excitement.
+
+“He is my brother and he has--hurt himself. He can't ride any farther
+and we have seventy miles still to travel. We didn't know what to do,
+and so--”
+
+“You started out to be a road-agent and he took a pot-shot at the
+first person he saw. I'm surely obliged to you both for taking so much
+interest in me, or rather in my team. Robbery and murder are quite a
+family pastime, ain't they?”
+
+The girl went white as snow, seemed to shrink before his sneer as from
+a deadly weapon; and like a flash of light some divination of the truth
+pierced the Westerner's brain. They were fugitives from justice, making
+for the Mexican line. That the man was wounded a single glance had
+told him. It was plain to be seen that the wear and tear of keeping the
+saddle had been too much for him.
+
+“I acted on an impulse,” the girl explained in the same low tone. “I
+saw you coming and I didn't know--hadn't money enough to buy the
+team--besides--”
+
+He took the words out of her mouth when she broke down.
+
+“Besides, I might have happened to be a sheriff. I might be, but then
+I'm not.”
+
+The traveler stepped forward and kicked the wounded man's revolver
+beyond his reach, then swiftly ran a hand over him to make sure he
+carried no other gun.
+
+The fellow on the ground eyed him furtively. “What are you going to do
+with me?” he growled.
+
+The other addressed himself to the girl, ignoring him utterly.
+
+“What has this man done?”
+
+“He has--broken out from--from prison.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“At Yuma.”
+
+“Damn you, you're snitching,” interrupted the criminal in a scream that
+was both wheedling and threatening.
+
+The young man put his foot on the burly neck and calmly ground it into
+the dust. Otherwise he paid no attention to him, but held the burning
+eyes of the girl that stared at him from a bloodless face.
+
+“What was he in for?”
+
+“For holding up a train.”
+
+She had answered in spite of herself, by reason of something compelling
+in him that drew the truth from her.
+
+“How long has he been in the penitentiary?”
+
+“Seven years.” Then, miserably, she added: “He was weak and fell into
+bad company. They led him into it.”
+
+“When did he escape?”
+
+“Two days ago. Last night he knocked at my window--at the window of the
+room where I lodge in Fort Lincoln. I had not heard of his escape, but
+I took him in. There were horses in the barn. One of them was mine. I
+saddled, and after I had dressed his wound we started. He couldn't get
+any farther than this.”
+
+“Do you live in Fort Lincoln?”
+
+“I came there to teach school. My home was in Wisconsin before.”
+
+“You came out here to be near him?”
+
+“Yes. That is, near as I could get a school. I was to have got in the
+Tucson schools next year. That's much nearer.”
+
+“You visited him at the penitentiary?”
+
+“No. I was going to during the Thanksgiving vacation. Until last night I
+had not seen him since he left home. I was a child of seven then.”
+
+The Texan looked down at the ruffian under his feet.
+
+“Do you know the road to Mexico by the Arivaca cut-off?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then climb into my rig and hit the trail hard--burn it up till you've
+crossed the line.”
+
+The fellow began to whine thanks, but the man above would have none of
+them, “I'm giving you this chance for your sister's sake. You won't make
+anything of it. You're born for meanness and deviltry. I know your kind
+from El Paso to Dawson. But she's game and she's white clear through,
+even if she is your sister and a plumb little fool. Can you walk to the
+road?” he ended abruptly.
+
+“I think so. It's in my ankle. Some hell-hound gave it me while we were
+getting over the wall,” the fellow growled.
+
+“Don't blame him. His intentions were good. He meant to blow out your
+brains.”
+
+The convict cursed vilely, but in the midst of his impotent rage the
+other stopped and dragged him to his feet.
+
+“That's enough. You padlock that ugly mouth and light a shuck.”
+
+The girl came forward and the man leaned heavily on her as he limped to
+the road. The Texan followed with the buckskin she had been riding and
+tied it to the back of the road-wagon.
+
+“Give me my purse,” the girl said to the convict after they were seated.
+
+She emptied it and handed the roll of bills it contained to the owner of
+the team. He looked at it and at her, then shook his head.
+
+“You'll need it likely. I reckon I can trust you. Schoolmarms are mostly
+reliable.”
+
+“I had rather pay now,” she answered tartly.
+
+“What's the rush?”
+
+“I prefer to settle with you now.”
+
+“All right, but I'm in no sweat for my money. My team and the wagon are
+worth two hundred and fifty dollars. Put this plug at forty and it
+would be high.” He jerked his head toward the brush where the other
+saddle-horse was. “That leaves me a balance of about two hundred and
+ten. Is that fair?”
+
+She bit her lip in vexation. “I expect so, but I haven't that much with
+me. Can't I pay this seventy on account?”
+
+“No, ma'am, you can't. All or none.” There was a gleam of humor in his
+hard eyes. “I reckon you better let me come and collect after you get
+back to Fort Lincoln.”
+
+She took out a note-book and pencil. “If you will give me your name and
+address please.”
+
+He smiled hardily at her. “I've clean forgotten them.”
+
+There was a warning flash in her disdainful eye.
+
+“Just as you like. My name is Margaret Kinney. I will leave the money
+for you at the First National Bank.”
+
+She gathered up the rains deftly.
+
+“One moment.” He laid a hand on the lines. “I reckon you think I owe you
+an apology for what happened when we first met.”
+
+A flood of spreading color dyed her cheeks. “I don't think anything
+about it.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you do,” he contradicted. “And you're going to think a heap
+more about it. You're going to lay awake nights going over it.”
+
+Out of eyes like live coals she gave him one look. “Will you take your
+hands from these reins please?”
+
+“Presently. Just now I'm talking and you're listening.”
+
+“I don't care to hear any apologies, sir,” she said stiffly.
+
+“I'm not offering any,” he laughed, yet stung by her words.
+
+“You're merely insulting me again, I presume?”
+
+“Some young women need punishing. I expect you're one.”
+
+She handed him the horsewhip, a sudden pulse of passion beating fiercely
+in her throat. “Very well. Make an end of it and let me see the last of
+you,” she challenged.
+
+He cracked the lash expertly so that the horses quivered and would have
+started if his strong hand had not tightened on the lines.
+
+The Westerner laughed again. “You're game anyhow.”
+
+“When you are quite through with me,” she suggested, very quietly.
+
+But he noticed the fury of her deep-pupiled eyes, the turbulent rise and
+fall of her bosom.
+
+“I'll not punish you that way this time.” And he gave back the whip.
+
+“If you won't use it I will.”
+
+The lash flashed up and down, twined itself savagely round his wrist,
+and left behind a bracelet of crimson. Startled, the horses leaped
+forward. The reins slipped free from his numbed fingers. Miss Kinney had
+made her good-by and was descending swiftly into the valley.
+
+The man watched the rig sweep along that branch of the road which led to
+the south. Then he looked at his wrist and laughed.
+
+“The plucky little devil! She's a thoroughbred for fair. You bet I'll
+make her pay for this. But ain't she got sand in her craw? She's surely
+hating me proper.” He laughed again in remembrance of the whole episode,
+finding in it something that stirred his blood immensely.
+
+After the trap had swept round a curve out of sight he disappeared in
+the mesquite and bear-grass, presently returning with the roan that had
+been ridden by the escaped convict.
+
+“Whoever would suppose she was the sister of that scurvy scalawag with
+jailbird branded all over his hulking hide? He ain't fit to wipe her
+little feet on. She's as fine as silk. Think of her going through what
+she is to save that coyote, and him as crooked as a dog's hind leg.
+There ain't any limit to what a good woman will do for a man when she
+thinks he's got a claim on her, more especially if he's a ruffian.”
+
+With this bit of philosophic observation he rolled a cigarette and lit
+it.
+
+“Him fall into bad company and be led away?” he added in disgust. “There
+ain't any worse than him. But he'll work her to the limit before she
+finds it out.”
+
+Leisurely he swung to the saddle and rode down into the valley of the
+San Xavier, which rolled away from his feet in numberless tawny waves
+of unfeatured foot-hills and mesas and washes. Almost as far as the eye
+could see there stretched a sea of hilltops bathed in sun. Only on
+the west were they bounded, by the irregular saw-toothed edge of the
+Frenchman Hills, silhouetted against an incomparable blue. For a stretch
+of many miles the side of the range was painted scarlet by millions of
+poppies splashed broadcast.
+
+“Nature's gone to flower-gardening for fair on the mountains,” murmured
+the rider. “What with one thing and another I've got a notion I'm going
+to take a liking to this country.”
+
+The man was plainly very tired with rapid travel, and about the middle
+of the afternoon the young man unsaddled and picketed the animal near a
+water-hole. He lay down in the shadow of a cottonwood, flat on his
+back, face upturned to the deep cobalt sky. Presently the drowse of the
+afternoon crept over him. The slumberous valley grew hazy to his nodding
+eyes. The reluctant lids ceased to open and he was fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II -- LIEUTENANT FRASER INTERFERES.
+
+The sun had declined almost to a saddle in the Cuesta del Burro when
+the sleeper reopened his eyes. Even before he had shaken himself free
+of sleep he was uneasily aware of something wrong. Hazily the sound of
+voices drifted to him across an immense space. Blurred figures crossed
+before his unfocused gaze.
+
+The first thing he saw clearly was the roan, still grazing in the circle
+of its picket-rope. Beside the bronco were two men looking the animal
+over critically.
+
+“Been going some,” he heard one remark, pointing at the same time to the
+sweat-stains that streaked the shoulders and flanks.
+
+“If he had me on his back he'd still be burning the wind, me being in
+his boots,” returned the second, with a grating laugh, jerking his head
+toward the sleeper. “Whatever led the durned fool to stop this side of
+the line beats me.”
+
+“If he was hiking for Chihuahua he's been hitting a mighty crooked
+trail. I don't savvy it, him knowing the country as well as they say he
+does,” the first speaker made answer.
+
+The traveler's circling eye now discovered two more men, each of them
+covering him with a rifle. A voice from the rear assured him there was
+also a fifth member to the party.
+
+“Look out! He's awake,” it warned.
+
+The young man's hand inadvertently moved toward his revolver-butt. This
+drew a sharp imperative order from one of the men in front.
+
+“Throw up your hands, and damn quick!”
+
+“You seem to have the call, gentlemen,” he smiled. “Would you mind
+telling me what it's all about?”
+
+“You know what it's all about as well as we do. Collect his gun, Tom.”
+
+“This hold-up business seems to be a habit in this section. Second time
+to-day I've been the victim of it,” said the victim easily.
+
+“It will be the last,” retorted one of the men grimly.
+
+“If you're after the mazuma you've struck a poor bank.”
+
+“You've got your nerve,” cried one of the men in a rage; and another
+demanded: “Where did you get that hawss?”
+
+“Why, I got it--” The young man stopped in the middle of his sentence.
+His jaw clamped and his eyes grew hard. “I expect you better explain
+what right you got to ask that question.”
+
+The man laughed without cordiality. “Seeing as I have owned it three
+years I allow I have some right.”
+
+“What's the use of talking? He's the man we want, broke in another
+impatiently.
+
+“Who is the man you want?” asked their prisoner.
+
+“You're the man we want, Jim Kinney.”
+
+“Wrong guess. My name is Larry Neill. I'm from the Panhandle and I've
+never been in this part of the country till two days ago.”
+
+“You may have a dozen names. We don't care what you call yourself. Of
+course you would deny being the man we're after. But that don't go with
+us.”
+
+“All right. Take me back to Fort Lincoln, or take me to the prison
+officials. They will tell you whether I am the man.”
+
+The leader of the party pounced on his slip. “Who mentioned prison? Who
+told you we wanted an escaped prisoner?”
+
+“He's give himself away,” triumphed the one edged Tom. “I guess that
+clinches it. He's riding Maloney's hawss. He's wounded; so's the man we
+want. He answers the description--gray eyes, tall, slim, muscular. Same
+gun--automatic Colt. Tell you there's nothin' to it, Duffield.”
+
+“If you're not Kinney, how come you with this hawss? He stole it from
+a barn in Fort Lincoln last night. That's known,” said the leader,
+Duffield.
+
+The imperilled man thought of the girl bing toward the border with her
+brother and the remembrance padlocked his tongue.
+
+“Take me to the proper authorities and I'll answer questions. But, I'll
+not talk here. What's the use? You don't believe a word I say.”
+
+“You spoke the truth that time,” said one.
+
+“If you ever want to do any explaining now's the hour,” added another.
+
+“I'll do mine later, gentlemen.”
+
+They looked at each other and one of them spoke.
+
+“It will be too late to explain then.”
+
+“Too late?”
+
+Some inkling of the man's hideous meaning seared him and ran like an
+ice-blast through him.
+
+“You've done all the meanness you'll ever do in this world. Poor Dave
+Long is the last man you'll ever kill. We're going to do justice right
+now.”
+
+“Dave Long! I never heard of him,” the prisoner repeated mechanically.
+“Good God, do you think I'm a murderer?”
+
+One of the men thrust himself forward. “We know it. Y'u and that hellish
+partner of yours shot him while he was locking the gate. But y'u made a
+mistake when y'u come to Fort Lincoln. He lived there before he went to
+be a guard at the Arizona penitentiary. I'm his brother. These gentlemen
+are his neighbors. Y'u're not going back to prison. Y'u're going to stay
+right here under this cottonwood.”
+
+If the extraordinary menace of the man appalled Neill he gave no sign
+of it. His gray eye passed from one to another of them quietly without
+giving any sign of the impotent tempest raging within him.
+
+“You're going to lynch me then?”
+
+“Y'u've called the turn.”
+
+“Without giving me a chance to prove my innocence?”
+
+“Without giving y'u a chance to escape or sneak back to the
+penitentiary.”
+
+The thing was horribly unthinkable. The warm mellow afternoon sunshine
+wrapped them about. The horses grazed with quiet unconcern. One of
+these hard-faced frontiersmen was chewing tobacco with machine-like
+regularity. Another was rolling a cigarette. There was nothing of
+dramatic effect. Not a man had raised his voice. But Neill knew there
+was no appeal. He had come to the end of the passage through a horrible
+mistake. He raged in bitter resentment against his fate, against these
+men who stood so quietly about him ready to execute it, most of all
+against the girl who had let him sacrifice himself by concealing the
+vital fact that her brother had murdered a guard to effect his escape.
+Fool that he had been, he had stumbled into a trap, and she had let
+him do it without a word of warning. Wild, chaotic thoughts crowded his
+brain furiously.
+
+But the voice with which he addressed them was singularly even and
+colorless.
+
+“I am a stranger to this country. I was born in Tennessee, brought up
+in the Panhandle. I'm an irrigation engineer by profession. This is my
+vacation. I'm headed now for the Mal Pais mines. Friends of mine are
+interested in a property there with me and I have been sent to look
+the ground over and make a report. I never heard of Kinney till to-day.
+You've got the wrong man, gentlemen.”
+
+“We'll risk it,” laughed one brutally. “Bring that riata, Tom.”
+
+Neill did not struggle or cry out frantically. He stood motionless while
+they adjusted the rope round his bronzed throat. They had judged him
+for a villain; they should at least know him a man. So he stood there
+straight and lithe, wide-shouldered and lean-flanked, a man in a
+thousand. Not a twitch of the well-packed muscles, not a quiver of the
+eyelash nor a swelling of the throat betrayed any fear. His cool eyes
+were quiet and steady.
+
+“If you want to leave any message for anybody I'll see it's delivered,”
+ promised Duffield.
+
+“I'll not trouble you with any.”
+
+“Just as you like.”
+
+“He didn't give poor Dave any time for messages,” cried Tom Long
+bitterly.
+
+“That's right,” assented another with a curse.
+
+It was plain to the victim they were spurring their nerves to hardihood.
+
+“Who's that?” cried one of the men, pointing to a rider galloping toward
+them.
+
+The newcomer approached rapidly, covered by their weapons, and flung
+himself from his pony as he dragged it to a halt beside the group.
+
+“Steve Fraser,” cried Duffield in surprise, and added, “He's an officer
+in the rangers.”
+
+“Right, gentlemen. Come to claim my prisoner,” said the ranger promptly.
+
+“Y'u can't have him, Steve. We took him and he's got to hang.”
+
+The lieutenant of rangers shook his dark curly head.
+
+“Won't do, Duffield. Won't do at all,” he said decisively. “You'd ought
+to know law's on top in Texas these days.”
+
+Tom Long shouldered his way to the front. “Law! Where was the law when
+this ruffian Kinney shot down my poor brother Dave? I guess a rope and a
+cottonwood's good enough law for him. Anyhow, that's what he gits.”
+
+Fraser, hard-packed, lithe, and graceful, laid a friendly hand on the
+other's shoulder and smiled sunnily at him.
+
+“I know how you feel, Tom. We all thought a heap of Dave and you're his
+brother. But Dave died for the law. Both you boys have always stood for
+order. He'd be troubled if he knew you were turned enemy to it on his
+account.”
+
+“I'm for justice, Steve. This skunk deserves death and I'm going to see
+he gits it.”
+
+“No, Tom.”
+
+“I say yes. Y'u ain't sitting in this game, Steve.”
+
+“I reckon I'll have to take a hand then.”
+
+The ranger's voice was soft and drawling, but his eyes were indomitably
+steady. Throughout the Southwest his reputation for fearlessness was
+established even among a population singularly courageous. The audacity
+of his daredevil recklessness was become a proverb.
+
+“We got a full table. Better ride away and forget it,” said another.
+
+“That ain't what I'm paid for, Jack,” returned Fraser good-naturedly.
+“Better turn him over to me peaceable, boys. He'll get what's coming to
+him all right.”
+
+“He'll get it now, Steve, without any help of yours. We don't aim to
+allow any butting in.”
+
+“Don't you?”
+
+There was a flash of steel as the ranger dived forward. Next instant he
+and the prisoner stood with their backs to the cottonwood, a revolver
+having somehow leaped from its scabbard to his hand. His hunting-knife
+had sheared at a stroke the riata round the engineer's neck.
+
+“Take it easy, boys,” urged Fraser, still in his gentle drawl, to the
+astonished vigilantes whom his sudden sally had robbed of their victim.
+“Think about it twice. We'll all be a long time dead. No use in hurrying
+the funerals.”
+
+Nevertheless he recognized battle as inevitable. Friends of his though
+they were, he knew these sturdy plainsmen would never submit to be
+foiled in their purpose by one man. In the momentary silence before the
+clash the quiet voice of the prisoner made itself heard.
+
+“Just a moment, gentlemen. I don't want you spilling lead over me. I'm
+the wrong man, and I can prove it if you'll give me time. Here's the
+key to my room at the hotel in San Antonio. In my suit-case you'll find
+letters that prove--”
+
+“We don't need them. I've got proof right here,” cut in Fraser,
+remembering.
+
+He slipped a hand into his coat pocket and drew out two photographs.
+“Boys, here are the pictures and descriptions of the two men that
+escaped from Yuma the other day. I hadn't had time to see this gentleman
+before he spoke, being some busy explaining the situation to you, but a
+blind jackass could see he don't favor either Kinney or Struve, You're
+sure barking up the wrong tree.”
+
+The self-appointed committee for the execution of justice and the man
+from the Panhandle looked the prison photographs over blankly. Between
+the hard, clean-cut face of their prisoner and those that looked at them
+from the photographs it was impossible to find any resemblance. Duffield
+handed the prints back with puzzled chagrin.
+
+“I guess you're right, Steve. But I'd like this gentleman to explain
+how come he to be riding the horse one of these miscreants stole from
+Maloney's barn last night.”
+
+Steve looked at the prisoner. “It's your spiel, friend,” he said.
+
+“All right. I'll tell you some facts. Just as I was coming down from
+the Roskruge range this mo'ning I was held up for my team. One of these
+fellows--the one called Kinney--had started from Fort Lincoln on this
+roan here, but he was wounded and broke down. There was some gun-play,
+and he gave me this scratch on the cheek. The end of it was that he took
+my team and left me with his worn-out bronc. I plugged on all day with
+the hawss till about three mebbe, then seeing it was all in I
+unsaddled and picketed. I lay down and dropped asleep. Next I knew the
+necktie-party was in session.”
+
+“What time was it y'u met this fellow Kinney?” asked Long sharply.
+
+“Must have been about nine or nine-thirty I judge.”
+
+“And it's five now. That's eight hours' start, and four more before we
+can cut his trail on Roskruge. By God, we've lost him!”
+
+“Looks like,” agreed another ruefully.
+
+“Make straight for the Arivaca cut-off and you ought to stand a show,”
+ suggested Fraser.
+
+“That's right. If we ride all night, might beat him to it.” Each of the
+five contributed a word of agreement.
+
+Five minutes later the Texan and the ranger watched a dust-cloud
+drifting to the south. In it was hidden the posse disappearing over the
+hilltop.
+
+Steve grinned. “I hate to disappoint the boys. They're so plumb anxious.
+But I reckon I'll strike the telephone line and send word to Moreno for
+one of the rangers to cut out after Kinney. Going my way, seh?”
+
+“If you're going mine.”
+
+“I reckon I am. And just to pass the time you might tell me the real
+story of that hold-up while we ride.”
+
+“The real story?”
+
+“Well, I don't aim to doubt your word, but I reckon you forgot to tell
+some of it.” He turned on the other his gay smile. “For instance, seh,
+you ain't asking me to believe that you handed over your rig to Kinney
+so peaceful and that he went away and clean forgot to unload from you
+that gun you pack.”
+
+The eyes of the two met and looked into each other's as clear and
+straight as Texas sunshine. Slowly Neill's relaxed into a smile.
+
+“No, I won't ask you to believe that. I owe you something because you
+saved my life--”
+
+“Forget it,” commanded the lieutenant crisply.
+
+“And I can't do less than tell you the whole story.”
+
+He told it, yet not the whole of it either; for there was one detail
+he omitted completely. It had to do with the cause for existence of the
+little black-and-blue bruise under his right eye and the purple ridge
+that seamed his wrist. Nor with all his acuteness could Stephen Fraser
+guess that the one swelling had been made by a gold ring on the clenched
+fist of an angry girl held tight in Larry Neill's arms, the other by the
+lash of a horsewhip wielded by the same young woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III -- A DISCOVERY
+
+The roan, having been much refreshed by a few hours on grass, proved to
+be a good traveller. The two men took a road-gait and held it steadily
+till they reached a telephone-line which stretched across the desert
+and joined two outposts of civilization. Steve strapped on his climbing
+spurs and went up a post lightly with his test outfit. In a few minutes
+he had Moreno on the wire and was in touch with one of his rangers.
+
+“Hello! This you, Ferguson? This is Fraser. No, Fraser--Lieutenant
+Fraser. Yes. How many of the boys can you get in touch with right away?
+Two? Good. I want you to cover the Arivaca cut-off. Kinney is headed
+that way in a rig. His sister is with him. She is not to be injured
+under any circumstances. Understand? Wire me at the Mal Pais mines
+to-morrow your news. By the way, Tom Long and some of the boys are
+headed down that way with notions of lynching Kinney. Dodge them if you
+can and rush your man up to the Mal Pais. Good-bye.”
+
+“Suppose they can't dodge them?” ventured Neill after Steve had rejoined
+him.
+
+“I reckon they can. If not--well, my rangers are good boys; I expect
+they won't give up a prisoner.”
+
+“I'm right glad to find you are going to the Mal Pais mines with me,
+lieutenant. I wasn't expecting company on the way.”
+
+“I'll bet a dollar Mex against two plunks gold that you're wondering
+whyfor I'm going.”
+
+Larry laughed. “You're right. I was wondering.”
+
+“Well, then, it's this way. What with all these boys on Kinney's trail
+he's as good as rounded up. Fact is, Kinney's only a weak sister anyhow.
+He turned State's witness at the trial, and it was his testimony that
+convicted Struve. I know something about this because I happened to be
+the man that caught Struve. I had just joined the rangers. It was my
+first assignment. The other three got away. Two of them escaped and the
+third was not tried for lack of sufficient evidence. Now, then:
+Kinney rides the rods from Yuma to Marfa and is now or had ought to
+be somewhere in this valley between Posa Buena and Taylor's ranch. But
+where is Struve, the hardier ruffian of the two? He ain't been seen
+since they broke out. He sure never reached Ft. Lincoln. My notion is
+that he dropped off the train in the darkness about Casa Grande, then
+rolled his tail for the Mal Pais country. Your eyes are asking whys
+mighty loud, my friend; and my answer is that there's a man up there
+mebbe who has got to hide Struve if he shows up. That's only a guess,
+but it looks good to me. This man was the brains of the whole outfit,
+and folks say that he's got cached the whole haul the gang made from
+that S. P. hold-up. What's more, he scattered gold so liberal that
+his name wasn't even mentioned at the trial. He's a big man now, a
+millionaire copper king and into gold-mines up to the hocks. In the
+Southwest those things happen. It doesn't always do to look too closely
+at a man's past.
+
+“We'll say Struve drops in on him and threatens to squeak. Mebbe he has
+got evidence; mebbe he hasn't. Anyhow, our big duck wants to forget the
+time he was wearing a mask and bending a six-gun for a living. Also and
+moreover, he's right anxious to have other folks get a chance to forget.
+From what I can hear he's clean mashed on some girl at Amarillo, or
+maybe it's Fort Lincoln. See what a twist Strove's got on him if he can
+slip into the Mal Pais country on the q. t.”
+
+“And you're going up there to look out for him?”
+
+“I'm going in to take a casual look around. There's no telling what a
+man might happen onto accidentally if he travels with his ear to the
+ground.”
+
+The other nodded. He could now understand easily why Fraser was going
+into the Mal Pais country, but he could not make out why the ranger,
+naturally a man who lived under his own hat and kept his own counsel,
+had told him so much as he had. The officer shortly relieved his mind on
+this point.
+
+“I may need help while I'm there. May I call on you if I do, seh?”
+
+Neill felt his heart warm toward this hard-faced, genial frontiersman,
+who knew how to judge so well the timbre of a casual acquaintance.
+
+“You sure may, lieutenant.”
+
+“Good. I'll count on you then.”
+
+So, in these few words, the compact of friendship and alliance was
+sealed between them. Each of them was strangely taken with the other,
+but it is not the way of the Anglo-Saxon fighting man to voice his
+sentiment. Though each of them admired the stark courage and the
+flawless fortitude he knew to dwell in the other, impassivity sat
+on their faces like an ice-mask. For this is the hall-mark of the
+Southwest, that a man must love and hate with the same unchanging face
+of iron, save only when a woman is in consideration.
+
+They were to camp that night by Cottonwood Spring, and darkness caught
+them still some miles from their camp. They were on no road, but were
+travelling across country through washes and over countless hills.
+The ranger led the way, true as an arrow, even after velvet night had
+enveloped them.
+
+“It must be right over this mesa among the cottonwoods you see rising
+from that arroyo,” he announced at last.
+
+He had scarcely spoken before they struck a trail that led them direct
+to the spring. But as they were descending this in a circle Fraser's
+horse shied.
+
+“Hyer you, Pinto! What's the matter with--”
+
+The ranger cut his sentence in two and slid from the saddle. When his
+companion reached him and drew rein the ranger was bending over a dark
+mass stretched across the trail. He looked up quietly.
+
+“Man's body,” he said briefly.
+
+“Dead?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Neill dismounted and came forward. The moon-crescent was up by now and
+had lit the country with a chill radiance. The figure was dressed in the
+coarse striped suit of a convict.
+
+“I don't savvy this play,” Fraser confessed softly to himself.
+
+“Do you know him?”
+
+“Suppose you look at him and see if you know him.”
+
+Neill looked into the white face and shook his head.
+
+“No, I don't know him, but I suppose it is Struve.”
+
+From his pocket the ranger produced a photograph and handed it to him.
+
+“Hyer, I'll strike a match and you'll see better.”
+
+The match flared up in the slight breeze and presently went out, but
+not before Neill had seen that it was the face of the man who lay before
+them.
+
+“Did you see the name under the picture, seh?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Another match flared and the man from the Panhandle read a name, but
+it was not the one he had expected to see. The words printed there were
+“James Kinney.”
+
+“I don't understand. This ain't Kinney. He is a heavy-set man with a
+villainous face. There's some mistake.”
+
+“There ce'tainly is, but not at this end of the line. This is Kinney all
+right. I've seen him at Yuma. He was heading for the Mal Pais country
+and he died on the way. See hyer. Look at these soaked bandages. He's
+been wounded--shot mebbe--and the wound broke out on him again so that
+he bled to death.”
+
+“It's all a daze to me. Who is the other man if he isn't Kinney?”
+
+“We're coming to that. I'm beginning to see daylight,” said Steve,
+gently. “Let's run over this thing the way it might be. You've got to
+keep in mind that this man was weak, one of those spineless fellows that
+stronger folks lead around by the nose. Well, they make their getaway at
+Yuma after Struve has killed a guard. That killing of Dave Long shakes
+Kinney up a lot, he being no desperado but only a poor lost-dog kind of
+a guy. Struve notices it and remembers that this fellow weakened before.
+He makes up his mind to take no chances. From that moment he watches for
+a chance to make an end of his pardner. At Casa Grande they drop off the
+train they're riding and cut across country toward the Mal Pais. Mebbe
+they quarrel or mebbe Struve gets his chance and takes it. But after he
+has shot his man he sees he has made a mistake. Perhaps they were seen
+travelling in that direction. Anyhow, he is afraid the body will be
+found since he can't bury it right. He changes his plan and takes a
+big chance; cuts back to the track, boards a freight, and reaches Fort
+Lincoln.”
+
+“My God!” cried the other, startled for once out of his calm.
+
+The officer nodded. “You're on the trail right enough. I wish we were
+both wrong, but we ain't.”
+
+“But surely she would have known he wasn't her brother, surely--”
+
+The ranger shook his head. “She hadn't seen the black sheep since she
+was a kid of about seven. How would she know what he looked like? And
+Struve was primed with all the facts he had heard Kinney blat out time
+and again. She wasn't suspecting any imposition and he worked her to a
+fare-you-well.”
+
+Larry Neill set his teeth on a wave of icy despair.
+
+“And she's in that devil's power. She would be as safe in a den of
+rattlers. To think that I had my foot on his neck this mo'ning and
+didn't break it.”
+
+“She's safe so long as she is necessary to him. She's in deadly peril
+as soon as he finds her one witness too many. If he walks into my boys'
+trap at the Arivaca cut-off, all right. If not, God help her! I've shut
+the door to Mexico and safety in his face. He'll strike back for the Mal
+Pais country. It's his one chance, and he'll want to travel light and
+fast.”
+
+“If he starts back Tom Long's party may get him.”
+
+“That's one more chance for her, but it's a slim one. He'll cut straight
+across country; they're following the trail. No, seh, our best bet is my
+rangers. They'd ought to land him, too.”
+
+“Oh, ought to,” derided the other impatiently. “Point is, if they don't.
+How are we going to save her? You know this country. I don't.”
+
+“Don't tear your shirt, amigo,” smiled the ranger. “We'll arrive faster
+if we don't go off half-cocked. Let's picket the broncs, amble down
+to the spring, and smoke a cigarette. We've got to ride twenty miles for
+fresh hawsses and these have got to have a little rest.”
+
+They unsaddled and picketed, then strolled to the spring.
+
+“I've been thinking that maybe we have made a mistake. Isn't it possible
+the man with Miss Kinney is not Struve?” asked Neill.
+
+“That's easy proved. You saw him this mo'ning.” The lieutenant went down
+into his pocket once more for a photograph. “Does this favor the man
+with Miss Kinney?”
+
+Under the blaze of another match, shielded by the ranger's hands, Larry
+looked into the scowling, villainous face he had seen earlier in the
+day. There could be no mistaking those leering, cruel eyes nor the
+ratlike, shifty look of the face, not to mention the long scar across
+it. His heart sank.
+
+“It's the man.”
+
+“Don't you blame yourself for not putting his lights out. How could you
+tell who he was?”
+
+“I knew he was a ruffian, hide and hair.”
+
+“But you thought he was her brother and that's a whole lot different.
+What do you say to grubbing here? We've got to go to the Halle ranch for
+hawsses and it's a long jog.”
+
+They lit a fire and over their coffee discussed plans. In the midst of
+these the Southerner picked up idly a piece of wrapping-paper. Upon it
+was pencilled a wavering scrawl:
+
+Bleeding has broke out again. Can't stop it. Struve shot me and left me
+for dead ten miles back. I didn't kill the guard or know he meant to. J.
+KINNEY.
+
+Neill handed the paper to the ranger, who read it through, folded it,
+and gave it back to the other.
+
+“Keep that paper. We may need it.” His grave eyes went up the trail to
+where the dark figure lay motionless in the cold moonlight. “Well, he's
+come to the end of the trail--the only end he could have reached. He
+wasn't strong enough to survive as a bad man. Poor devil!”
+
+They buried him in a clump of cottonwoods and left a little pile of
+rocks to mark the spot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV -- LOST!
+
+After her precipitate leave-taking of the man whose team she had bought
+or borrowed, Margaret Kinney nursed the fires of her indignation in
+silence, banking them for future use against the time when she should
+meet him again in the event that should ever happen. She brought her
+whip-lash snapping above the backs of the horses, and there was that in
+the supple motion of the small strong wrist which suggested that nothing
+would have pleased her more than having this audacious Texan there in
+place of the innocent animals. For whatever of inherited savagery lay
+latent in her blood had been flogged to the surface by the circumstances
+into which she had been thrust. Never in all her placid life had she
+known the tug of passion any closer than from across the footlights of a
+theatre.
+
+She had had, to be sure, one stinging shame, but it had been buried in
+far-away Arizona, quite beyond the ken of the convention-bound people
+of the little Wisconsin town where she dwelt. But within the past twelve
+hours Fate had taken hold of her with both hands and thrust her into
+Life. She sensed for the first time its roughness, its nakedness, its
+tragedy. She had known the sensations of a hunted wild beast, the flush
+of shame for her kinship to this coarse ruffian by her side, and the
+shock of outraged maiden modesty at kisses ravished from her by force.
+The teacher hardly knew herself for the same young woman who but
+yesterday was engrossed in multiplication tables and third readers.
+
+A sinister laugh from the man beside her brought the girl back to the
+present.
+
+She looked at him and then looked quickly away again. There was
+something absolutely repulsive in the creature--in the big ears that
+stood out from the close-cropped head, in the fishy eyes that saw
+everything without ever looking directly at anything, in the crooked
+mouth with its irregular rows of stained teeth from which several were
+missing. She had often wondered about her brother, but never at the
+worst had she imagined anything so bad as this. The memory would be
+enough to give one the shudders for years.
+
+“Guess I ain't next to all that happened there in the mesquite,” he
+sneered, with a lift of the ugly lip.
+
+She did not look at him. She did not speak. There seethed in her a
+loathing and a disgust beyond expression.
+
+“Guess you forgot that a fellow can sometimes hear even when he can't
+see. Since I'm chaperooning you I'll make out to be there next time you
+meet a good-looking lady-killer. Funny, the difference it makes, being
+your brother. You ain't seen me since you was a kid, but you plumb
+forgot to kiss me.”
+
+There was a note in his voice she had not heard before, some hint of
+leering ribaldry in the thick laugh that for the first time stirred
+unease in her heart. She did not know that the desperate, wild-animal
+fear in him, so overpowering that everything else had been pushed to the
+background, had obscured certain phases of him that made her presence
+here such a danger as she could not yet conceive. That fear was now
+lifting, and the peril loomed imminent.
+
+He put his arm along the back of the seat and grinned at her from his
+loose-lipped mouth.
+
+“But o' course it ain't too late to begin now, my dearie.”
+
+Her fearless level eyes met squarely his shifty ones and read there
+something she could dread without understanding, something that was an
+undefined sacrilege of her sweet purity. For woman-like her instinct
+leaped beyond reason.
+
+“Take down your arm,” she ordered.
+
+“Oh, I don't know, sis. I reckon your brother--”
+
+“You're no brother of mine,” she broke in. “At most it is an accident of
+birth I disown. I'll have no relationship with you of any sort.”
+
+“Is that why you're driving with me to Mexico?” he jeered.
+
+“I made a mistake in trying to save you. If it were to do over again I
+should not lift a hand.”
+
+“You wouldn't, eh?”
+
+There was something almost wolfish in the facial malignity that
+distorted him.
+
+“Not a finger.”
+
+“Perhaps you'd give me up now if you had a chance?”
+
+“I would if I did what was right.”
+
+“And you'd sure want to do what was right,” he snarled.
+
+“Take down your arm,” she ordered again, a dangerous glitter in her
+eyes.
+
+He thrust his evil face close to hers and showed his teeth in a blind
+rage that forgot everything else.
+
+“Listen here, you little locoed baby. I got something to tell you
+that'll make your hair curl. You're right, I ain't your brother. I'm
+Nick Struve--Wolf Struve if you like that better. I lied you into
+believing me your brother, who ain't ever been anything but a skim-milk
+quitter. He's dead back there in the cactus somewhere, and I killed
+him!”
+
+Terror flooded her eyes. Her very breathing hung suspended. She gazed at
+him in a frozen fascination of horror.
+
+“Killed him because he gave me away seven years ago and was gittin'
+ready to round on me again. Folks don't live long that play Wolf Struve
+for a lamb. A wolf! That's what I am, a born wolf, and don't you forget
+it.”
+
+The fact itself did not need his words for emphasis. He fairly reeked
+the beast of prey. She had to nerve herself against faintness. She must
+not swoon. She dared not.
+
+“Think you can threaten to give me up, do you? 'Fore I'm through with
+you you'll wish you had never been born. You'll crawl on your knees and
+beg me to kill you.”
+
+Such a devil of wickedness she had never seen in human eyes before. The
+ruthlessness left no room for appeal. Unless the courage to tame him lay
+in her she was lost utterly.
+
+He continued his exultant bragging, blatantly, ferociously.
+
+“I didn't tell you about my escape; how a guard tried to stop me and I
+put the son of a gun out of business. There's a price on my head. D'ye
+think I'm the man to give you a chance to squeal on me? D'ye think I'll
+let a pink-and-white chit send me back to be strangled?” he screamed.
+
+The stark courage in her rose to the crisis. Not an hour before she had
+seen the Texan cow him. He was of the kind would take the whip
+whiningly could she but wield it. Her scornful eyes fastened on him
+contemptuously, chiseled into the cur heart of him.
+
+“What will you do?” she demanded, fronting the issue that must sooner or
+later rise.
+
+The raucous jangle of his laugh failed to disturb the steadiness of
+her gaze. To reassure himself of his mastery he began to bluster, to
+threaten, turning loose such a storm of vile abuse as she had never
+heard. He was plainly working his nerve up to the necessary pitch.
+
+In her first terror she had dropped the reins. Her hands had slipped
+unconsciously under the lap-robe. Now one of them touched something
+chilly on the seat beside her. She almost gasped her relief. It was the
+selfsame revolver with which she had tried to hold up the Texan.
+
+In the midst of Struve's flood of invective the girl's hand leaped
+quickly from the lap-robe. A cold muzzle pressed against his cheek
+brought the convict's outburst to an abrupt close.
+
+“If you move I'll fire,” she said quietly.
+
+For a long moment their gazes gripped, the deadly clear eyes of the
+young woman and the furtive ones of the miscreant. Underneath the robe
+she felt a stealthy movement, and cried out quickly: “Hands up!”
+
+With a curse he threw his arms into the air.
+
+“Jump out! Don't lower your hands!”
+
+“My ankle,” he whined.
+
+“Jump!”
+
+His leap cleared the wheel and threw him to the ground. She caught up
+the whip and slashed wildly at the horses. They sprang forward in a
+panic, flying wildly across the open plain. Margaret heard a revolver
+bark twice. After that she was so busy trying to regain control of the
+team that she could think of nothing else. The horses were young and
+full of spirit, so that she had all she could do to keep the trap from
+being upset. It wound in and out among the hills, taking perilous places
+safely to her surprise, and was at last brought to a stop only by the
+narrowing of a draw into which the animals had bolted.
+
+They were quiet now beyond any chance of farther runaway, even had it
+been possible. Margaret dropped the lines on the dashboard and began
+to sob, at first in slow deep breaths and then in quicker uneven ones.
+Plucky as she was, the girl had had about all her nerves could stand for
+one day. The strain of her preparation for flight, the long night
+drive, and the excitement of the last two hours were telling on her in a
+hysterical reaction.
+
+She wept herself out, dried her eyes with dabs of her little kerchief,
+and came back to a calm consideration of her situation. She must get
+back to Fort Lincoln as soon as possible, and she must do it without
+encountering the convict. For in the course of the runaway the revolver
+had been jolted from the trap.
+
+Not quite sure in which direction lay the road, she got out from the
+trap, topped the hill to her right, and looked around. She saw in all
+directions nothing but rolling hilltops, merging into each other even
+to the horizon's edge. In her wild flight among these hills she had lost
+count of direction. She had not yet learned how to know north from south
+by the sun, and if she had it would have helped but little since she
+knew only vaguely the general line of their travel.
+
+She felt sure that from the top of the next rise she could locate the
+road, but once there she was as uncertain as before. Before giving up
+she breasted a third hill to the summit. Still no signs of the road.
+Reluctantly she retraced her steps, and at the foot of the hill was
+uncertain whether she should turn to right or left. Choosing the left,
+from the next height she could see nothing of the team. She was not yet
+alarmed. It was ridiculous to suppose that she was lost. How could she
+be when she was within three or four hundred yards of the rig? She would
+cut across the shoulder into the wash and climb the hillock beyond. For
+behind it the team must certainly be.
+
+But at her journey's end her eyes were gladdened by no sight of the
+horses. Every draw was like its neighbor, every rolling rise a replica
+of the next. The truth came home to a sinking heart. She was lost in one
+of the great deserts of Texas. She would wander for days as others had,
+and she would die in the end of starvation and thirst. Nobody would know
+where to look for her, since she had told none where she was going. Only
+yesterday at her boarding-house she had heard a young man tell how a
+tenderfoot had been found dead after he had wandered round and round in
+intersecting circles. She sank down and gave herself up to despair.
+
+But not for long. She was too full of grit to give up without a long
+fight. How many hours she wandered Margaret Kinney did not know. The sun
+was high in the heavens when she began. It had given place to flooding
+moonlight long before her worn feet and aching heart gave up the search
+for some human landmark. Once at least she must have slept, for she
+stared up from a spot where she had sunk down to look up into a starry
+sky that was new to her.
+
+The moon had sailed across the vault and grown chill and faint with dawn
+before she gave up, completely exhausted, and when her eyes opened again
+it was upon a young day fresh and sweet. She knew by this time hunger
+and an acute thirst. As the day increased, this last she knew must be a
+torment of swollen tongue and lime-kiln throat. Yesterday she had cried
+for help till her voice had failed. A dumb despair had now driven away
+her terror.
+
+And then into the awful silence leaped a sound like a messenger of hope.
+It was a shot, so close that she could see the smoke rise from an arroyo
+near. She ran forward till she could look down into it and caught sight
+of a man with a dead bird in his hand. He had his back toward her and
+was stooping over a fire. Slithering down over the short dry grass, she
+was upon him almost before she could stop.
+
+“I've been lost all night and all yesterday,” she sobbed.
+
+He snatched at the revolver lying beside him and whirled like a flash
+as if to meet an attack. The girl's pumping heart seemed to stand still.
+The man snarling at her was the convict Struve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V -- LARRY NEILL TO THE RESCUE
+
+The snarl gave way slowly to a grim more malign than his open hostility.
+
+“So you've been lost! And now you're found--come safe back to your
+loving brother. Ain't that luck for you? Hunted all over Texas till you
+found him, eh? And it's a powerful big State, too.”
+
+She caught sight of something that made her forget all else.
+
+“Have you got water in that canteen?” she asked, her parched eyes
+staring at it.
+
+“Yes, dearie.”
+
+“Give it me.”
+
+He squatted tailor-fashion on the ground, put the canteen between his
+knees, and shoved his teeth in a crooked grin.
+
+“Thirsty?”
+
+“I'm dying for a drink.”
+
+“You look like a right lively corpse.”
+
+“Give it to me.”
+
+“Will you take it now or wait till you get it?”
+
+“My throat's baked. I want water,” she said hoarsely.
+
+“Most folks want a lot they never get.”
+
+She walked toward him with her hand outstretched.
+
+“I tell you I've got to have it.”
+
+He laughed evilly. “Water's at a premium right now. Likely there ain't
+enough here to get us both out of this infernal hole alive. Yes, it's
+sure at a premium.”
+
+He let his eye drift insolently over her and take stock of his prey, in
+the same feline way of a cat with a mouse, gloating over her distress
+and the details of her young good looks. His tainted gaze got the faint
+pure touch of color in her face, the reddish tinge of her wavy brown
+hair, the desirable sweetness of her rounded maidenhood. If her step
+dragged, if dusky hollows shadowed her lids, if the native courage had
+been washed from the hopeless eyes, there was no spring of manliness
+hid deep within him that rose to refresh her exhaustion. No pity or
+compunction stirred at her sweet helplessness.
+
+“Do you want my money?” she asked wearily.
+
+“I'll take that to begin with.”
+
+She tossed him her purse. “There should be seventy dollars there. May I
+have a drink now?”
+
+“Not yet, my dear. First you got to come up to me and put your arms
+round--”
+
+He broke off with a curse, for she was flying toward the little circle
+of cottonwoods some forty yards away. She had caught a glimpse of the
+water-hole and was speeding for it.
+
+“Come back here,” he called, and in a rage let fly a bullet after her.
+
+She paid no heed, did not stop till she reached the spring and threw
+herself down full length to drink, to lave her burnt face, to drink
+again of the alkali brackish water that trickled down her throat like
+nectar incomparably delicious.
+
+She was just rising to her feet when Struve hobbled up.
+
+“Don't you think you can play with me, missie. When I give the word you
+stop in your tracks, and when I say 'Jump!' step lively.”
+
+She did not answer. Her head was lifted in a listening attitude, as if
+to catch some sound that came faintly to her from a distance.
+
+“You're mine, my beauty, to do with as I please, and don't you forget
+it.”
+
+She did not hear him. Her ears were attuned to voices floating to her
+across the desert. Of course she was beginning to wander in her mind.
+She knew that. There could be no other human beings in this sea of
+loneliness. They were alone; just they two, the degenerate ruffian and
+his victim. Still, it was strange. She certainly had imagined the murmur
+of people talking. It must be the beginning of delirium.
+
+“Do you hear me?” screamed Struve, striking her on the cheek with his
+fist. “I'm your master and you're my squaw.”
+
+She did not cringe as he had expected, nor did she show fight. Indeed
+the knowledge of the blow seemed scarcely to have penetrated her mental
+penumbra. She still had that strange waiting aspect, but her eyes were
+beginning to light with new-born hope. Something in her manner shook the
+man's confidence; a dawning fear swept away his bluster. He, too, was
+now listening intently.
+
+Again the low murmur, beyond a possibility of doubt. Both of them caught
+it. The girl opened her throat in a loud cry for help. An answering
+shout came back clear and strong. Struve wheeled and started up the
+arroyo, bending in and out among the cactus till he disappeared over the
+brow.
+
+Two horsemen burst into sight, galloping down the steep trail at
+breakneck speed, flinging down a small avalanche of shale with them. One
+of them caught sight of the girl, drew up so short that his horse slid
+to its haunches, and leaped from the saddle in a cloud of dust.
+
+He ran toward her, and she to him, hands out to meet her rescuer.
+
+“Why didn't you come sooner? I've waited so long,” she cried
+pathetically, as his arms went about her.
+
+“You poor lamb! Thank God we're in time!” was all he could say.
+
+Then for the first time in her life she fainted.
+
+The other rider lounged forward, a hat in his hand that he had just
+picked up close to the fire.
+
+“We seem to have stampeded part of this camping party. I'll just take
+a run up this hill and see if I can't find the missing section and
+persuade it to stay a while. I don't reckon you need me hyer, do you?”
+ he grinned, with a glance at Neill and his burden.
+
+“All right. You'll find me here when you get back, Fraser,” the other
+answered.
+
+Larry carried the girl to the water-hole and set her down beside it.
+He sprinkled her face with water, and presently her lids trembled and
+fluttered open. She lay there with her head on his arm and looked at him
+quite without surprise.
+
+“How did you find me?”
+
+“Mainly luck. We followed your trail to where we found the rig. After
+that it was guessing where the needle was in the haystack It just
+happened we were cutting across country to water when we heard a shot.”
+
+“That must have been when he fired at me,” she said.
+
+“My God! Did he shoot at you?”
+
+“Yes. Where is he now?” She shuddered.
+
+“Cutting over the hills with Steve after him.”
+
+“Steve?”
+
+“My friend, Lieutenant Fraser. He is an officer in the ranger force.”
+
+“Oh!” She relapsed into a momentary silence before she said: “He isn't
+my brother at all. He is a murderer.” She gave a sudden little moan of
+pain as memory pierced her of what he had said. “He bragged to me that
+he had killed my brother. He meant to kill me, I think.”
+
+“Sho! It doesn't matter what the coyote meant. It's all over now. You're
+with friends.”
+
+A warm smile lit his steel-blue eyes, softened the lines of his lean,
+hard face. Never had shipwrecked mariner come to safer harbor than she.
+She knew that this slim, sun-bronzed Westerner was a man's man, that
+strength and nerve inhabited his sinewy frame. He would fight for her
+because she was a woman as long as he could stand and see.
+
+A touch of color washed back into her cheeks, a glow of courage into her
+heart. “Yes, it's all over. The weary, weary hours--and the fear--and
+the pain--and the dreadful thirst--and worst of all, him!”
+
+She began to cry softly, hiding her face in his coat-sleeve.
+
+“I'm crying because--it's all over. I'm a little fool, just as--as you
+said I was.”
+
+“I didn't know you then,” he smiled. “I'm right likely to make snap-shot
+judgments that are 'way off.”
+
+“You knew me well enough to--” She broke off in the middle, bathed in
+a flush of remembrance that brought her coppery head up from his arm
+instantly.
+
+“Be careful. You're dizzy yet.”
+
+“I'm all right now, thank you,” she answered, her embarrassed profile
+haughtily in the air. “But I'm ravenous for something to eat. It's been
+twenty-four hours since I've had a bite. That's why I'm weepy and
+faint. I should think you might make a snap-shot judgment that breakfast
+wouldn't hurt me.”
+
+He jumped up contritely. “That's right. What a goat I am!”
+
+His long, clean stride carried him over the distance that separated him
+from his bronco. Out of the saddle-bags he drew some sandwiches wrapped
+in a newspaper.
+
+“Here, Miss Margaret! You begin on these. I'll have coffee ready in two
+shakes of a cow's tail. And what do you say to bacon?”
+
+He understood her to remark from the depths of a sandwich that she said
+“Amen!” to it, and that she would take everything he had and as soon as
+he could get it ready. She was as good as her word. He found no cause
+to complain of her appetite. Bacon and sandwiches and coffee were all
+consumed in quantities reasonable for a famished girl who had been
+tramping actively for a day and a night, and, since she was a child
+of impulse, she turned more friendly eyes on him who had appeased her
+appetite.
+
+“I suppose you are a cowboy like everybody else in this country?” she
+ventured amiably after her hunger had become less sharp.
+
+“No, I belong to the government reclamation service.”
+
+“Oh!” She had a vague idea she had heard of it before. “Who is it you
+reclaim? Indians, I suppose.”
+
+“We reclaim young ladies when we find them wandering about the desert,”
+ he smiled.
+
+“Is that what the government pays you for?”
+
+“Not entirely. Part of the time I examine irrigation projects and report
+on their feasibility. I have been known to build dams and bore tunnels.”
+
+“And what of the young ladies you reclaim? Do you bore them?” she asked
+saucily.
+
+“I understand they have hitherto always found me very entertaining,” he
+claimed boldly, his smiling eyes on her.
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“But young ladies are peculiar. Sometimes we think we're entertaining
+them when we ain't.”
+
+“I'm sure you are right.”
+
+“And other times they're interested when they pretend they're not.”
+
+“It must be comforting to your vanity to think that,” she said coldly.
+For his words had recalled similar ones spoken by him twenty-four hours
+earlier, which in turn had recalled his unpardonable sin.
+
+The lieutenant of rangers appeared over the hill and descended into the
+draw. Miss Kinney went to meet him.
+
+“He got away?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, ma'am. I lost him in some of these hollows, or rather I never
+found him. I'm going to take my hawss and swing round in a circle.”
+
+“What are you going to do with me?” she smiled.
+
+“I been thinking that the best thing would be for you to go to the Mal
+Pais mines with Mr. Neill.”
+
+“Who is Mr. Neill?”
+
+“The gentleman over there by the fire.”
+
+“Must I go with him? I should feel safer in your company, lieutenant.”
+
+“You'll be safe enough in his, Miss Kinney.”
+
+“You know me then?” she asked.
+
+“I've seen you at Fort Lincoln. You were pointed out to me once as a new
+teacher.”
+
+“But I don't want to go to the Mal Pais mines. I want to go to Fort
+Lincoln. As to this gentleman, I have no claims on him and shall not
+trouble him to burden himself with me.”
+
+Steve laughed. “I don't reckon he would think, it a terrible burden,
+ma'am. And about the Mal Pais--this is how it is. Fort Lincoln is all of
+sixty miles from here as the crow flies. The mines are about seventeen.
+My notion was you could get there and take the stage to-morrow to your
+town.”
+
+“What shall I do for a horse?”
+
+“I expect Mr. Neill will let you ride his. He can walk beside the
+hawss.”
+
+“That won't do at all. Why should I put him to that inconvenience? I'll
+walk myself.”
+
+The ranger flashed his friendly smile at her. He had an instinct that
+served him with women. “Any way that suits you and him suits me. I'm
+right sorry that I've got to leave you and take out after that hound
+Struve, but you may take my word for it that this gentleman will look
+after you all right and bring you safe to the Mal Pais.”
+
+“He is a stranger to me. I've only met him once and on that occasion not
+pleasantly. I don't like to put myself under an obligation to him. But
+of course if I must I must.”
+
+“That's the right sensible way to look at it. In this little old world
+we got to do a heap we don't want to do. For instance, I'd rather see
+you to the Mal Pais than hike over the hills after this fellow,” he
+concluded gallantly.
+
+Neill, who had been packing the coffee-pot and the frying-pan, now
+sauntered forward with his horse.
+
+“Well, what's the program?” he wanted to know.
+
+“It's you and Miss Kinney for the Mal Pais, me for the trail. I ain't
+very likely to find Mr. Struve, but you can't always sometimes tell.
+Anyhow, I'm going to take a shot at it,” the ranger answered.
+
+“And at him?” his friend suggested.
+
+“Oh, I reckon not. He may be a sure-enough wolf, but I expect this ain't
+his day to howl.”
+
+Steve whistled to his pony, swung to the saddle when it trotted up, and
+waved his hat in farewell.
+
+His “Adios!” drifted back to them from the crown of the hill just before
+he disappeared over its edge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI -- SOMEBODY'S ACTING MIGHTY FOOLISH.
+
+Larry Neill watched him vanish and then turned smiling to Miss Kinney.
+
+“All aboard for the Mal Pais,” he sang out cheerfully.
+
+Too cheerfully perhaps. His assurance that all was well between them
+chilled her manner. He might forgive himself easily if he was that sort
+of man; she would at least show him she was no party, to it. He had
+treated her outrageously, had manhandled her with deliberate intent to
+insult. She would show him no one alive could treat her so and calmly
+assume to her that it was all right.
+
+Her cool eyes examined the horse, and him.
+
+“I don't quite see how you expect to arrange it, Mr. Neill. That is your
+name, isn't it?” she added indifferently.
+
+“That's my name--Larry Neill. Easiest thing in the world to arrange. We
+ride pillion if it suits you; if not, I'll walk.”
+
+“Neither plan suits me,” she announced curtly, her gaze on the far-away
+hills.
+
+He glanced at her in quick surprise, then made the mistake of letting
+himself smile at her frosty aloofness instead of being crestfallen by
+it. She happened to look round and catch that smile before he could
+extinguish it. Her petulance hardened instantly to a resolution.
+
+“I don't quite know what we're going to do about it--unless you walk,”
+ he proposed, amused at the absurdity of his suggestion.
+
+“That's just what I'm going to do,” she retorted promptly.
+
+“What!” He wheeled on her with an astonished smile on his face.
+
+This served merely to irritate her.
+
+“I said I was going to walk.”
+
+“Walk seventeen miles?”
+
+“Seventy if I choose.”
+
+“Nonsense! Of course you won't.”
+
+Her eyebrows lifted in ironic demurrer. “I think you must let me be the
+judge of that,” she said gently.
+
+“Walk!” he reiterated. “Why, you're walked out. You couldn't go a mile.
+What do you take me for? Think I'm going to let you come that on me.”
+
+“I don't quite see how you can help it, Mr. Neill,” she answered.
+
+“Help it! Why, it ain't reasonable. Of course you'll ride.”
+
+“Of course I won't.”
+
+She set off briskly, almost jauntily, despite her tired feet and aching
+limbs.
+
+“Well, if that don't beat--” He broke off to laugh at the situation.
+After she had gone twenty steps he called after her in a voice that did
+not suppress its chuckle: “You ain't going the right direction, Miss
+Kinney.”
+
+She whirled round on him in anger. How dared he laugh at her?
+
+“Which is the right way?” she choked.
+
+“North by west is about it.”
+
+She was almost reduced to stamping her foot.
+
+Without condescending to ask more definite instructions she struck off
+at haphazard, and by chance guessed right. There was nothing for it but
+to pursue. Wherefore the man pursued. The horse at his heels hampered
+his stride, but he caught up with her soon.
+
+“Somebody's acting mighty foolish,” he said.
+
+She said nothing very eloquently.
+
+“If I need punishing, ma'am, don't punish yourself, but me. You ain't
+able to walk and that's a fact.”
+
+She gave her silent attention strictly to the business of making
+progress through the cactus and the sand.
+
+“Say I'm all you think I am. You can trample on me proper after we get
+to the Mal Pais. Don't have to know me at all if you don't want to.
+Won't you ride, ma'am? Please!”
+
+His distress filled her with a fierce delight. She stumbled defiantly
+forward.
+
+He pondered a while before he asked quietly:
+
+“Ain't you going to ride, Miss Kinney?”
+
+“No, I'm not. Better go on. Pray don't let me detain you.”
+
+“All right. See that peak with the spur to it? Well, you keep that
+directly in line and make straight for it. I'll say good-by now, ma'am.
+I got to hurry to be in time for dinner. I'll send some one out from the
+camp to meet you that ain't such a villain as I am.”
+
+He swung to the saddle, put spurs to his pony, and cantered away.
+She could scarce believe it, even when he rode straight over the hill
+without a backward glance. He would never leave her. Surely he would
+not do that. She could never reach the camp, and he knew it. To be left
+alone in the desert again; the horror of it broke her down, but not
+immediately. She went proudly forward with her head in the air at first.
+He might look round. Perhaps he was peeping at her from behind some
+cholla. She would not gratify him by showing any interest in his
+whereabouts. But presently she began to lag, to scan draws and mesas
+anxiously for him, even to call aloud in an ineffective little voice
+which the empty hills echoed faintly. But from him there came no answer.
+
+She sat down and wept in self-pity. Of course she had told him to go,
+but he knew well enough she did not mean it. A magnanimous man would
+have taken a better revenge on an exhausted girl than to leave her alone
+in such a spot, and after she had endured such a terrible experience as
+she had. She had read about the chivalry of Western men. Yet these two
+had ridden away on their horses and left her to live or die as chance
+willed it.
+
+“Now, don't you feel so bad, Miss Margaret. I wasn't aiming really to
+leave you, of course,” a voice interrupted her sobs to say.
+
+She looked through the laced fingers that covered her face, mightily
+relieved, but not yet willing to confess it. The engineer had made a
+circuit and stolen up quietly behind.
+
+“Oh! I thought you had gone,” she said as carelessly as she could with a
+voice not clear of tears.
+
+“Were you crying because you were afraid I hadn't?” he asked.
+
+“I ran a cactus into my foot. And I didn't say anything about crying.”
+
+“Then if your foot is hurt you will want to ride. That seventeen miles
+might be too long a stroll before you get through with it.”
+
+“I don't know what I'll do yet,” she answered shortly.
+
+“I know what you'll do.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“You'll quit your foolishness and get on this hawss.”
+
+She flushed angrily. “I won't!”
+
+He stooped down, gathered her up in his arms, and lifted her to the
+saddle.
+
+“That's what you're going to do whether you like it or not,” he informed
+her.
+
+“How are you going to make me stay here, now you have put me here?”
+
+“I'm going to get on behind and hold you if it's necessary.”
+
+He was sensible enough of the folly of it all, but he did not see what
+else he could do. She had chosen to punish him through herself in a way
+that was impossible. It was a childish thing to do, born of some touch
+of hysteria her experience had induced, and he could only treat her as a
+child till she was safely back in civilization.
+
+Their wills met in their eyes, and the man's, masculine and dominant,
+won the battle. The long fringe of hers fell to the soft cheeks.
+
+“It won't be at all necessary,” she promised.
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“Quite sure.”
+
+“That's the way to talk.”
+
+“If you care to know,” she boiled over, “I think you the most hateful
+man I ever met.”
+
+“That's all right,” he grinned ruefully. “You're the most contrary
+woman I ever bumped into, so I reckon honors are easy.”
+
+He strode along beside the horse, mile after mile, in a silence which
+neither of them cared to break. The sap of youth flowed free in him, was
+in his elastic tread, in the set of his broad shoulders, in the carriage
+of his small, well-shaped head. He was as lean-loined and lithe as a
+panther, and his stride ate up the miles as easily.
+
+They nooned at a spring in the dry wash of Bronco Creek. After he had
+unsaddled and picketed he condescended to explain to her.
+
+“We'll stay here three hours or mebbe four through the heat of the day.”
+
+“Is it far now?” she asked wearily.
+
+“Not more than seven miles I should judge. Are you about all in?”
+
+“Oh, no! I'm all right, thank you,” she said, with forced sprightliness.
+
+His shrewd, hard gaze went over her and knew better.
+
+“You lie down under those live-oaks and I'll get some grub ready.”
+
+“I'll cook lunch while you lie down. You must be tired walking so far
+through the sun,” said Miss Kinney.
+
+“Have I got to pick you up again and carry you there?”
+
+“No, you haven't. You keep your hands off me,” she flashed.
+
+But nevertheless she betook herself to the shade of the live-oaks and
+lay down. When he went to call her for lunch he found her fast asleep
+with her head pillowed on her arm. She looked so haggard that he had not
+the heart to rouse her.
+
+“Let her sleep. It will be the making of her. She's fair done. But ain't
+she plucky? And that spirited! Ready to fight so long as she can drag a
+foot. And her so sorter slim and delicate. Funny how she hangs onto
+her grudge against me. Sho! I hadn't ought to have kissed her, but I'll
+never tell her so.”
+
+He went back to his coffee and bacon, dined, and lay down for a siesta
+beneath a cottonwood some distance removed from the live-oaks where Miss
+Kinney reposed. For two or three hours he slept soundly, having been in
+the saddle all night. It was mid-afternoon when he awoke, and the sun
+was sliding down the blue vault toward the sawtoothed range to the west.
+He found the girl still lost to the world in deep slumber.
+
+The man from the Panhandle looked across the desert that palpitated
+with heat, and saw through the marvelous atmosphere the smoke of the
+ore-mills curling upward. He was no tenderfoot, to suppose that ten
+minutes' brisk walking would take him to them. He guessed the distance
+at about two and a half hour's travel.
+
+“This is ce'tainly a hot evening. I expect we better wait till sundown
+before moving,” he said aloud.
+
+Having made up his mind, it was characteristic of him that he was asleep
+again in five minutes. This time she wakened before him, to look into a
+wonderful sea of gold that filled the crotches of the hills between the
+purple teeth. No sun was to be seen--it had sunk behind the peaks--but
+the trail of its declension was marked by that great pool of glory into
+which she gazed.
+
+Margaret crossed the wash to the cottonwood under which her escort
+was lying. He was fast asleep on his back, his gray shirt open at the
+bronzed, sinewy neck. The supple, graceful lines of him were relaxed,
+but even her inexperience appreciated the splendid shoulders and the
+long rippling muscles. The maidenly instinct in her would allow but one
+glance at him, and she was turning away when his eyes opened.
+
+Her face, judging from its tint, might have absorbed some of the
+sun-glow into which she had been gazing.
+
+“I came to see if you were awake,” she explained.
+
+“Yes, ma'am, I am,” he smiled.
+
+“I was thinking that we ought to be going. It will be dark before we
+reach Mal Pais.”
+
+He leaped to his feet and faced her.
+
+“C'rect.”
+
+“Are you hungry?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He relit the fire and put on the coffee-pot before he saddled the horse.
+She ate and drank hurriedly, soon announcing herself ready for the
+start.
+
+She mounted from his hand; then without asking any questions he swung to
+a place behind her.
+
+“We'll both ride,” he said.
+
+The stars were out before they reached the outskirts of the mining-camp.
+At the first house of the rambling suburbs Neill slipped to the ground
+and walked beside her toward the old adobe plaza of the Mexican town.
+
+People passed them on the run, paying no attention to them, and others
+dribbled singly or in small groups from the houses and saloons. All of
+them were converging excitedly to the plaza.
+
+“Must be something doing here,” said her guide. “Now I wonder what!”
+
+Round the next turn he found his answer. There must have been present
+two or three hundred men, mostly miners, and their gazes all focussed on
+two figures which stood against a door at the top of five or six steps.
+One of the forms was crouched on its knees, abject, cringing terror
+stamped on the white villainous face upturned to the electric light
+above. But the other was on its feet, a revolver in each hand, a smile
+of reckless daring on the boyish countenance that just now stood for law
+and order in Mal Pais.
+
+The man beside the girl read the situation at a glance. The handcuffed
+figure groveling on the steps belonged to the murderer Struve, and over
+him stood lightly the young ranger Steve Fraser. He was standing off a
+mob that had gathered to lynch his prisoner, and one glance at him was
+enough to explain how he had won his reputation as the most dashing and
+fearless member of a singularly efficient force. For plain to be read as
+the danger that confronted him was the fact that peril was as the breath
+of life to his nostrils.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII -- ENTER MR. DUNKE
+
+“He's my prisoner and you can't have him,” the girl heard the ranger
+say.
+
+The answer came in a roar of rage. “By God, we'll show you!”
+
+“If you want him, take him. But don't come unless you are ready to pay
+the price!” warned the officer.
+
+He was bareheaded and his dark-brown curly hair crisped round his
+forehead engagingly. Round his right hand was tied a blood-stained
+handkerchief. A boy he looked, but his record was a man's, and so the
+mob that swayed uncertainly below him knew. His gray eyes were steady as
+steel despite the fire that glowed in them. He stood at ease, with nerve
+unshaken, the curious lifted look of a great moment about the poise of
+his graceful figure.
+
+“It is Lieutenant Fraser,” cried Margaret, but as she looked down she
+missed her escort.
+
+An instant, and she saw him. He was circling the outskirts of the crowd
+at a run. For just a heart-beat she wondered what he was about, but her
+brain told her before her eye. He swung in toward the steps, shoulders
+down, and bored a way through the stragglers straight to the heart of
+the turmoil. Taking the steps in two jumps, he stood beside the ranger.
+
+“Hello, Tennessee,” grinned that young man. “Come to be a pall-bearer?”
+
+“Hello, Texas! Can't say, I'm sure. Just dropped in to see what's
+doing.”
+
+Steve's admiring gaze approved him a man from the ground up. But the
+ranger only laughed and said: “The band's going to play a right lively
+tune, looks like.”
+
+The man from the Panhandle had his revolvers out already. “Yes, there
+will be a hot time in the old town to-night, I shouldn't wonder.”
+
+But for the moment the attackers were inclined to parley. Their leader
+stepped out and held up a hand for a suspension of hostilities. He was a
+large man, heavily built, and powerful as a bear. There was about him an
+air of authority, as of one used to being obeyed. He was dressed roughly
+enough in corduroy and miner's half-leg boots, but these were of the
+most expensive material and cut. His cold gray eye and thin lips denied
+the manner of superficial heartiness he habitually carried. If one
+scratched the veneer of good nature it was to find a hard selfishness
+that went to his core.
+
+“It's Mr. Dunke!” the young school-teacher cried aloud in surprise.
+
+“I've got something to say to you, Mr. Lieutenant Ranger,” he announced,
+with importance.
+
+“Uncork it,” was Fraser's advice.
+
+“We don't want to have any trouble with you, but we're here for
+business. This man is a cold-blooded murderer and we mean to do justice
+on him.”
+
+Steve laughed insolently. “If all them that hollers for justice the
+loudest got it done to them, Mr. Dunke, there'd be a right smart
+shrinkage in the census returns.”
+
+Dunke's eye gleamed with anger. “We're not here to listen to any smart
+guys, sir. Will you give up Struve to us or will you not?”
+
+“That's easy. I will not.”
+
+The mob leader turned to the Tennessean. “Young man, I don't know who
+you are, but if you mean to butt into a quarrel that ain't yours all
+I've got to say is that you're hunting an early grave.”
+
+“We'll know about that later, seh.”
+
+“You stand pat, do you?”
+
+“Well, seh, I draw to a pair that opens the pot anyhow,” answered Larry,
+with a slight motion of his weapons.
+
+Dunke fell back into the mob, a shot rang out into the night, and the
+crowd swayed forward. But at that instant the door behind Fraser swung
+open. A frightened voice sounded in his ear.
+
+“Quick, Steve!”
+
+The ranger slewed his head, gave an exclamation of surprise, and
+hurriedly threw his prisoner into the open passage.
+
+“Back, Larry! Lively, my boy!” he ordered.
+
+Neill leaped back in a spatter of bullets that rained round him. Next
+moment the door was swung shut again.
+
+“You all right, Nell?” asked Fraser quickly of the young woman who had
+opened the door, and upon her affirmative reply he added: “Everybody
+alive and kicking? Nobody get a pill?”
+
+“I'm all right for one,” returned Larry. “But we had better get out of
+this passage. I notice our friends the enemy are sending their cards
+through the door after us right anxious.”
+
+As he spoke a bullet tore a jagged splinter from a panel and buried
+itself in the ceiling. A second and a third followed.
+
+“That's c'rect. We'd better be 'Not at home' when they call. Eh, Nell?”
+
+Steve put an arm affectionately round the waist of the young woman who
+had come in such timely fashion to their aid and ran through the passage
+with her to the room beyond, Neill following with the prisoner.
+
+“You're wounded, Steve,” the young woman cried.
+
+He shrugged. “Scratch in the hand. Got it when I arrested him. Had to
+shoot his trigger finger off.”
+
+“But I must see to it.”
+
+“Not now; wait till we're out of the woods.” He turned to his friend:
+“Nell, let me introduce to you Mr. Neill, from the Panhandle. Mr. Neill,
+this is my sister. I don't know how come she to drop down behind us like
+an angel from heaven, but that's a story will wait. The thing we got to
+do right now is to light a shuck out of here.”
+
+His friend nodded, listening to the sound of blows battering the outer
+door. “They'll have it down in another minute. We've got to burn the
+wind seven ways for Sunday.”
+
+“What I'd like to know is whether there are two entrances to this
+rat-trap. Do you happen to know, Nell?” asked Fraser of his sister.
+
+“Three,” she answered promptly. “There's a back door into the court and
+a trap-door to the roof. That's the way I came.”
+
+“And it's the way we'll go. I might a-known you'd know all about it give
+you a quarter of a chance,” her brother said admiringly. “We'll duck
+through the roof and let Mr. Dunke hold the sack. Lead the way, sis.”
+
+She guided them along another passageway and up some stairs to the
+second story. The trap-door that opened to the flat roof was above the
+bed about six feet. Neill caught the edges of the narrow opening, drew
+himself up, and wriggled through. Fraser lifted his sister by the waist
+high enough for Larry to catch her hands and draw her up.
+
+“Hurry, Steve,” she urged. “They've broken in. Hurry, dear.”
+
+The ranger unlocked his prisoner's handcuffs and tossed them up to the
+Tennessean.
+
+“Get a move on you, Mr. Struve, unless you want to figure in a necktie
+party,” he advised.
+
+But the convict's flabby muscles were unequal to the task of getting
+him through the opening. Besides which, his wounded hand, tied up with
+a blood-soaked rag, impeded him. He had to be pulled from above and
+boosted from behind. Fraser, fit to handle his weight in wildcats, as
+an admirer had once put it, found no trouble in following. Steps were
+already heard on the stairs below when Larry slipped the cover to its
+place and put upon it a large flat stone which he found on the roof for
+that purpose. The fugitives crawled along the roof on their hands and
+knees so as to escape the observation of the howling mob outside the
+house. Presently they came into the shadows, and Nell rose, ran forward
+to a little ladder which led to a higher roof, and swiftly ascended.
+Neill, who was at her heels, could not fail to note the light supple
+grace with which she moved. He thought he had never seen a more charming
+woman in appearance. She still somehow retained the slim figure and
+taking ways of a girl, in conjunction with the soft rounded curves of a
+present-day Madonna.
+
+Two more roofs were crossed before they came to another open trap-door.
+A lamp in the room below showed it to be a bedroom with two cots in it.
+Two children, one of them a baby, were asleep in these. A sweet-faced
+woman past middle age looked anxiously up with hands clasped together as
+in prayer.
+
+“Is it you, Nellie?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, mother, and Steve, and his friend. We're all right.”
+
+Fraser dropped through, and his sister let herself down into his arms.
+Struve followed, and was immediately handcuffed. Larry put back the trap
+and fastened it from within before he dropped down.
+
+“We shall have to leave at once, mother, without waiting to dress
+the children,” explained Fraser. “Wrap them in blankets and take some
+clothes along. I'll drop you at the hotel and slip my prisoner into
+the jail the back way if I can; that is, if another plan I have doesn't
+work.”
+
+The oldest child awoke and caught sight of Fraser. He reached out his
+hands in excitement and began to call: “Uncle Steve! Uncle Steve back
+again.”
+
+Fraser picked up the youngster. “Yes, Uncle Steve is back. But we're
+going to play a game that Indians are after us. Webb must be good and
+keep very, very still. He mustn't say a word till uncle tells him he
+may.”
+
+The little fellow clapped his hands. “Goody, goody! Shall we begin now?”
+
+“Right this minute, son. Better take your money with you, mother. Is
+father here?”
+
+“No, he is at the ranch. He went down in the stage to-day.”
+
+“All right, friends. We'll take the back way. Tennessee, will you look
+out for Mr. Struve? Sis will want to carry the baby.”
+
+They passed quietly down-stairs and out the back door. The starry night
+enveloped them coldly, and the moon looked down through rifted clouds.
+Nature was peaceful as her own silent hills, but the raucous jangle of
+cursing voices from a distance made discord of the harmony. They slipped
+along through the shadows, meeting none except occasional figures
+hurrying to the plaza. At the hotel door the two men separated from the
+rest of the party, and took with them their prisoner.
+
+“I'm going to put him for safe-keeping down the shaft of a mine my
+father and I own,” explained Steve. “He wouldn't be safe in the jail,
+because Dunke, for private reasons, has made up his mind to put out his
+lights.”
+
+“Private reasons?” echoed the engineer.
+
+“Mighty good ones, too. Ain't that right?” demanded the ranger of
+Struve.
+
+The convict cursed, though his teeth still chattered with fright from
+the narrow escape he had had, but through his prison jargon ran a hint
+of some power he had over the man Dunke. It was plain he thought the
+latter had incited the lynching in order to shut the convict's mouth
+forever.
+
+“Where is this shaft?” asked Neill.
+
+“Up a gulch about half a mile from here.”
+
+Fraser's eyes fixed themselves on a young man who passed on the run. He
+suddenly put his fingers to his lips and gave a low whistle. The running
+man stopped instantly, his head alert to catch the direction from which
+the sound had come. Steve whistled again and the stranger turned toward
+them.
+
+“It's Brown, one of my rangers,” explained the lieutenant.
+
+Brown, it appeared, had just reached town and stabled his horse when
+word came to him that there was trouble on the plaza. He had been making
+for it when his officer's whistle stopped him.
+
+“It's all over except getting this man to safety. I'm going to put him
+down an abandoned shaft of the Jackrabbit. He'll be safe there, and
+nobody will think to look for him in any such place,” said Fraser.
+
+The man from the Panhandle drew his friend to one side. “Do you need
+me any longer? I left Miss Kinney right on the edge of that mob, and I
+expect I better look around and see where she is now.”
+
+“All right. No, we don't need you. Take care you don't let any of these
+miners recognize you. They might make you trouble while they're still
+hot. Well, so-long. See you to-morrow at the hotel.”
+
+The Tennessean looked to his guns to make sure they hung loose in the
+scabbards, then stepped briskly back toward the plaza.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII -- WOULD YOU WORRY ABOUT ME?
+
+Margaret Kinney's heart ceased beating in that breathless instant after
+the two dauntless friends had flung defiance to two hundred. There was a
+sudden tightening of her throat, a fixing of dilated eyes on what would
+have been a thrilling spectacle had it not meant so much more to her.
+For as she leaned forward in the saddle with parted lips she knew a
+passionate surge of fear for one of the apparently doomed men that went
+through her like swift poison, that left her dizzy with the shock of it.
+
+The thought of action came to her too late. As Dunke stepped back to
+give the signal for attack she cried out his name, but her voice was
+drowned in the yell of rage that filled the street. She tried to spur
+her horse into the crowd, to force a way to the men standing with
+such splendid fearlessness above this thirsty pack of wolves. But the
+denseness of the throng held her fixed even while revolvers flashed.
+
+And then the miracle happened. She saw the door open and limned in
+a penumbra of darkness the white comely face of a woman. She saw the
+beleaguered men sway back and the door close in the faces of the horde.
+She saw bullets go crashing into the door, heard screams of baffled
+fury, and presently the crash of axes into the panels of the barrier
+that held them back. It seemed to fade away before her gaze, and instead
+of it she saw a doorway full of furious crowding miners.
+
+Then presently her heart stood still again. From her higher place in the
+saddle, well back in the outskirts of the throng, in the dim light she
+made out a figure crouching on the roof; then another, and another, and
+a fourth. She suffered an agony of fear in the few heart-beats before
+they began to slip away. Her eyes swept the faces near her. One and all
+they were turned upon the struggling mass of humanity at the entrance
+to the passage. When she dared look again to the roof the fugitives were
+gone. She thought she perceived them swarming up a ladder to the higher
+roof, but in the surrounding grayness she could not be sure of this.
+
+The stamping of feet inside the house continued. Once there was the
+sound of an exploding revolver. After a long time a heavy figure
+struggled into view through the roof-trap. It was Dunke himself. He
+caught sight of the ladder, gave a shout of triumph, and was off in
+pursuit of his flying prey. As others appeared on the roof they, too,
+took up the chase, a long line of indistinct running figures.
+
+There were other women on the street now, most of them Mexicans, so that
+Margaret attracted little attention. She moved up opposite the house
+that had become the scene of action, expecting every moment to hear the
+shots that would determine the fate of the victims.
+
+But no shots came. Lights flashed from room to room, and presently one
+light began to fill a room so brilliantly that she knew a lamp must have
+been overturned and set the house on fire. Dunke burst from the front
+door, scarce a dozen paces from her. There was a kind of lurid fury in
+his eyes. He was as ravenously fierce as a wolf balked of its kill. She
+chose that moment to call him.
+
+“Mr. Dunke!”
+
+Her voice struck him into a sort of listening alertness, and again she
+pronounced his name.
+
+“You, Miss Kinney--here?” he asked in amazement.
+
+“Yes--Miss Kinney.”
+
+“But--What are you doing here? I thought you were at Fort Lincoln.”
+
+“I was, but I'm here now.”
+
+“Why? This is no place for you to-night. Hell's broke loose.”
+
+“So it seems,” she answered, with shining eyes.
+
+“There's trouble afoot, Miss Margaret. No girl should be out, let alone
+an unprotected one.”
+
+“I did not come here unprotected. There was a man with me. The one, Mr.
+Dunke, that you are now looking for to murder!”
+
+She gave it to him straight from the shoulder, her eyes holding his
+steadily.
+
+“Struve?” he gasped, taken completely aback.
+
+“No, not Struve. The man who stood beside Lieutenant Fraser, the one you
+threatened to kill because he backed the law.”
+
+“I guess you don't know all the facts, Miss Kinney.” He came close and
+met her gaze while he spoke in a low voice. “There ain't many know what
+I know. Mebbe there ain't any beside you now. But I know you're Jim
+Kinney's sister.”
+
+“You are welcome to the knowledge. It is no secret. Lieutenant Fraser
+knows it. So does his friend. I'm not trying to hide it. What of it?”
+
+Her quiet scorn drew the blood to his face.
+
+“That's all right. If you do want to keep it quiet I'm with you. But
+there's something more. Your brother escaped from Yuma with this fellow
+Struve. Word came over the wire an hour or two ago that Struve had been
+captured and that it was certain he had killed his pal, your brother.
+That's why I mean to see him hanged before mo'ning.”
+
+“He did kill my brother. He told me so himself.” Her voice carried a sob
+for an instant, but she went on resolutely. “What has that to do with
+it? Isn't there any law in Texas? Hasn't he been captured? And isn't he
+being taken back to his punishment?”
+
+“He told you so himself!” the man echoed. “When did he tell you? When
+did you see him?”
+
+“I was alone with him for twelve hours in the desert.”
+
+“Alone with you?” His puzzled face showed how he was trying to take this
+in, “I don't understand. How could he be alone with you?”
+
+“I thought he was my brother and I was helping him to escape from Fort
+Lincoln.”
+
+“Helping him to escape! Helping Wolf Struve to escape! Well, I'm darned
+if that don't beat my time. How come you to think him your brother?” the
+man asked suspiciously.
+
+“It doesn't matter how or why. I thought so. That's enough.”
+
+“And you were alone with him--why, you must have been alone with him all
+night,” cried Dunke, coming to a fresh discovery.
+
+“I was,” she admitted very quietly.
+
+A new suspicion edged itself into his mind. “What did you talk about?
+Did he say anything about--Did he--He always was a terrible liar. Nobody
+ever believed Wolf Struve.”
+
+Without understanding the reason for it, she could see that he was
+uneasy, that he was trying to discount the value of anything the convict
+might have told her. Yet what could Struve the convict, No. 9,432, have
+to do with the millionaire mine-owner, Thomas J. Dunke? What could there
+be in common between them? Why should the latter fear what the other had
+to tell? The thing was preposterous on the face of it, but the girl knew
+by some woman's instinct that she was on the edge of a secret Dunke held
+hidden deep in his heart from all the world. Only this much she guessed;
+that Struve was a sharer of his secret, and therefore he was set on
+lynching the man before he had time to tell it.
+
+“They got away, didn't they?” she asked.
+
+“They got away--for the present,” he answered grimly. “But we're still
+hunting them.”
+
+“Can't you let the law take its course, Mr. Danke? Is it necessary to do
+this terrible thing?”
+
+“Don't you worry any about it, Miss Kinney. This ain't a woman's job.
+I'll attend to it.”
+
+“But my friends,” she reminded him.
+
+“We ain't intending to hurt them any. Come, I'll see you home. You
+staying at the hotel?”
+
+“I don't know. I haven't made any arrangements yet.”
+
+“Well, we'll go make them now.”
+
+But she did not move. “I'm not going in till I know how this comes out.”
+
+He was a man used to having his own brutal way, one strong by nature,
+with strength increased by the money upon which he rode rough-shod to
+success.
+
+He laughed as he caught hold of the rein. “That's ridiculous!”
+
+“But my business, I think,” the girl answered sharply, jerking the
+bridle from his fingers.
+
+Dunke stared at her. It was his night of surprises. He failed to
+recognize the conventional teacher he knew in this bright-eyed,
+full-throated young woman who fronted him so sure of herself. She seemed
+to him to swim brilliantly in a tide of flushed beauty, in spite of the
+dust and the stains of travel. She was in a shapeless khaki riding-suit
+and a plain, gray, broad-brimmed Stetson. But the one could not hide
+the flexible curves that made so frankly for grace, nor the other the
+coppery tendrils that escaped in fascinating disorder from under its
+brim.
+
+“You hadn't ought to be out here. It ain't right.”
+
+“I don't remember asking you to act as a standard of right and wrong for
+me.”
+
+He laughed awkwardly. “We ain't quarreling, are we, Miss Margaret?”
+
+“Certainly I am not. I don't quarrel with anybody but my friends.”
+
+“Well, I didn't aim to offend you anyway. You know me better than that.”
+ He let his voice fall into a caressing modulation and put a propitiatory
+hand on her skirt, but under the uncompromising hardness of her gaze the
+hand fell away to his side. “I'm your friend--leastways I want to be.”
+
+“My friends don't lynch men.”
+
+“But after what he did to your brother.”
+
+“The law will take care of that. If you want to please me call off your
+men before it is too late.”
+
+It was his cue to please her, for so far as it was in him the man loved
+her. He had set his strong will to trample on his past, to rise to a
+place where no man could shake his security with proof of his former
+misdeeds. He meant to marry her and to place her out of reach of those
+evil days of his. Only Struve was left of the old gang, and he knew
+the Wolf well enough to be sure that the fellow would delight in
+blackmailing him. The convict's mouth must be closed. But just now he
+must promise t she wanted, and he did.
+
+The promise was still on his lips when a third person strode into their
+conversation.
+
+“Sorry I had to leave you so hastily, Miss Kinney. I'm ready to take you
+to the hotel now if it suits you.”
+
+Both of them turned quickly, to see the man from the Panhandle
+sauntering forth from the darkness. There was a slight smile on his
+face, which did not abate when he nodded to Dunke amiably.
+
+“You?” exclaimed the mine-owner angrily.
+
+“Why, yes--me. Hope we didn't inconvenience you, seh, by postponing the
+coyote's journey to Kingdom Come. My friend had to take a hand because
+he is a ranger, and I sat in to oblige him. No hard feelings, I hope.”
+
+“Did you--Are you all safe?” Margaret asked.
+
+“Yes, ma'am. Got away slick and clean.”
+
+“Where?” barked Dunke.
+
+“Where what, my friend?”
+
+“Where did you take him?”
+
+Larry laughed in slow deep enjoyment. “I hate to disappoint you, but if
+I told that would be telling. No, I reckon I won't table my cards yet a
+while. If you're playing in this game of Hi-Spy go to it and hunt.”
+
+“Perhaps you don't know that I am T. J. Dunke.”
+
+“You don't say! And I'm General Grant. This lady hyer is Florence
+Nightingale or Martha Washington, I disremember which.”
+
+Miss Kinney laughed. “Whichever she is she's very very tired,” she said.
+“I think I'll accept your offer to see me to the hotel, Mr. Neill.”
+
+She nodded a careless good night to the mine-owner, and touched the
+horse with her heel. At the porch of the rather primitive hotel she
+descended stiffly from the saddle.
+
+Before she left the Southerner--or the Westerner, for sometimes she
+classified him as one, sometimes as the other--she asked him one
+hesitant question.
+
+“Were you thinking of going out again tonight?”
+
+“I did think of taking a turn out to see if I could find Fraser.
+Anything I can do for you?”
+
+“Yes. Please don't go. I don't want to have to worry about you. I have
+had enough trouble for the present.”
+
+“Would you worry about me?” he asked quietly, his eyes steadily on her.
+
+“I lie awake about the most unaccountable things sometimes.”
+
+He smiled in his slow Southern fashion. “Very well. I'll stay indoors.
+I reckon Steve ain't lost, anyhow. You're too tired to have to lie awake
+about me to-night. There's going to be lots of other nights for you to
+think of me.”
+
+She glanced at him with a quick curiosity. “Well, of all the conceit I
+ever heard!”
+
+“I'm the limit, ain't I?” he grinned as he took himself off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX -- DOWN THE JACKRABBIT SHAFT.
+
+Next morning Larry got up so late that he had to Order a special
+breakfast for himself, the dining-room being closed. He found one guest
+there, however, just beginning her oatmeal, and he invited himself to
+eat at her table.
+
+“Good mawnin', Miss Kinney. You don't look like you had been lying awake
+worrying about me,” he began by way of opening the conversation.
+
+Nor did she. Youth recuperates quickly, and after a night's sound sleep
+she was glowing with health and sweet vitality. He could see a flush
+beat into the fresh softness of her flesh, but she lifted her dark
+lashes promptly to meet him, and came to the sex duel gaily.
+
+“I suppose you think I had to take a sleeping-powder to keep me from
+it?” she flashed back.
+
+“Oh, well, a person can dream,” he suggested.
+
+“How did you know? But you are right. I did dream of you.”
+
+To the waiter he gave his order before answering her. “Some oatmeal and
+bacon and eggs. Yes, coffee. And some hot cakes, Charlie. Did you honest
+dream about me?” This last not to the Chinese waiter who had padded
+soft-footed to the kitchen.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She smiled shyly at him with sweet innocence, and he drew his chair a
+trifle closer.
+
+“Tell me.”
+
+“I don't like to.”
+
+“But you must. Go on.”
+
+“Well,” very reluctantly. “I dreamed I was visiting the penitentiary and
+you were there in stripes. You were in for stealing a sheep, I think.
+Yes, that was it, for stealing a sheep.”
+
+“Couldn't you make it something more classy if you're bound to have me
+in?” he begged, enjoying immensely the rise she was taking out of him.
+
+“I have to tell it the way it was,” she insisted, her eyes bubbling with
+fun. “And it seems you were the prison cook. First thing I knew you
+were standing in front of a wall and two hundred of the prisoners were
+shooting at you. They were using your biscuits as bullets.”
+
+“That was a terrible revenge to take on me for baking them.”
+
+“It seems you had your sheep with you--the one you stole, and you and it
+were being pelted all over.”
+
+“Did you see a lady hold-up among those shooting at me?” he inquired
+anxiously.
+
+She shook her head. “And just when the biscuits were flying thickest the
+wall opened and Mr. Fraser appeared. He caught you and the sheep by
+the back of your necks, and flung you in. Then the wall closed, and I
+awoke.”
+
+“That's about as near the facts as dreams usually get.”
+
+He was very much pleased, for it would have been a great disappointment
+to him if she had admitted dreaming about him for any reason except to
+make fun of him. The thing about her that touched his imagination most
+was something wild and untamed, some quality of silken strength in her
+slim supple youth that scoffed at all men and knew none as master. He
+meant to wrest from her if he could an interest that would set him apart
+in her mind from all others, but he wanted the price of victory to cost
+him something. Thus the value of it would be enhanced.
+
+“But tell me about your escape--all about it and what became of
+Lieutenant Fraser. And first of all, who the lady was that opened the
+door for you,” she demanded.
+
+“She was his sister.”
+
+“Oh! His sister.” Her voice was colorless. She observed him without
+appearing to do so. “Very pretty, I thought her. Didn't you?”
+
+“Right nice looking. Had a sort of an expression made a man want to look
+at her again.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Innocently unaware that he was being pumped, he contributed more
+information. “And that game.”
+
+“She was splendid. I can see her now opening the door in the face of the
+bullets.”
+
+“Never a scream out of her either. Just as cool.”
+
+“That is the quality men admire most, isn't it--courage?”
+
+“I don't reckon that would come first. Course it wouldn't make a hit
+with a man to have a woman puling around all the time.”
+
+“My kind, you mean.”
+
+Though she was smiling at him with her lips, it came to him that his
+words were being warped to a wrong meaning.
+
+“No, I don't,” he retorted bluntly.
+
+“As I remember it, I was bawling every chance I got yesterday and the
+day before,” she recalled, with fine contempt of herself.
+
+“Oh, well! You had reason a-plenty. And sometimes a woman cries just
+like a man cusses. It don't mean anything. I once knew a woman wet her
+handkerchief to a sop crying because her husband forgot one mo'ning to
+kiss her good-by. She quit irrigating to run into a burning house after
+a neighbor's kids.”
+
+“I accept your apology for my behavior if you'll promise I won't do it
+again,” she laughed. “But tell me more about Miss Fraser. Does she live
+here?”
+
+For a moment he was puzzled. “Miss Fraser! Oh! She gave up that name
+several years ago. Mrs. Collins they call her. And say, you ought to see
+her kiddies. You'd fall in love with them sure.”
+
+The girl covered her mistake promptly with a little laugh. It would
+never do for him to know she had been yielding to incipient jealousy.
+“Why can't I know them? I want to meet her too.”
+
+The door opened and a curly head was thrust in. “Dining-room closes for
+breakfast at nine. My clock says it's ten-thirty now. Pretty near work
+to keep eating that long, ain't it? And this Sunday, too! I'll have you
+put in the calaboose for breaking the Sabbath.”
+
+“We're only bending it,” grinned Neill. “Good mo'ning, Lieutenant. How
+is Mrs. Collins, and the pickaninnies?”
+
+“First rate. Waiting in the parlor to be introduced to Miss Kinney.”
+
+“We're through,” announced Margaret, rising.
+
+“You too, Tennessee? The proprietor will be grateful.”
+
+The young women took to each other at once. Margaret was very fond of
+children, and the little boy won her heart immediately. Both he and his
+baby sister were well-trained, healthy, and lovable little folks, and
+they adopted “Aunt Peggy” enthusiastically.
+
+Presently the ranger proposed to Neill an adjournment.
+
+“I got to take some breakfast down the Jackrabbit shaft to my prisoner.
+Wanter take a stroll that way?” he asked.
+
+“If the ladies will excuse us.”
+
+“Glad to get rid of you,” Miss Kinney assured him promptly, but with a
+bright smile that neutralized the effect of her sauciness. “Mrs. Collins
+and I want to have a talk.”
+
+The way to the Jackrabbit lay up a gulch behind the town. Up one incline
+was a shaft-house with a great gray dump at the foot of it. This they
+left behind them, climbing the hill till they came to the summit.
+
+The ranger pointed to another shaft-house and dump on the next hillside.
+
+“That's the Mal Pais, from which the district is named. Dunke owns it
+and most of the others round here. His workings and ours come together
+in several places, but we have boarded up the tunnels at those points
+and locked the doors we put in. Wonder where Brown is? I told him to
+meet me here to let us down.”
+
+At this moment they caught sight of him coming up a timbered draw. He
+lowered them into the shaft, which was about six hundred feet deep.
+From the foot of the shaft went a tunnel into the heart of the mountain.
+Steve led the way, flashing an electric searchlight as he went.
+
+“We aren't working this part of the mine any more,” he explained. “It
+connects with the newer workings by a tunnel. We'll go back that way to
+the shaft.”
+
+“You've got quite a safe prison,” commented the other.
+
+“It's commodious, anyhow; and I reckon it's safe. If a man was to
+get loose he couldn't reach the surface without taking somebody into
+partner-ship with him. There ain't but three ways to daylight; one by
+the shaft we came down, another by way of our shaft-house, and the third
+by Dunke's, assuming he could break through into the Mal Pais. He'd
+better not break loose and go to wandering around. There are seventeen
+miles of workings down here in the Jackrabbit, let alone the Mal Pais.
+He might easily get lost and starve to death. Here he is at the end of
+this tunnel.”
+
+Steve flashed the light twice before he could believe his eyes. There
+was no sign of Struve except the handcuffs depending from an iron chain
+connected by a heavy staple with the granite wall. Apparently he had
+somehow managed to slip from the gyves by working at them constantly.
+
+The officer turned to his friend and laughed. “I reckon I'm holding the
+sack this time. See. There's blood on these cuffs. He rasped his hands
+some before he got them out.”
+
+“Well, you've still got him safe down here somewhere.”
+
+“Yes, I have or Dunke has. The trouble is both the mines are shut down
+just now. He's got about forty miles of tunnel to play hide-and-go-seek
+in. He's in luck if he doesn't starve to death.”
+
+“What are you going to do about it?”
+
+“I'll have to get some of my men out on search-parties--just tell them
+there's a man lost down here without telling them who. I reckon we
+better say nothing about it to the ladies. You know how tender-hearted
+they are. Nellie wouldn't sleep a wink to-night for worrying.”
+
+“All right. We'd better get to it at once then.”
+
+Fraser nodded. “We'll go up and rustle a few of the boys that know the
+mine well. I expect before we find him Mr. Wolf Struve will be a lamb
+and right anxious for the shepherd to arrive.”
+
+All day the search proceeded without results, and all of the next day.
+The evening of this second day found Struve still not accounted for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X -- IN A TUNNEL OF THE MAL PAIS
+
+Although Miss Kinney had assured Neill that she was glad to be rid of
+him it occurred to her more than once in the course of the day that
+he was taking her a little too literally. On Sunday she did not see a
+glimpse of him after he left. At lunch he did not appear, nor was he
+in evidence at dinner. Next morning she learned that he had been to
+breakfast and had gone before she got down. She withheld judgment till
+lunch, being almost certain that he would be on hand to that meal. His
+absence roused her resentment and her independence. If he didn't care to
+see her she certainly did not want to see him. She was not going to sit
+around and wait for him to take her down into the mine he had promised
+she should see. Let him forget his appointment if he liked. He would
+wait a long time before she made any more engagements with him.
+
+About this time Dunke began to flatter himself that he had made an
+impression. Miss Kinney was all smiles. She was graciously pleased to
+take a horseback ride over the camp with him, nor did he know that
+her roving eye was constantly on the lookout for a certain spare,
+clean-built figure she could recognize at a considerable distance by the
+easy, elastic tread. Monday evening the mine-owner called upon her and
+Mrs. Collins, whose brother also was among the missing, and she was
+delighted to accept his invitation to go through the Mal Pais workings
+with him.
+
+“That is, if Mrs. Collins will go, too,” she added as an afterthought.
+
+That young woman hesitated. Though this man had led his miners against
+her brother, she was ready to believe the attack not caused by personal
+enmity. The best of feeling did not exist between the owners of the
+Jackrabbit and those of the Mal Pais. Dunke was suspected of boldly
+crossing into the territory of his neighbor where his veins did not
+lead. But there had been no open rupture. For the very reason that an
+undertow of feeling existed Nellie consented to join the party. She did
+not want by a refusal to put into words a hostility that he had always
+carefully veiled. She was in the position of not wanting to go at all,
+yet wanting still less to decline to do so.
+
+“I shall be glad to go,” she said.
+
+“Fine. We'll start about nine, or nine-thirty say. I'll drive up in a
+surrey.”
+
+“And we'll have lunch for the party put up at the hotel here. I'll get
+some fruit to take along,” said Margaret.
+
+“We'll make a regular picnic of it,” added Dunke heartily. “You'll enjoy
+eating out of a dinner-pail for once just like one of my miners, Miss
+Kinney.”
+
+After he had gone Margaret mentioned to Mrs. Collins her feeling
+concerning him. “I don't really like him. Or rather I don't give him my
+full confidence. He seems pleasant enough, too.” She laughed a little as
+she added: “You know he does me the honor to admire me.”
+
+“Yes, I know that. I was wondering how you felt about it.”
+
+“How ought one to feel about one of the great mining kings of the West?”
+
+“Has that anything to do with it, my dear? I mean his being a mining
+king?” asked Mrs. Collins gently.
+
+Margaret went up to her and kissed her. “You're a romantic little thing.
+That's because you probably married a heaven-sent man. We can't all be
+fortunate.”
+
+“We none of us need to marry where we don't love.”
+
+“Goodness me! I'm not thinking of marrying Mr. Dunke's millions. The
+only thing is that I don't have a Croesus to exhibit every day at my
+chariot wheels. It's horrid of course, but I have a natural feminine
+reluctance to surrendering him all at once. I don't object in the least
+to trampling on him, but somehow I don't feel ready for his declaration
+of independence.”
+
+“Oh, if that's all!” her friend smiled.
+
+“That's quite all.”
+
+“Perhaps you prefer Texans who come from the Panhandle.”
+
+Mrs. Collins happened to be looking straight at her out of her big brown
+eyes. Wherefore she could not help observing the pink glow that deepened
+in the soft cheeks.
+
+“He hasn't preferred me much lately.”
+
+Nellie knitted her brow in perplexity. “I don't understand. Steve's been
+away, too, nearly all the time. Something is going on that we don't know
+about.”
+
+“Not that I care. Mr. Neill is welcome to stay away.”
+
+Her new friend shot a swift slant look at her. “I don't suppose you
+trample on him much.”
+
+Margaret flushed. “No, I don't. It's the other way. I never saw anybody
+so rude. He does not seem to have any saving sense of the proper thing.”
+
+“He's a man, dearie, and a good one. He may be untrammeled by
+convention, but he is clean and brave. He has eyes that look through
+cowardice and treachery, fine strong eyes that are honest and unafraid.”
+
+“Dear me, you must have studied them a good deal to see all that in
+them,” said Miss Peggy lightly, yet pleased withal.
+
+“My dear,” reproached her friend, so seriously that Peggy repented.
+
+“I didn't really mean it,” she laughed. “I've heard already on good
+authority that you see no man's eyes except the handsome ones in the
+face of Mr. Tim Collins.”
+
+“I do think Tim has fine eyes,” blushed the accused.
+
+“No doubt of it. Since you have been admiring my young man I must praise
+yours,” teased Miss Kinney.
+
+“Am I to wish you joy? I didn't know he was your young man,” flashed
+back the other.
+
+“I understand that you have been trying to put him off on me.”
+
+“You'll find he does not need any 'putting off' on anybody.”
+
+“At least, he has a good friend in you. I think I'll tell him, so that
+when he does condescend to become interested in a young woman he may
+refer her to you for a recommendation.”
+
+The young wife borrowed for the occasion some of Miss Peggy's audacity.
+“I'm recommending him to that young woman now, my dear,” she made
+answer.
+
+Dunke's party left for the mine on schedule time, Water-proof coats and
+high lace-boots had been borrowed for the ladies as a protection against
+the moisture they were sure to meet in the tunnels one thousand feet
+below the ground. The mine-owner had had the hoisting-engine started for
+the occasion, and the cage took them down as swiftly and as smoothly
+as a metropolitan elevator. Nevertheless Margaret clung tightly to
+her friend, for if was her first experience of the kind. She had never
+before dropped nearly a quarter of a mile straight down into the heart
+of the earth and she felt a smothered sensation, a sense of danger
+induced by her unaccustomed surroundings. It is the unknown that awes,
+and when she first stepped from the cage and peered down the long, low
+tunnel through which a tramway ran she caught her breath rather quickly.
+She had an active imagination, and she conjured cave-ins, explosions,
+and all the other mine horrors she had read about.
+
+Their host had spared no expense to make the occasion a gala one.
+Electric lights were twinkling at intervals down the tunnel, and an
+electric ore-car with a man in charge was waiting to run them into the
+workings nearly a mile distant. Dunke dealt out candles and assisted his
+guests into the car, which presently carried them deep into the mine.
+Margaret observed that the timbered sides of the tunnel leaned inward
+slightly and that the roof was heavily cross-timbered.
+
+“It looks safe,” she thought aloud.
+
+“It's safe enough,” returned Dunke carelessly. “The place for cave-ins
+is at the head of the workings, before we get drifts timbered.”
+
+“Are we going into any of those places?”
+
+“I wouldn't take you into any place that wasn't safe, Miss Margaret.”
+
+“Is it always so dreadfully warm down here?” she asked.
+
+“You must remember we're somewhere around a thousand feet in the heart
+of the earth. Yes, it's always warm.”
+
+“I don't see how the men stand it and work.”
+
+“Oh, they get used to it.”
+
+They left the car and followed a drift which took them into a region of
+perpetual darkness, into which the electric lights did not penetrate.
+Margaret noticed that her host carried his candle with ease, holding
+it at an angle that gave the best light and most resistance to the
+air, while she on her part had much ado to keep hers from going out.
+Frequently she had to stop and let the tiny flame renew its hold on the
+base of supplies. So, without his knowing it, she fell behind gradually,
+and his explanations of stopes, drifts, air-drills, and pay-streaks fell
+only upon the already enlightened ears of Mrs. Collins.
+
+The girl had been picking her way through some puddles of water that had
+settled on the floor, and when she looked up the lights of those ahead
+had disappeared. She called to them faintly and hurried on, appalled
+at the thought of possibly losing them in these dreadful underground
+catacombs where Stygian night forever reigned. But her very hurry
+delayed her, for in her haste the gust of her motion swept out the
+flame. She felt her way forward along the wall, in a darkness such as
+she had never conceived before. Nor could she know that by chance she
+was following the wrong wall. Had she chosen the other her hand must
+have come to a break in it which showed that a passage at that point
+deflected from the drift toward the left. Unconsciously she passed this,
+already frightened but resolutely repressing her fear.
+
+“I'll not let them know what an idiot I am. I'll not! I'll not!” she
+told herself.
+
+Therefore she did not call yet, thinking she must come on them at any
+moment, unaware that every step was taking her farther from the gallery
+into which they had turned. When at last she cried out it was too late.
+The walls hemmed in her cry and flung it back tauntingly to her--the
+damp walls against which she crouched in terror of the subterranean
+vault in which she was buried. She was alone with the powers of
+darkness, with the imprisoned spirits of the underworld that fought
+inarticulately against the audacity of the puny humans who dared venture
+here. So her vivid imagination conceived it, terrorizing her against
+both will and reason.
+
+How long she wandered, a prey to terror, calling helplessly in the
+blackness, she did not know. It seemed to her that she must always
+wander so, a perpetual prisoner condemned to this living grave. So that
+it was with a distinct shock of glad surprise she heard a voice answer
+faintly her calls. Calling and listening alternately, she groped her way
+in the direction of the sounds, and so at last came plump against the
+figure of the approaching rescuer.
+
+“Who is it?” a hoarse voice demanded.
+
+But before she could answer a match flared and was held close to her
+face. The same light that revealed her to him told the girl who this man
+was that had met her alone a million miles from human aid. The haggard,
+drawn countenance with the lifted upper lip and the sunken eyes that
+glared into hers belonged to the convict Nick Struve.
+
+The match went out before either of them spoke.
+
+“You--you here!” she exclaimed, and was oddly conscious that her relief
+at meeting even him had wiped out for the present her fear of the man.
+
+“For God's sake, have you got anything to eat?” he breathed thickly.
+
+It had been part of the play that each member of their little party
+should carry a dinner-pail just like an ordinary miner. Wherefore she
+had hers still in her hand.
+
+“Yes, and I have a candle here. Have you another match?”
+
+He lit the candle with a shaking hand.
+
+“Gimme that bucket,” he ordered gruffly, and began to devour ravenously
+the food he found in it, tearing at sandwiches and gulping them down
+like a hungry dog.
+
+“What day is this?” he stopped to ask after he had stayed the first
+pangs.
+
+She told him Tuesday.
+
+“I ain't eaten since Saturday,” he told her. “I figured it was a week.
+There ain't any days in this place--nothin' but night. Can't tell one
+from another.”
+
+“It's terrible,” she agreed.
+
+His appetite was wolfish. She could see that he was spent, so weak
+with hunger that he had reeled against the wall as she handed him
+the dinner-pail. Pallor was on the sunken face, and exhaustion in the
+trembling hands and unsteady gait.
+
+“I'm about all in, what with hunger and all I been through. I thought I
+was out of my head when I heard you holler.” He snatched up the candle
+from the place where he had set it and searched her face by its flame.
+“How come you down here? You didn't come alone. What you doin' here?” he
+demanded suspiciously.
+
+“I came down with Mr. Dunke and a friend to look over his mine. I had
+never been in one before.”
+
+“Dunke!” A spasm of rage swept the man's face. “You're a friend of his,
+are you? Where is he? If you came with him how come you to be roaming
+around alone?”
+
+“I got lost. Then my light went out.”
+
+“So you're a friend of Dunke, that damned double-crosser! He's a
+millionaire, you think, a big man in this Western country. That's what
+he claims, eh?” Struve shook a fist into the air in a mad burst of
+passion. “Just watch me blow him higher'n a kite. I know what he is, and
+I got proof. The Judas! I keep my mug shut and do time while he gets off
+scot-free and makes his pile. But you listen to me, ma'am. Your friend
+ain't nothin' but an outlaw. If he got his like I got mine he'd be at
+Yuma to-day. Your brother could a-told you. Dunke was at the head of the
+gang that held up that train. We got nabbed, me and Jim. Burch got
+shot in the Catalinas by one of the rangers, and Smith died of fever in
+Sonora. But Dunke, curse him, he sneaks out and buys the officers off
+with our plunder. That's what he done--let his partners get railroaded
+through while he sails out slick and easy. But he made one mistake, Mr.
+Dunke did. He wrote me a letter and told me to keep mum and he would
+fix it for me to get out in a few months. I believed him, kept my mouth
+padlocked, and served seven years without him lifting a hand for me.
+Then, when I make my getaway he tries first off to shut my mouth by
+putting me out of business. That's what your friend done, ma'am.”
+
+“Is this true?” asked the girl whitely.
+
+“So help me God, every word of it.”
+
+“He let my brother go to prison without trying to help him?”
+
+“Worse than that. He sent him to prison. Jim was all right when he first
+met up with Dunke. It was Dunke that got him into his wild ways and
+led him into trouble. It was Dunke took him into the hold-up business.
+Hadn't been for him Jim never would have gone wrong.”
+
+She made no answer. Her mind was busy piecing out the facts of her
+brother's misspent life. As a little girl she remembered her big brother
+before he went away, good-natured, friendly, always ready to play with
+her. She was sure he had not been bad, only fatally weak. Even this man
+who had slain him was ready to testify to that.
+
+She came back from her absorption to find Struve outlining what he meant
+to do.
+
+“We'll go back this passage along the way you came. I want to find
+Mr. Dunke. I allow I've got something to tell him he will be right
+interested in hearing.”
+
+He picked up the candle and led the way along the tunnel. Margaret
+followed him in silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI -- THE SOUTHERNER TAKES A RISK
+
+The convict shambled forward through the tunnel till he came to a drift
+which ran into it at a right angle.
+
+“Which way now?” he demanded.
+
+“I don't know.”
+
+“Don't know,” he screamed. “Didn't you just come along here? Do you want
+me to get lost again in this hell-hole?”
+
+The stricken fear leaped into his face. He had forgotten her danger,
+forgotten everything but the craven terror that engulfed him. Looking at
+him, she was struck for the first time with the thought that he might be
+on the verge of madness.
+
+His cry still rang through the tunnel when Margaret saw a gleam of
+distant light. She pointed it out to Struve, who wheeled and fastened
+his eyes upon it. Slowly the faint yellow candle-rays wavered toward
+them. A man was approaching through the gloom, a large man whom she
+presently recognized as Dunke. A quick gasp from the one beside her
+showed that he too knew the man. He took a dozen running steps forward,
+so that in his haste the candle flickered out.
+
+“That you, Miss Margaret?” the mine-owner called.
+
+Neither she nor Struve answered. The latter had stopped and was waiting
+tensely his enemy's approach. When he was within a few yards of the
+other Dunke raised his candle and peered into the blackness ahead of
+him.
+
+“What's the matter? Isn't it you, Miss Peggy?”
+
+“No, it ain't. It's your old pal, Nick Struve. Ain't you glad to see
+him, Joe?”
+
+Dunke looked him over without a word. His thin lips set and his gaze
+grew wall-eyed. The candle passed from right to left hand.
+
+Struve laughed evilly. “No, I'm not going to pay you that way--not yet;
+nor you ain't going to rid yourself of me either. Want to know why, Mr.
+Millionaire Dunke, what used to be my old pal? Want to know why it ain't
+going to do you any good to drop that right hand any closeter to your
+hip pocket?”
+
+Still Dunke said nothing, but the candle-glow that lit his face showed
+an ugly expression.
+
+“Don't you whip that gun out, Joe Dunke. Don't you! 'Cause why? If you
+do you're a goner.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that I kept the letter you wrote me seven years ago, and have
+put it where it will do you no good if anything happens to me. That's
+why you won't draw that gun, Joe Dunke. If you do it will send you
+to Yuma. Millionaire you may be, but that won't keep you from wearing
+stripes.”
+
+Struve's voice rang exultantly. From the look in the face of his old
+comrade in crime who had prospered at his expense, as he chose to think,
+he saw that for the time being he had got the whip-hand.
+
+There was a long silence before Dunke asked hoarsely:
+
+“What do you want?”
+
+“I want you to hide me. I want you to get me out of this country. I want
+you to divvy up with me. Didn't we grub-stake you with the haul from the
+Overland? Don't we go share and share alike, the two of us that's left?
+Ain't that fair and square? You wouldn't want to do less than right by
+an old pal, cap, you that are so respectable and proper now. You ain't
+forgot the man that lay in the ditch with you the night we held up the
+flyer, the man that rode beside you when you shot--”
+
+“For God's sake don't rake up forgotten scrapes. We were all young
+together then. I'll do what's right by you, but you got to keep your
+mouth shut and let me manage this.”
+
+“The way you managed it before when you let me rot at Yuma seven years,”
+ jeered Struve.
+
+“I couldn't help it. They were on my trail and I had to lie low. I tell
+you I'll pull you through if you do as I say.”
+
+“And I tell you I don't believe a word you say. You double-crossed me
+before and you will again if you get a chance. I'll not let you out of
+my sight.”
+
+“Don't be a fool, Nick. How can I help you if I can't move around to
+make the arrangements for running you across the line?”
+
+“And what guarantee have I got you ain't making arrangements to have me
+scragged? Think I'm forgetting Saturday night?”
+
+The girl in the blackness without the candle-shine moved slightly.
+
+“What's that?” asked Dunke, startled.
+
+“What's what?”
+
+“That noise. Some one moved.”
+
+Dunke's revolver came swiftly from his pocket.
+
+“I reckon it must a-been the girl.”
+
+“What girl? Miss Kinney?”
+
+Dunke's hard eyes fastened on the other like steel augers.
+
+Margaret came forward and took wraithlike shape.
+
+“I want you to take me to Mrs. Collins, Mr. Dunke,” she said.
+
+The steel probes shifted from Struve to her.
+
+“What did you hear, Miss Kinney? This man is a storehouse of lies. I let
+him run on to see how far he would go.”
+
+Struve's harsh laugh filled the tunnel.
+
+“Take me to Mrs. Collins,” she reiterated wearily.
+
+“Not till I know what you heard,” answered Dunke doggedly.
+
+“I heard everything,” she avowed boldly. “The whole wretched, miserable
+truth.”
+
+She would have pushed past him, but he caught her arm.
+
+“Let me go!”
+
+“I tell you it's all a mistake. I can explain it. Give me time.”
+
+“I won't listen, I want never to see either of you again. What have
+I ever done that I should be mixed up with such men?” she cried, with
+bitter despair.
+
+“Don't go off half-cocked. 'Course I'll take you to Mrs. Collins if you
+like. But you got to listen to what I say.”
+
+Another candle glimmered dimly in the tunnel and came toward them. It
+presently stopped, and a voice rolled along the vault.
+
+“Hello, there!”
+
+Margaret would have known that voice anywhere among a thousand. Now it
+came to her sweet as water after a drought. She slipped past Dunke and
+ran stumbling through the darkness to its source.
+
+“Mr. Neill! Mr. Neill!”
+
+The pitiful note in her voice, which he recognized instantly, stirred
+him to the core. Astonished that she should be in the mine and in
+trouble, he dashed forward, and his candle went out in the rush. Groping
+in the darkness her hands encountered his. His arms closed round
+her, and in her need of protection that brushed aside conventions and
+non-essentials, the need that had spoken in her cry of relief, in her
+hurried flight to him, she lay panting and trembling in his arms. He
+held her tight, as one who would keep his own against the world.
+
+“How did you get here--what has happened?” he demanded.
+
+Hurriedly she explained.
+
+“Oh, take me away, take me away!” she concluded, nestling to him with no
+thought now of seeking to disguise her helpless dependence upon him,
+of hiding from herself the realization that he was the man into whose
+keeping destiny had ordained that she was to give her heart.
+
+“All right, honey. You're sure all safe now,” he said tenderly, and in
+the blackness his lips sought and met hers in a kiss that sealed the
+understanding their souls had reached.
+
+At the sound of Neill's voice Dunke had extinguished the candle and
+vanished in the darkness with Struve, the latter holding him by the arm
+in a despairing grip. Neill shouted again and again, as he relighted his
+candle, but there came no answer to his calls.
+
+“We had better make for the shaft,” he said.
+
+They set out on the long walk to the opening that led up to the light
+and the pure air. For a while they walked on in silence. At last he took
+her hand and guided her fingers across the seam on his wrist.
+
+“It don't seem only four days since you did that, honey,” he murmured.
+
+“Did I do that?” Her voice was full of self-reproach, and before he
+could stop her she lifted his hand and kissed the welt.
+
+“Don't, sweet. I deserved what I got and more. I'm ready with that
+apology you didn't want then, Peggy.”
+
+“But I don't want it now, either. I won't have it. Didn't I tell you
+I wouldn't? Besides,” she added, with a little leap of laughter in her
+voice, “why should you ask pardon for kissing the girl you were meant
+to--to----”
+
+He finished it for her.
+
+“To marry, Peggy. I didn't know it then, but I knew it before you said
+good-by with your whip.”
+
+“And I didn't know it till next morning,” she said.
+
+“Did you know it then, when you were so mean to me?”
+
+“That was why I was so mean to you. I had to punish myself and you
+because I--liked you so well.”
+
+She buried her face shyly in his coat to cover this confession.
+
+It seemed easy for both of them to laugh over nothing in the exuberance
+of their common happiness. His joy pealed now delightedly.
+
+“I can't believe it--that four days ago you wasn't on the earth for me.
+Seems like you always belonged; seems like I always enjoyed your sassy
+ways.”
+
+“That's just the way I feel about you. It's really scandalous that in
+less than a week--just a little more than half a week--we should be
+engaged. We are engaged, aren't we?”
+
+“Very much.”
+
+“Well, then--it sounds improper, but it isn't the least bit. It's right.
+Isn't it?”
+
+“It ce'tainly is.”
+
+“But you know I've always thought that people who got engaged so soon
+are the same kind of people that correspond through matrimonial papers.
+I didn't suppose it would ever happen to me.”
+
+“Some right strange things happen while a person is alive, Peggy.”
+
+“And I don't really know anything at all about you except that you say
+your name is Larry Neill. Maybe you are married already.”
+
+She paused, startled at the impossible thought.
+
+“It must have happened before I can remember, then,” he laughed.
+
+“Or engaged. Very likely you have been engaged a dozen times. Southern
+people do, they say.”
+
+“Then I'm an exception.”
+
+“And me--you don't know anything about me.”
+
+“A fellow has to take some risk or quit living,” he told her gaily.
+
+“When you think of my temper doesn't it make you afraid?”
+
+“The samples I've had were surely right exhilarating,” he conceded. “I'm
+expecting enough difference of opinion to keep life interesting.”
+
+“Well, then, if you won't be warned you'll just have to take me and risk
+it.”
+
+And she slipped her arm into his and held up her lips for the kiss
+awaiting her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII -- EXIT DUNKE
+
+Dunke plowed back through the tunnel in a blind whirl of passion. Rage,
+chagrin, offended vanity, acute disappointment, all blended with a
+dull heartache to which he was a stranger. He was a dangerous man in
+a dangerous mood, and so Wolf Struve was likely to discover. But the
+convict was not an observant man. His loose upper lip lifted in the ugly
+sneer to which it was accustomed.
+
+“Got onto you, didn't she?”
+
+Dunke stuck his candle in a niche of the ragged granite wall, strode
+across to his former partner in crime, and took the man by the throat.
+
+“I'll learn you to keep that vile tongue of yours still,” he said
+between set teeth, and shook the hapless man till he was black in the
+face.
+
+Struve hung, sputtering and coughing, against the wall where he had been
+thrown. It was long before he could do more than gasp.
+
+“What--what did you do--that for?” His furtive ratlike face looked
+venomous in its impotent anger. “I'll pay you for this--and don't
+you--forget it, Joe Dunke!”
+
+“You'd shoot me in the back the way you did Jim Kinney if you got a
+chance. I know that; but you see you won't get a chance.”
+
+“I ain't looking for no such chance. I--”
+
+“That's enough. I don't have to stand for your talk even if I do have to
+take care of you. Light your candle and move along this tunnel lively.”
+
+Something in Dunke's eye quelled the rebellion the other contemplated.
+He shuffled along, whining as he went that he would never have looked
+for his old pal to treat him so. They climbed ladders to the next level,
+passed through an empty stope, and stopped at the end of a drift.
+
+“I'll arrange to get you out of here to-night and have you run across
+the line. I'm going to give you three hundred dollars. That's the last
+cent you'll ever get out of me. If you ever come back to this country
+I'll see that you're hanged as you deserve.”
+
+With that Dunke turned on his heel and was gone. But his contempt for
+the ruffian he had cowed was too fearless. He would have thought so
+if he could have known of the shadow that dogged his heels through the
+tunnel, if he could have seen the bare fangs that had gained Struve
+his name of “Wolf,” if he could have caught the flash of the knife that
+trembled in the eager hand. He did not know that, as he shot up in the
+cage to the sunlight, the other was filling the tunnel with imprecations
+and wild threats, that he was hugging himself with the promise of a
+revenge that should be sure and final.
+
+Dunke went about the task of making the necessary arrangements
+personally. He had his surrey packed with food, and about eleven o'clock
+drove up to the mine and was lowered to the ninth level. An hour later
+he stepped out of the cage with a prisoner whom he kept covered with a
+revolver.
+
+“It's that fellow Struve,” he explained to the astonished engineer in
+the shaft-house. “I found him down below. It seems that Fraser took
+him down the Jackrabbit and he broke loose and worked through to our
+ground.”
+
+“Do you want any help in taking him downtown, sir? Shall I phone for the
+marshal?”
+
+His boss laughed scornfully.
+
+“When I can't handle one man after I've got him covered I'll let you
+know, Johnson.”
+
+The two men went out into the starlit night and got into the surrey. The
+play with the revolver had hitherto been for the benefit of Johnson,
+but it now became very real. Dunke jammed the rim close to the other's
+temple.
+
+“I want that letter I wrote you. Quick, by Heaven! No fairy-tales, but
+the letter!”
+
+“I swear, Joe--”
+
+“The letter, you villain! I know you never let it go out of your
+possession. Give it up! Quick!”
+
+Struve's hand stole to his breast, came out slowly to the edge of his
+coat, then leaped with a flash of something bright toward the other's
+throat. Simultaneously the revolver rang out. A curse, the sound of
+a falling body, and the frightened horses leaped forward. The wheels
+slipped over the edge of the narrow mountain road, and surrey, horses,
+and driver plunged a hundred feet down to the sharp, broken rocks below.
+
+Johnson, hearing the shot, ran out and stumbled over a body lying in
+the road. By the bright moonlight he could see that it was that of his
+employer. The surrey was nowhere in sight, but he could easily make
+out where it had slipped over the precipice. He ran back into the
+shaft-house and began telephoning wildly to town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII -- STEVE OFFERS CONGRATULATIONS
+
+When Fraser reached the dining-room for breakfast his immediate family
+had finished and departed. He had been up till four o'clock and his
+mother had let him sleep as long as he would. Now, at nine, he was up
+again and fresh as a daisy after a morning bath.
+
+He found at the next table two other late breakfasters.
+
+“Mo'ning, Miss Kinney. How are you, Tennessee?” he said amiably.
+
+Both Larry and the young woman admitted good health, the latter so
+blushingly that Steve's keen eyes suggested to him that he might not be
+the only one with news to tell this morning.
+
+“What's that I hear about Struve and Dunke?” asked Neill at once.
+
+“Oh, you've heard it. Well, it's true. I judge Dunke was arranging to
+get him out of the country. Anyhow, Johnson says he took the fellow
+out to his surrey from the shaft-house of the Mal Pais under his gun.
+A moment later the engineer heard a shot and ran out. Dunke lay in the
+road dead, with a knife through his heart. We found the surrey down in
+the canyon. It had gone over the edge of the road. Both the hawsses were
+dead, and Struve had disappeared. How the thing happened I reckon never
+will be known unless the convict tells it. My guess would be that Dunke
+attacked him and the convict was just a little bit more than ready for
+him.”
+
+“Have you any idea where Struve is?”
+
+“The obvious guess would be that he is heading for Mexico. But I've got
+another notion. He knows that's where we will be looking for him.
+His record shows that he used to trail with a bunch of outlaws up in
+Wyoming. That was most twenty years ago. His old pals have disappeared
+long since. But he knows that country up there. He'll figure that down
+here he's sure to be caught and hanged sooner or later. Up there he'll
+have a chance to hide under another name.”
+
+Neill nodded. “That's a big country up there and the mountains are full
+of pockets. If he can reach there he will be safe.”
+
+“Maybe,” the ranger amended quietly.
+
+“Would you follow him?”
+
+The officer's opaque gaze met the eyes of his friend. “We don't aim to
+let a prisoner make his getaway once we get our hands on him. Wyoming
+ain't so blamed far to travel after him--if I learn he is there.”
+
+For a moment all of them were silent. Each of them was thinking of the
+fellow and the horrible trail of blood he had left behind him in one
+short week. Margaret looked at her lover and shuddered. She had not the
+least doubt that this man sitting opposite them would bring the criminal
+back to his punishment, but the sinister grotesque shadow of the convict
+seemed to fall between her and her happiness.
+
+Larry caught her hand under the table and gave it a little pressure of
+reassurance. He spoke in a low voice. “This hasn't a thing to do with
+us, Peggy--not a thing. They were already both out of your life.”
+
+“Yes, I know, but--”
+
+“There aren't any buts.” He smiled warmly, and his smile took the other
+man into their confidence. “You've been having a nightmare. That's past.
+See the sunshine on those hills. It's bright mo'ning, girl. A new day
+for you and for me.”
+
+Steve grinned. “This is awful sudden, Tennessee. You must a-been sawing
+wood right industrious on the hawssback ride and down in the tunnel. I
+expect there wasn't any sunshine down there, was there?”
+
+“You go to grass, Steve.”
+
+“No, Tennessee is ce'tainly no two-bit man. Lemme see.
+One--two--three--four days. That's surely going some,” the ranger
+soliloquized.
+
+“Mr. Fraser,” the young woman reproved with a blush.
+
+“Don't mind him, Peggy. He's merely jealous,” came back Larry.
+
+“Course I'm jealous. Whyfor not? What license have these Panhandle guys
+to come in and tote off our girls? But don't mind me. I'll pay strict
+attention to my ham and eggs and not see a thing that's going on.”
+
+“Lieutenant!” Miss Margaret was both embarrassed and shocked.
+
+“Want me to shut my eyes, Tennessee?”
+
+“Next time we get engaged you'll not be let in on the ground floor,”
+ Neill predicted.
+
+“Four days! My, my! If that ain't rapid transit for fair!”
+
+“You're a man of one idea, Steve. Cayn't you see that the fact's the
+main thing, not the time it took to make it one?”
+
+“And counting out Sunday and Monday, it only leaves two days.”
+
+“Don't let that interfere with your breakfast. You haven't been elected
+timekeeper for this outfit, you know!”
+
+Fraser recovered from his daze and duly offered congratulations to the
+one and hopes for unalloyed joy to the other party to the engagement.
+
+“But four days!” he added in his pleasant drawl. “That's sure some
+precipitous. Just to look at him, ma'am”--this innocently to Peggy--“a
+man wouldn't think he had it in him to locate, stake out, and do the
+necessary assessment work on such a rich claim as the Margaret Kinney
+all in four days. Mostly a fellow don't strike such high-grade ore
+without a lot of--”
+
+“That will do for you, lieutenant,” interrupted Miss Kinney, with merry,
+sparkling eyes. “You needn't think we're going to let you trail this off
+into a compliment now. I'm going to leave you and see what Mrs. Collins
+says. She won't sit there and parrot 'Four days' for the rest of her
+life.”
+
+With which Mistress Peggy sailed from the room in mock hauteur.
+
+When Larry came back from closing the door after her, his friend fell
+upon him with vigorous hands to the amazement of Wun Hop, the waiter.
+
+“You blamed lucky son of a gun,” he cried exuberantly between punches.
+“You've ce'tainly struck pure gold, Tennessee. Looks like Old Man Good
+Luck has come home to roost with you, son.”
+
+The other, smiling, shook hands with him. “I'm of that opinion myself,
+Steve,” he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II -- THE GIRL OF LOST VALLEY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I -- IN THE FIRE ZONE
+
+“Say, you Teddy hawss, I'm plumb fed up with sagebrush and scenery. I
+kinder yearn for co'n bread and ham. I sure would give six bits for a
+drink of real wet water. Yore sentiments are similar, I reckon, Teddy.”
+
+The Texan patted the neck of his cow pony, which reached round playfully
+and pretended to nip his leg. They understood each other, and were now
+making the best of a very unpleasant situation. Since morning they had
+been lost on the desert. The heat of midday had found them plowing
+over sandy wastes. The declining sun had left them among the foothills,
+wandering from one to another, in the vain hope that each summit
+might show the silvery gleam of a windmill, or even that outpost
+of civilization, the barb-wire fence. And now the stars looked down
+indifferently, myriads of them, upon the travelers still plodding
+wearily through a land magically transformed by moonlight to a silvery
+loveliness that blotted out all the garish details of day.
+
+The Texan drew rein. “We all been discovering that Wyoming is a powerful
+big state. Going to feed me a cigarette, Teddy. Too bad a hawss cayn't
+smoke his troubles away,” he drawled, and proceeded to roll a cigarette,
+lighting it with one sweeping motion of his arm, that passed down the
+leg of his chaps and ended in the upward curve at his lips.
+
+The flame had not yet died, when faintly through the illimitable velvet
+night there drifted to him a sound.
+
+“Did you hear that, pardner?” the man demanded softly, listening
+intently for a repetition of it.
+
+It came presently, from away over to the left, and, after it, what might
+have been taken for the popping of a distant bunch of firecrackers.
+
+“Celebrating the Fourth some premature, looks like. What? Think not,
+Teddy! Some one getting shot up? Sho! You are romancin', old hawss.”
+
+Nevertheless he swung the pony round and started rapidly in the
+direction of the shots. From time to time there came a renewal of them,
+though the intervals grew longer and the explosions were now individual
+ones. He took the precaution to draw his revolver from the holster and
+to examine it carefully.
+
+“Nothing like being sure. It's a heap better than being sorry
+afterward,” he explained to the cow pony.
+
+For the first time in twelve hours, he struck a road. Following this
+as it wound up to the summit of a hill, he discovered that the area of
+disturbance was in the valley below. For, as he began his descent, there
+was a flash from a clump of cotton-woods almost at his feet.
+
+“Did yo' git him?” a voice demanded anxiously.
+
+“Don't know, dad,” the answer came, young, warm, and tremulous.
+
+“Hello! There's a kid there,” the Texan decided. Aloud, he asked
+quietly: “What's the row, gentlemen?”
+
+One of the figures whirled--it was the boyish one, crouched behind a
+dead horse--and fired at him.
+
+“Hold on, sonny! I'm a stranger. Don't make any more mistakes like
+that.”
+
+“Who are you?”
+
+“Steve Fraser they call me. I just arrived from Texas. Wait a jiff, and
+I'll come down and explain.”
+
+He stayed for no permission, but swung from the saddle, trailed the
+reins, and started down the slope. He could hear a low-voiced colloquy
+between the two dark figures, and one of them called roughly:
+
+“Hands up, friend! We'll take no chances on yo'.”
+
+The Texan's hands went up promptly, just as a bullet flattened itself
+against a rock behind him. It had been fired from the bank of the dry
+wash, some hundred and fifty yards away.
+
+“That's no fair! Both sides oughtn't to plug at me,” he protested,
+grinning.
+
+The darkness which blurred detail melted as Fraser approached, and the
+moonlight showed him a tall, lank, unshaven old mountaineer, standing
+behind a horse, his shotgun thrown across the saddle.
+
+“That's near enough, Mr. Fraser from Texas,” said the old man, in a slow
+voice that carried the Southern intonation. “This old gun is loaded with
+buckshot, and she scatters like hell. Speak yore little piece. How came
+yo' here, right now?”
+
+“I got lost in the Wind River bad lands this mo'ning, and I been playing
+hide and go seek with myself ever since.”
+
+“Where yo' haided for?”
+
+“Gimlet Butte.”
+
+“Huh! That's right funny, too.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because all yo' got to do to reach the butte is to follow this road and
+yore nose for about three miles.”
+
+A bullet flung up a spurt of sand beside the horse.
+
+The young fellow behind the dead horse broke in, with impatient alarm:
+“He's all right, dad. Can't you tell by his way of talking that he's
+from the South? Make him lie down.”
+
+Something sweet and vibrant in the voice lingered afterward in the
+Texan's mind almost like a caress, but at the time he was too busy to
+think of this. He dropped behind a cottonwood, and drew his revolver.
+
+“How many of them are there?” he asked of the lad, in a whisper.
+
+“About six, I think. I'm sorry I shot at you.”
+
+“What's the row?”
+
+“They followed us out of Gimlet Butte. They've been drinking. Isn't that
+some one climbing up the side of the ridge?”
+
+“I believe it is. Let me have your rifle, kid.”
+
+“What for?” The youngster took careful aim, and fired.
+
+A scream from the sagebrush--just one, and then no more.
+
+“Bully for you', Arlie,” the old man said.
+
+None of them spoke for some minutes, then Fraser heard a sob--a stifled
+one, but unmistakable none the less.
+
+“Don't be afraid, kid. We'll stand 'em off,” the Texan encouraged.
+
+“I ain't afraid, but I--I----Oh, God, I've killed a man.”
+
+The Texan stared at him, where he lay in the heavy shadows, shaken with
+his remorse. “Holy smoke! Wasn't he aiming to kill you? He likely isn't
+dead, anyhow. You got real troubles to worry about, without making up
+any.”
+
+He could see the youngster shaking with the horror of it, and could hear
+the staccato sobs forcing themselves through the closed teeth. Something
+about it, some touch of pathos he could not account for, moved his not
+very accessible heart. After all, he was a slim little kid to be engaged
+in such a desperate encounter Fraser remembered his own boyhood and the
+first time he had ever seen bloodshed, and, recalling it, he slipped
+across in the darkness and laid an arm across the slight shoulder.
+
+“Don't you worry, kid. It's all right. You didn't mean--”
+
+He broke off in swift, unspeakable amazement. His eye traveled up the
+slender figure from the telltale skirt. This was no boy at all, but
+a girl. As he took in the mass of blue-black hair and the soft but
+clean-cut modeling from ear to chin, his hand fell from her shoulder.
+What an idiot he had been not to know from the first that such a voice
+could have come only from a woman! He had been deceived by the darkness
+and by the slouch hat she wore. He wanted to laugh in sardonic scorn of
+his perception.
+
+But on the heel of that came a realization of her danger. He must get
+her out of there at once, for he knew that the enemy must be circling
+round, to take them on the flank too. It was not a question of whether
+they could hold off the attackers. They might do that, and yet she
+might be killed while they were doing it. A man used to coping with
+emergencies, his brain now swiftly worked out a way of escape.
+
+“Yore father and I will take care of these coyotes. You slip along those
+shadows up the hill to where my Teddy hawss is, and burn the wind out of
+here,” he told her.
+
+“I'll not leave dad,” she said quickly.
+
+The old mountaineer behind the horse laughed apologetically. “I been
+trying to git her to go, but she won't stir. With the pinto daid, o'
+course we couldn't both make it.”
+
+“That's plumb foolishness,” the Texan commented irritably.
+
+“Mebbe,” admitted the girl; “but I reckon I'll stay long as dad does.”
+
+“No use being pigheaded about it.”
+
+Her dark eyes flashed. “Is this your say-so, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is?”
+ she asked sharply, less because she resented what he said than because
+she was strung to a wire edge.
+
+His troubled gaze took in again her slim girlishness. The frequency of
+danger had made him proof against fear for himself, but just now he was
+very much afraid for her. Hard man as he was, he had the Southerner's
+instinctive chivalry toward woman.
+
+“You better go, Arlie,” her father counseled weakly.
+
+“Well, I won't,” she retorted emphatically.
+
+The old man looked whimsically at the Texan. “Yo' see yo'self how it is,
+stranger.”
+
+Fraser saw, and the girl's stanchness stirred his admiration even while
+it irritated him. He made his decision immediately.
+
+“All right. Both of you go.”
+
+“But we have only one horse,” the girl objected. “They would catch us.”
+
+“Take my Teddy.”
+
+“And leave you here?” The dark eyes were full on him again, this time in
+a wide-open surprise.
+
+“Oh, I'll get out once you're gone. No trouble about that.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“We couldn't light out, and leave yo' here,” the father interrupted.
+
+“Of course we couldn't,” the girl added quickly. “It isn't your quarrel,
+anyhow.”
+
+“What good can you do staying here?” argued Fraser. “They want you,
+not me. With you gone, I'll slip away or come to terms with them. They
+haven't a thing against me.”
+
+“That's right,” agreed the older man, rubbing his stubbly beard with his
+hand. “That's sho'ly right.”
+
+“But they might get you before they understood,” Arlie urged.
+
+“Oh, I'll keep under cover, and when it's time, I'll sing out and let
+them know. Better leave me that rifle, though.” He went right on, taking
+it for granted that she had consented to go: “Slip through those shadows
+up that draw. You'll have no trouble with Teddy. Whistle when you're
+ready, and your father will make a break up the hill on his hawss.
+So-long. See you later some time, mebbe.”
+
+She went reluctantly, not convinced, but overborne by the quality of
+cheerful compulsion that lay in him. He was not a large man, though
+the pack and symmetry of his muscles promised unusual strength. But
+the close-gripped jaw, the cool serenity of the gray eyes that looked
+without excitement upon whatever they saw, the perfect poise of his
+carriage--all contributed to a personality plainly that of a leader of
+men.
+
+It was scarce a minute later that the whistle came from the hilltop. The
+mountaineer instantly swung to the saddle and set his pony to a canter
+up the draw. Fraser could see him join his daughter in the dim light,
+for the moon had momentarily gone behind a cloud, but almost at once the
+darkness swallowed them.
+
+Some one in the sagebrush called to a companion, and the Texan knew
+that the attackers had heard the sound of the galloping horses. Without
+waiting an instant, he fired twice in rapid succession.
+
+“That'll hold them for a minute or two,” he told himself. “They won't
+understand it, and they'll get together and have a powwow.”
+
+He crouched behind the dead horse, his gaze sweeping the wash, the
+sagebrush, and the distant group of cottonwoods from which he had seen
+a shot fired. Though he lay absolutely still, without the least visible
+excitement, he was alert and tense to the finger tips. Not the slightest
+sound, not the smallest motion of the moonlit underbrush, escaped his
+unwavering scrutiny.
+
+The problem before him was to hold the attackers long enough for Arlie
+and her father to make their escape, without killing any of them
+or getting killed himself. He knew that, once out of the immediate
+vicinity, the fugitives would leave the road and take to some of the
+canyons that ran from the foothills into the mountains. If he could
+secure them a start of fifteen minutes that ought to be enough.
+
+A voice from the wash presently hailed him:
+
+“See here! We're going to take you back with us, old man. That's a
+cinch. We want you for that Squaw Creek raid, and we're going to have
+you. You done enough damage. Better surrender peaceable, and we'll
+promise to take you back to jail. What say?”
+
+“Gimme five minutes to think it over,” demanded the Texan.
+
+“All right, five minutes. But you want to remember that it's all off
+with you if you don't give up. Billy Faulkner's dead, and we'll sure
+come a-shooting.”
+
+Fraser waited till his five minutes was nearly up, then plunged across
+the road into the sagebrush growing thick there. A shot or two rang out,
+without stopping him. Suddenly a man rose out of the sage in front of
+him, a revolver in his hand.
+
+For a fraction of a second, the two men faced each other before either
+spoke.
+
+“Who are you?”
+
+Fraser's answer was to dive for the man's knees, just as a football
+tackle does. They went down together, but it was the Texan got up first.
+A second man was running toward him.
+
+“Hands up, there!” the newcomer ordered.
+
+Fraser's hand went up, but with his forty-five in it. The man pitched
+forward into the sage. The Southerner twisted forward again, slid down
+into the dry creek, and ran along its winding bed for a hundred yards.
+Then he left it, cutting back toward the spot where he had lain behind
+the dead horse. Hiding in the sage, he heard the pursuit pouring down
+the creek, waited till it was past, and quickly recrossed the road.
+Here, among the cow-backed hills, he knew he was as safe as a needle in
+a haystack.
+
+“I had to get that anxious guy, but it might have been a whole lot
+worse. I only plugged his laig for him,” he reflected comfortably.
+“Wonder why they wanted to collect the old man's scalp, anyhow? The
+little girl sure was game. Just like a woman, though, the way she broke
+down because she hit that fellow.”
+
+Within five minutes he was lost again among the thousand hills that rose
+like waves of the sea, one after another. It was not till nearly morning
+that he again struck a road.
+
+He was halted abruptly by a crisp command from behind a bowlder:
+
+“Up with your hands--quick!”
+
+“Who are you, my friend?” the Texan asked mildly.
+
+“Deputy sheriff,” was the prompt response. “Now, reach for the sky, and
+prompt, too.”
+
+“Just as you say. You've ce'tainly got the crawl on me.”
+
+The deputy disarmed his captive, and drove him into town before him.
+When morning dawned, Fraser found himself behind the bars. He was
+arrested for the murder of Faulkner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II -- A COMPACT
+
+After the jailer had brought his breakfast, Fraser was honored by a
+visit from the sheriff, a big, rawboned Westerner, with the creases of
+fifty outdoor years stamped on his brown, leathery face.
+
+He greeted his prisoner pleasantly enough, and sat down on the bed.
+
+“Treating you right, are they?” he asked, glancing around. “Breakfast up
+to the mark?”
+
+“I've got no kick coming, thank you,” said Fraser.
+
+“Good!”
+
+The sheriff relapsed into sombre silence. There was a troubled look in
+the keen eyes that the Texan did not understand. Fraser waited for the
+officer to develop the object of his visit, and it was set down to
+his credit. A weaker man would have rushed at once into excuses
+and explanations. But in the prisoner's quiet, steely eyes, in the
+close-shut mouth and salient jaw, in the set of his well-knit figure,
+Sheriff Brandt found small room for weakness. Whoever he was, this man
+was one who could hold his own in the strenuous game of life.
+
+“My friend,” said the sheriff abruptly, “you and I are up against it.
+There is going to be trouble in town to-night.”
+
+The level, gray eyes looked questioningly at the sheriff.
+
+“You butted into grief a-plenty when you lined up with the cattlemen in
+this sheep war. Who do you ride for?”
+
+“I'm not riding for anybody,” responded Fraser. “I just arrived from
+Texas. Didn't even know there was a feud on.”
+
+Brandt laughed incredulously. “That will sound good to a jury, if
+your case ever comes to that stage. How do you expect to explain Billy
+Faulkner's death?”
+
+“Is there any proof I killed him?”
+
+“Some. You were recognized by two men last night while you were trying
+to escape. You carried a rifle that uses the same weight bullet as the
+one we dug out of Billy. When you attacked Tom Peake you dropped that
+rifle, and in your getaway hadn't time to pick it up again. That is
+evidence enough for a Wyoming jury, in the present state of public
+opinion.”
+
+“What do you mean by 'in the present state of public opinion'?”
+
+“I mean that this whole country is pretty nearly solid against the Cedar
+Mountain cattlemen, since they killed Campeau and Jennings in that raid
+on their camp. You know what I mean as well as I do.”
+
+Fraser did not argue the point. He remembered now having seen an account
+of the Squaw Creek raid on a sheep camp, ending in a battle that had
+resulted in the death of two men and the wounding of three others. He
+had been sitting in a hotel at San Antonio, Texas, when he had read the
+story over his after-dinner cigar. The item had not seemed even remotely
+connected with himself. Now he was in prison at Gimlet Butte, charged
+with murder, and unless he was very much mistaken the sheriff was
+hinting at a lynching. The Squaw Creek raid had come very near to him,
+for he knew the fight he had interrupted last night had grown out of it.
+
+“What do you mean by trouble to-night?” he asked, in an even,
+conversational tone.
+
+The sheriff looked directly at him. “You're a man, I reckon. That calls
+for the truth. Men are riding up and down this country to-day, stirring
+up sentiment against your outfit. To-night the people will gather in
+town, and the jail will be attacked.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“I'll uphold the law as long as I can.”
+
+Fraser nodded. He knew Brandt spoke the simple truth. What he had sworn
+to do he would do to the best of his ability. But the Texan knew,
+too, that the ramshackle jail would be torn to pieces and the sheriff
+overpowered.
+
+From his coat pocket he drew a letter, and presented it to the other. “I
+didn't expect to give this to you under these circumstances, Mr. Brandt,
+but I'd like you to know that I'm on the level when I say I don't know
+any of the Squaw Creek cattlemen and have never ridden for any outfit in
+this State.”
+
+Brandt tore open the letter, and glanced hurriedly through it. “Why,
+it's from old Sam Slauson! We used to ride herd together when we were
+boys.” And he real aloud:
+
+“Introducing Steve Fraser, lieutenant in the Texas Rangers.”
+
+He glanced up quickly. “You're not the Fraser that ran down Chacon and
+his gang of murderers?”
+
+“Yes, I was on that job.”
+
+Brandt shook hands heartily. “They say it was a dandy piece of work. I
+read that story in a magazine. You delivered the goods proper.”
+
+The ranger was embarrassed. “Oh, it wasn't much of a job. The man that
+wrote it put in the fancy touches, to make his story sell, I expect.”
+
+“Yes, he did! I know all about that!” the sheriff derided. “I've got to
+get you out of this hole somehow. Do you mind if I send for Hilliard,
+the prosecuting attorney? He's a bright young fellow, loaded to the
+guards with ideas. What I want is to get at a legal way of fixing this
+thing up, you understand. I'll call him up on the phone, and have him
+run over.”
+
+Hilliard was shortly on the spot--a short, fat little fellow with
+eyeglasses. He did not at first show any enthusiasm in the prisoner's
+behalf.
+
+“I don't doubt for a moment that you are the man this letter says you
+are, Mr. Fraser,” he said suavely. “But facts are stubborn things. You
+were seen carrying the gun that killed Faulkner. We can't get away from
+that just because you happen to have a letter of introduction to Mr.
+Brandt.”
+
+“I don't want to get away from it,” retorted. Fraser. “I have explained
+how I got into the fight. A man doesn't stand back and see two people,
+and one of them a girl, slaughtered by seven or eight.”
+
+The lawyer's fat forefinger sawed the air. “That's how you put it. Mind,
+I don't for a moment say it isn't the right way. But what the public
+wants is proof. Can you give evidence to show that Faulkner and his
+friends attacked Dillon and his daughter? Have you even got them on hand
+here to support your statement? Have you got a grain of evidence, apart
+from your bare word?”
+
+“That letter shows--”
+
+“It shows nothing. You might have written it yourself last night.
+Anyhow, a letter of introduction isn't quite an excuse for murder.”
+
+“It wasn't murder.”
+
+“That's what you say. I'll be glad to have you prove it.”
+
+“They followed Dillon--if that is his name--out of town.”
+
+“They put it that they were on their way home, when they were attacked.”
+
+“By an old man and his daughter,” the Texan added significantly.
+
+“There again we have only your statement for it. Half a dozen men had
+been in town during the day from the Cedar Mountain district. These men
+were witnesses in the suit that rose over a sheep raid. They may all
+have been on the spot, to ambush Faulkner's crowd.”
+
+Brandt broke in: “Are you personally convinced that this gentleman is
+Lieutenant Fraser of the Rangers?”
+
+“Personally, I am of opinion that he is, but--”
+
+“Hold your horses, Dave. Believing that, do you think that we ought to
+leave him here to be lynched to-night by Peake's outfit?”
+
+“That isn't my responsibility, but speaking merely as a private citizen,
+I should say, No.”
+
+“What would you do with him then?”
+
+“Why not take him up to your house?”
+
+“Wouldn't be safe a minute, or in any other house in town.”
+
+“Then get out of town with him.”
+
+“It can't be done. I'm watched.”
+
+Hilliard shrugged.
+
+The ranger's keen eyes went from one to another. He saw that what the
+lawyer needed was some personal interest to convert him into a partisan.
+From his pocket he drew another letter and some papers.
+
+“If you doubt that I am Lieutenant Fraser you can wire my captain at
+Dallas. This is a letter of congratulation to me from the Governor of
+Texas for my work in the Chacon case. Here's my railroad ticket, and
+my lodge receipt. You gentlemen are the officers in charge. I hold you
+personally responsible for my safety--for the safety of a man whose
+name, by chance, is now known all over this country.”
+
+This was a new phase of the situation, and it went home to the lawyer's
+mind at once. He had been brought into the case willy nilly, and he
+would be blamed for anything that happened to this young Texan, whose
+deeds had recently been exploited broadcast in the papers. He stood for
+an instant in frowning thought, and as he did so a clause in the letter
+from the Governor of Texas caught and held his eye.
+
+  which I regard as the ablest, most daring, and, at the same time,
+  the most difficult and most successful piece of secret service that
+  has come to my knowledge....
+
+Suddenly, Hilliard saw the way out--a way that appealed to him none the
+less because it would also serve his own ambitions.
+
+“Neither you nor I have any right to help this gentleman to escape,
+sheriff. The law is plain. He is charged with murder. We haven't any
+right to let our private sympathies run away with us. But there is one
+thing we can do.”
+
+“What is that?” the sheriff asked.
+
+“Let him earn his freedom.”
+
+“Earn it! How?”
+
+“By serving the State in this very matter of the Squaw Creek raid. As
+prosecuting attorney, it is in my discretion to accept the service of
+an accomplice to a crime in fixing the guilt upon the principals. Before
+the law, Lieutenant Fraser stands accused of complicity. We believe him
+not guilty, but that does not affect the situation. Let him go up into
+the Cedar Mountain country and find out the guilty parties in the Squaw
+Creek raid.”
+
+“And admit my guilt by compromising with you?” the Texan scoffed.
+
+“Not at all. You need not go publicly. In point of fact, you couldn't
+get out of town alive if it were known. No, we'll arrange to let you
+break jail on condition that you go up into the Lost Canyon district,
+and run down the murderers of Campeau and Jennings, That gives us an
+excuse for letting you go. You see the point--don't you?”
+
+The Texan grinned. “That isn't quite the point, is it?” he drawled. “If
+I should be successful, you will achieve a reputation, without any cost
+to yourself. That's worth mentioning.”
+
+Hilliard showed a momentary embarrassment.
+
+“That's incidental. Besides, it will help your reputation more than mine.”
+
+Brandt got busy at once with the details of the escape. “We'll loosen up
+the mortar round the bars in the south room. They are so rickety anyhow
+I haven't kept any prisoners there for years. After you have squeezed
+through you will find a horse saddled in the draw, back here. You'll
+want a gun of course.”
+
+“Always providing Lieutenant Fraser consents to the arrangement,” the
+lawyer added smoothly.
+
+“Oh, I'll consent,” laughed Fraser wryly. “I have no option. Of course,
+if I win I get the reward--whatever it is.”
+
+“Oh, of course.”
+
+“Then I'm at your service, gentlemen, to escape whenever you say the
+word.”
+
+“The best time would be right after lunch. That would give you five
+hours before Nichols was in here again,” the sheriff suggested.
+
+“Suppose you draw a map, showing the route I'm to follow to reach Cedar
+Mountain. I reckon I had better not trouble folks to ask them the way.”
+ And the Texan grinned.
+
+“That's right. I'll fix you up, and tell you later just where you'll
+find the horse,” Brandt answered.
+
+“You're an officer yourself, lieutenant,” said the lawyer. “You know
+just how much evidence it takes to convict. Well, that's just how much
+we want. If you have to communicate with us, address 'T. L. Meredith,
+Box 117.' Better send your letter in cipher. Here's a little code
+I worked out that we sometimes use. Well, so-long. Good hunting,
+lieutenant.”
+
+Fraser nodded farewell, but did not offer to shake hands.
+
+Brandt lingered for an instant. “Don't make any mistake, Fraser, about
+this job you've bit off. It's a big one, and don't you forget it. People
+are sore on me because I have fallen down on it. I can't help it. I just
+can't get the evidence. If you tackle it, you'll be in danger from start
+to finish. There are some bad men in this country, and the worst of them
+are lying low in Lost Valley.”
+
+The ranger smiled amiably. “Where is this Lost Valley?”
+
+“Somewhere up in the Cedar Mountain district. I've never been there. Few
+men have, for it is not easy to find; and even if it were strangers are
+not invited.”
+
+“Well, I'll have to invite myself.”
+
+“That's all right. But remember this. There are men up there who would
+drill holes in a dying man. I guess Lost Valley is the country God
+forgot.”
+
+“Sounds right interesting.”
+
+“You'll find it all that, and don't forget that if they find out what
+you are doing there, it will be God help Steve Fraser!”
+
+The ranger's eyes gleamed. “I'll try to remember it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III -- INTO LOST VALLEY
+
+It was one-twenty when Fraser slipped the iron bar from the masonry into
+which it had been fixed and began to lower himself from the window.
+The back of the jail faced on the bank of a creek; and into the aspens,
+which ran along it at this point in a little grove, the fugitive pushed
+his way. He descended to the creek edge and crossed the mountain stream
+on bowlders which filled its bed. From here he followed the trail for a
+hundred yards that led up the little river. On the way he passed a boy
+fishing and nodded a greeting to him.
+
+“What time is it, mister?” the youngster asked.
+
+A glance at his watch showed the Texan that it was one-twenty-five.
+
+“The fish have quit biting. Blame it all, I'm going home. Say, mister,
+Jimmie Spence says they're going to lynch that fellow who killed Billy
+Faulkner--going to hang him to-night, Jimmie says. Do you reckon they
+will?”
+
+“No, I reckon not.”
+
+“Tha's what I told him, but Jimmie says he heard Tom Peake say so.
+Jimmie says this town will be full o' folks by night.”
+
+Without waiting to hear any more of Jimmie's prophecies, Fraser followed
+the trail till it reached a waterfall Brandt bad mentioned, then struck
+sharply to the right. In a little bunch of scrub oaks he found a saddled
+horse tied to a sapling. His instructions were to cross the road, which
+ran parallel with the stream, and follow the gulch that led to the
+river. Half an hour's travel brought him to another road. Into this he
+turned, and followed it.
+
+In a desperate hurry though he was, Steve dared not show it. He held his
+piebald broncho to the ambling trot a cowpony naturally drops into. From
+his coat pocket he flashed a mouthharp for use in emergency.
+
+Presently he met three men riding into town. They nodded at him, in the
+friendly, casual way of the outdoors West. The gait of the pony was a
+leisurely walk, and its rider was industriously executing, “I Met My
+Love In the Alamo.”
+
+“Going the wrong way, aren't you?” one of the three suggested.
+
+“Don't you worry, I'll be there when y'u hang that guy they caught last
+night,” he told them with a grin.
+
+From time to time he met others. All travel seemed to be headed
+townward. There was excitement in the air. In the clear atmosphere
+voices carried a long way, and all the conversation that came to him
+was on the subjects of the war for the range, the battle of the previous
+evening, and the lynching scheduled to take place in a few hours. He
+realized that he had escaped none too soon, for it was certain that
+as the crowd in town multiplied, they would set a watch on the jail to
+prevent Brandt from slipping out with his prisoner.
+
+About four miles from town he cut the telephone wires, for he knew that
+as soon as his escape became known to the jailer, the sheriff would be
+notified, and he would telephone in every direction the escape of his
+prisoner, just the same as if there had been no arrangement between
+them. It was certain, too, that all the roads leading from Gimlet Butte
+would be followed and patrolled immediately. For which reason he left
+the road after cutting the wires, and took to the hill trail marked out
+for him in the map furnished by Brandt.
+
+By night, he was far up in the foothills. Close to a running stream,
+he camped in a little, grassy park, where his pony could find forage.
+Brandt had stuffed his saddlebags with food, and had tied behind a sack,
+with a feed or two of oats for his horse. Fraser had ridden the
+range too many years to risk lighting a fire, even though he had put
+thirty-five miles between him and Gimlet Butte. The night was chill, as
+it always is in that altitude, but he rolled up in his blanket, got what
+sleep he could, and was off again by daybreak.
+
+Before noon he was high in the mountain passes, from which he could
+sometimes look down into the green parks where nested the little ranches
+of small cattlemen. He knew now that he was beyond the danger of the
+first hurried pursuit, and that it was more than likely that any of
+these mountaineers would hide him rather than give him up. Nevertheless,
+he had no immediate intention of putting them to the test.
+
+The second night came down on him far up on Dutchman Creek, in the Cedar
+Mountain district. He made a bed, where his horse found a meal, in a
+haystack of a small ranch, the buildings of which were strung along the
+creek. He was weary, and he slept deep. When he awakened next morning,
+it was to hear the sound of men's voices. They drifted to him from the
+road in front of the house.
+
+Carefully he looked down from the top of his stack upon three horsemen
+talking to the bare-headed ranchman whom they had called out from his
+breakfast.
+
+“No, I ain't seen a thing of him. Shot Billy Faulkner, you say? What in
+time for?” the rancher was innocently asking.
+
+“You know what for, Hank Speed,” the leader of the posse made sullen
+answer. “Well, boys, we better be pushing on, I expect.”
+
+Fraser breathed freer when they rode out of sight. He had overslept, and
+had had a narrow shave; for his pony was grazing in the alfalfa field
+within a hundred yards of them at that moment. No sooner had the posse
+gone than Hank Speed stepped across the field without an instant's
+hesitation and looked the animal over, after which he returned to the
+house and came out again with a rifle in his hands.
+
+The ranger slid down the farther side of the stack and slipped his
+revolver from its holster. He watched the ranchman make a tour of the
+out-buildings very carefully and cautiously, then make a circuit of the
+haystack at a safe distance. Soon the rancher caught sight of the man
+crouching against it.
+
+“Oh, you're there, are you? Put up that gun. I ain't going to do you any
+harm.”
+
+“What's the matter with you putting yours up first?” asked the Texan
+amiably.
+
+“I tell you I ain't going to hurt you. Soon as I stepped out of the
+house I seen your horse. All I had to do was to say so, and they would
+have had you slick.”
+
+“What did you get your gun for, then?”
+
+“I ain't taking any chances till folks' intentions has been declared.
+You might have let drive at me before I got a show to talk to you.”
+
+“All right. I'll trust you.” Fraser dropped his revolver, and the other
+came across to him.
+
+“Up in this country we ain't in mourning for Billy Faulkner. Old man
+Dillon told me what you done for him. I reckon we can find cover for you
+till things quiet down. My name is Speed.”
+
+“Call me Fraser.”
+
+“Glad to meet you, Mr. Fraser. I reckon we better move you back into the
+timber a bit. Deputy sheriffs are some thick around here right now.
+If you have to lie hid up in this country for a spell, we'll make an
+arrangement to have you taken care of.”
+
+“I'll have to lie hid. There's no doubt about that. I made my jail break
+just in time to keep from being invited as chief guest to a necktie
+party.”
+
+“Well, we'll put you where the whole United States Army couldn't find
+you.”
+
+They had been walking across the field and now crawled between the
+strands of fence wire.
+
+“I left my saddle on top of the stack,” the ranger explained.
+
+“I'll take care of it. You better take cover on top of this ridge till I
+get word to Dillon you're here. My wife will fix you up some breakfast,
+and I'll bring it out.”
+
+“I've ce'tainly struck the good Samaritan,” the Texan smiled.
+
+“Sho! There ain't a man in the hills wouldn't do that much for a
+friend.”
+
+“I'm glad I have so many friends I never saw.”
+
+“Friends? The hills are full of them. You took a hand when old man
+Dillon and his girl were sure up against it. Cedar Mountain stands
+together these days. What you did for them was done for us all,” Speed
+explained simply.
+
+Fraser waited on the ridge till his host brought breakfast of bacon,
+biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, and coffee. While he ate, Speed sat down on
+a bowlder beside him and talked.
+
+“I sent my boy with a note to Dillon. It's a good thirty miles from
+here, and the old man won't make it back till some time to-morrow.
+Course, you're welcome at the house, but I judge it wouldn't be best for
+you to be seen there. No knowing when some of Brandt's deputies might
+butt in with a warrant. You can slip down again after dark and burrow in
+the haystack. Eh? What think?”
+
+“I'm in your hands, but I don't want to put you and your friends to so
+much trouble. Isn't there some mountain trail off the beaten road that I
+could take to Dillon's ranch, and so save him from the trip after me?”
+
+Speed grinned. “Not in a thousand years, my friend. Dillon's ranch ain't
+to be found, except by them that know every pocket of these hills like
+their own back yard. I'll guarantee you couldn't find it in a month,
+unless you had a map locating it.”
+
+“Must be in that Lost Valley, which some folks say is a fairy tale,” the
+ranger said carelessly, but with his eyes on the other.
+
+The cattleman made no comment. It occurred to Fraser that his remark had
+stirred some suspicion of him. At least, it suggested caution.
+
+“If you're through with your breakfast, I'll take back the dishes,”
+ Speed said dryly.
+
+The day wore to sunset. After dark had fallen the Texan slipped through
+the alfalfa field again and bedded in the stack. Before the morning was
+more than gray he returned to the underbrush of the ridge. His breakfast
+finished, and Speed gone, he lay down on a great flat, sun-dappled rock,
+and looked into the unflecked blue sky. The season was spring, and the
+earth seemed fairly palpitating with young life. The low, tireless hum
+of insects went on all about him. The air was vocal with the notes of
+nesting birds. Away across the valley he could see a mountain slope,
+with snow gulches glowing pink in the dawn. Little checkerboard squares
+along the river showed irrigated patches. In the pleasant warmth he grew
+drowsy. His eyes closed, opened, closed again.
+
+He was conscious of no sound that awakened him, yet he was aware of
+a presence that drew him from drowsiness to an alert attention.
+Instinctively, his hand crept to his scabbarded weapon.
+
+“Don't shoot me,” a voice implored with laughter--a warm, vivid voice,
+that struck pleasantly on his memory.
+
+The Texan turned lazily, and leaned on his elbow. She came smiling out
+of the brush, light as a roe, and with much of its slim, supple grace.
+Before, he had seen her veiled by night; the day disclosed her a dark,
+spirited young creature. The mass of blue-black hair coiled at the
+nape of the brown neck, the flash of dark eyes beneath straight, dark
+eyebrows, together with a certain deliberation of movement that was
+not languor, made it impossible to doubt that she was a Southerner by
+inheritance, if not by birth.
+
+“I don't reckon I will,” he greeted, smiling. “Down in Texas it ain't
+counted right good manners to shoot up young ladies.”
+
+“And in Wyoming you think it is.”
+
+“I judge by appearances, ma'am.”
+
+“Then you judge wrong. Those men did not know I was with dad that night.
+They thought I was another man. You see, they had just lost their suit
+for damages against dad and some more for the loss of six hundred sheep
+in a raid last year. They couldn't prove who did it.” She flamed into a
+sudden passion of resentment. “I don't defend them any. They are a lot
+of coyotes, or they wouldn't have attacked two men, riding alone.”
+
+He ventured a rapier thrust. “How about the Squaw Creek raid? Don't your
+friends sometimes forget to fight fair, too?”
+
+He had stamped the fire out of her in an instant. She drooped visibly.
+“Yes--yes, they do,” she faltered. “I don't defend them, either. Dad had
+nothing to do with that. He doesn't shoot in the back.”
+
+“I'm glad to hear it,” he retorted cheerfully. “And I'm glad to
+hear that your friends the enemy didn't know it was a girl they were
+attacking. Fact is, I thought you were a boy myself when first I
+happened in and you fanned me with your welcome.”
+
+“I didn't know. I hadn't time to think. So I let fly. But I was so
+excited I likely missed you a mile.”
+
+He took off his felt hat and examined with interest a bullet hole
+through the rim. “If it was a mile, I'd hate to have you miss me a
+hundred yards,” he commented, with a little ripple of laughter.
+
+“I didn't! Did I? As near as that?” She caught her hands together in a
+sudden anguish for what might have been.
+
+“Don't you care, ma'am. A miss is as good as a mile. It ain't the first
+time I've had my hat ventilated. I mentioned it, so you wouldn't get
+discouraged at your shooting. It's plenty good. Good enough to suit me.
+I wouldn't want it any better.”
+
+“What about the man I wounded.” she asked apprehensively. “Is he--is it
+all right?”
+
+“Haven't you heard?”
+
+“Heard what?” He could see the terror in her eyes.
+
+“How it all came out?”
+
+He could not tell why he did it, any more than he could tell why he had
+attempted no denial to the sheriff of responsibility for the death of
+Faulkner, but as he looked at this girl he shifted the burden from her
+shoulders to his. “You got your man in the ankle. I had worse luck after
+you left. They buried mine.”
+
+“Oh!” From her lips a little cry of pain forced itself. “It wasn't your
+fault. It was for us you did it. Oh, why did they attack us?”
+
+“I did what I had to do. There is no blame due either you or me for it,”
+ he said, with quiet conviction.
+
+“I know. But it seems so dreadful. And then they put you in jail--and
+you broke out! Wasn't that it?”
+
+“That was the way of it, Miss Arlie. How did you know?”
+
+“Henry Speed's note to father said you had broken jail. Dad wasn't at
+home. You know, the round-up is on now and he has to be there. So I
+saddled, and came right away.”
+
+“That was right good of you.”
+
+“Wasn't it?” There was a softened, almost tender, jeer in her voice.
+“Since you only saved our lives!”
+
+“I ain't claiming all that, Miss Arlie.”
+
+“Then I'll claim it for you. I suppose you gave yourself up to them and
+explained how it was after we left.”
+
+“Not exactly that. I managed to slip away, through the sage. It was
+mo'ning before I found the road again. Soon as I did, a deputy tagged
+me, and said, 'You're mine.' He spoke for me so prompt and seemed so
+sure about what he was saying, I didn't argue the matter with him.” He
+laughed gayly.
+
+“And then?”
+
+“Then he herded me to town, and I was invited to be the county's guest.
+Not liking the accommodations, I took the first chance and flew the
+coop. They missed a knife in my pocket when they searched me, and I
+chipped the cement away from the window bars, let myself down by the bed
+linen, and borrowed a cow-pony I found saddled at the edge of town. So,
+you see, I'm a hawss thief too, ma'am.”
+
+She could not take it so lightly as he did, even though she did not know
+that he had barely escaped with his life. Something about his debonair,
+smiling hardihood touched her imagination, as did also the virile
+competence of the man. If the cool eyes in his weatherbeaten face could
+be hard as agates, they could also light up with sparkling imps of
+mischief. Certainly he was no boy, but the close-cut waves of crisp,
+reddish hair and the ready smile contributed to an impression of youth
+that came and went.
+
+“Willie Speed is saddling you a horse. The one you came on has been
+turned loose to go back when it wants to. I'm going to take you home
+with me,” she told him.
+
+“Well, I'm willing to be kidnapped.”
+
+“I brought your horse Teddy. If you like, you may ride that, and I'll
+take the other.”
+
+“Yore a gentleman, ma'am. I sure would.”
+
+When Arlie saw with what pleasure the friends met, how Teddy nickered
+and rubbed his nose up and down his master's coat and how the Texan put
+him through his little repertoire of tricks and fed him a lump of sugar
+from his coat pocket, she was glad she had ridden Teddy instead of her
+own pony to the meeting.
+
+They took the road without loss of time. Arlie Dillon knew exactly how
+to cross this difficult region. She knew the Cedar Mountain district as
+a grade teacher knows her arithmetic. In daylight or in darkness, with
+or without a trail, she could have traveled almost a bee line to the
+point she wanted. Her life had been spent largely in the saddle--at
+least that part of it which had been lived outdoors. Wherefore she was
+able to lead her guest by secret trails that wound in and out among the
+passes and through unsuspected gorges to hazardous descents possible
+only to goats and cow ponies. No stranger finding his way in would have
+stood a chance of getting out again unaided.
+
+Among these peaks lay hidden pockets and caches by hundreds, rock
+fissures which made the country a very maze to the uninitiated. The
+ranger, himself one of the best trailers in Texas, doubted whether he
+could retrace his steps to the Speed place.
+
+After several hours of travel, they emerged from a gulch to a little
+valley known as Beaver Dam Park. The girl pointed out to her companion a
+narrow brown ribbon that wound through the park.
+
+“There's the road again. That's the last we shall see of it--or it will
+be when we have crossed it. Once we reach the Twin Buttes that are the
+gateway to French Cañon you are perfectly safe. You can see the buttes
+from here. No, farther to the right.”
+
+“I thought I'd ridden some tough trails in my time, but this country
+ce'tainly takes the cake,” Fraser said admiringly, as his gaze swept the
+horizon. “It puts it over anything I ever met up with. Ain't that right,
+Teddy hawss?”
+
+The girl flushed with pleasure at his praise. She was mountain bred, and
+she loved the country of the great peaks.
+
+They descended the valley, crossed the road, and in an open grassy spot
+just beyond, came plump upon four men who had unsaddled to eat lunch.
+
+The meeting came too abruptly for Arlie to avoid it. One glance told her
+that they were deputies from Gimlet Butte. Without the least hesitation
+she rode forward and gave them the casual greeting of cattleland.
+Fraser, riding beside her, nodded coolly, drew to a halt, and lit a
+cigarette.
+
+“Found him yet, gentlemen?” he asked.
+
+“No, nor we ain't likely to, if he's reached this far,” one of the men
+answered.
+
+“It would be some difficult to collect him here,” the Texan admitted
+impartially.
+
+“Among his friends,” one of the deputies put in, with a snarl.
+
+Fraser laughed easily. “Oh, well, we ain't his enemies, though he ain't
+very well known in the Cedar Mountain country. What might he be like,
+pardner?”
+
+“Hasn't he lived up here long?” asked one of the men, busy with some
+bacon over a fire.
+
+“They say not.”
+
+“He's a heavy-set fellow, with reddish hair; not so tall as you, I
+reckon, and some heavier. Was wearing chaps and gauntlets when he
+made his getaway. From the description, he looks something like you, I
+shouldn't wonder.”
+
+Fraser congratulated himself that he had had the foresight to discard
+as many as possible of these helps to identification before he was three
+miles from Gimlet Butte. Now he laughed pleasantly.
+
+“Sure he's heavier than me, and not so tall.”
+
+“It would be a good joke, Bud, if they took you back to town for this
+man,” cut in Arlie, troubled at the direction the conversation was
+taking, but not obviously so.
+
+“I ain't objecting any, sis. About three days of the joys of town would
+sure agree with my run-down system,” the Texan answered joyously.
+
+“When you cowpunchers do get in, you surely make Rome howl,” one of the
+deputies agreed, with a grin. “Been in to the Butte lately?”
+
+The Texan met his grin. “It ain't been so long.”
+
+“Well, you ain't liable to get in again for a while,” Arlie said
+emphatically. “Come on, Bud, we've got to be moving.”
+
+“Which way is Dead Cow Creek?” one of the men called after them.
+
+Fraser pointed in the direction from which he had just come.
+
+After they had ridden a hundred yards, the girl laughed aloud her relief
+at their escape. “If they go the way you pointed for Dead Cow Creek,
+they will have to go clear round the world to get to it. We're headed
+for the creek now.”
+
+“A fellow can't always guess right,” pleaded the Texan. “If he could,
+what a fiend he would be at playing the wheel! Shall I go back and tell
+him I misremembered for a moment where the creek is?”
+
+“No, sir. You had me scared badly enough when you drew their attention
+to yourself. Why did you do it?”
+
+“It was the surest way to disarm any suspicion they might have had. One
+of them had just said the man they wanted was like me. Presently, one
+would have been guessing that it was me.” He looked at her drolly, and
+added: “You played up to me fine, sis.”
+
+A touch of deeper color beat into her dusky cheeks. “We'll drop the
+relationship right now, if you please. I said only what you made me
+say,” she told him, a little stiffly.
+
+But presently she relaxed to the note of friendliness, even of
+comradeship, habitual to her. She was a singularly frank creature,
+having been brought up in a country where women were few and far, and
+where conventions were of the simplest. Otherwise, she would not have
+confessed to him with unconscious näiveté, as she now did, how greatly
+she had been troubled for him before she received the note from Speed.
+
+“It worried me all the time, and it troubled dad, too. I could see that.
+We had hardly left you before I knew we had done wrong. Dad did it for
+me, of course; but he felt mighty bad about it. Somehow, I couldn't
+think of anything but you there, with all those men shooting at you.
+Suppose you had waited too long before surrendering! Suppose you had
+been killed for us!” She looked at him, and felt a shiver run over her
+in the warm sunlight. “Night before last I was worn out. I slept some,
+but I kept dreaming they were killing you. Oh, you don't know how glad I
+was to get word from Speed that you were alive.” Her soft voice had the
+gift of expressing feeling, and it was resonant with it now.
+
+“I'm glad you were glad,” he said quietly.
+
+Across Dead Cow Creek they rode, following the stream up French Cañon
+to what was known as the Narrows. Here the great rock walls, nearly two
+thousand feet high, came so close together as to leave barely room for
+a footpath beside the creek which boiled down over great bowlders.
+Unexpectedly, there opened in the wall a rock fissure, and through this
+Arlie guided her horse.
+
+The Texan wondered where she could be taking him, for the fissure
+terminated in a great rock slide some two hundred yards ahead of them.
+Before reaching this she turned sharply to the left, and began winding
+in and out among the big bowlders which had fallen from the summit far
+above.
+
+Presently Fraser observed with astonishment that they were following
+a path that crept up the very face of the bluff. Up--up--up they went
+until they reached a rift in the wall, and into this the trail went
+precipitously. Stones clattered down from the hoofs of the horses as
+they clambered up like mountain goats. Once the Texan had to throw
+himself to the ground to keep Teddy from falling backward.
+
+Arlie, working her pony forward with voice and body and knees, so that
+from her seat in the saddle she seemed literally to lift him up, reached
+the summit and looked back.
+
+“All right back there?” she asked quietly.
+
+“All right,” came the cheerful answer. “Teddy isn't used to climbing up
+a wall, but he'll make it or know why.”
+
+A minute later, man and horse were beside her.
+
+“Good for Teddy,” she said, fondling his nose.
+
+“Look out! He doesn't like strangers to handle him.”
+
+“We're not strangers. We're tillicums. Aren't we, Teddy?”
+
+Teddy said “Yes” after the manner of a horse, as plain as words could
+say it.
+
+From their feet the trail dropped again to another gorge, beyond which
+the ranger could make out a stretch of valley through which ran the
+gleam of a silvery thread.
+
+“We're going down now into Mantrap Gulch. The patch of green you see
+beyond is Lost Valley,” she told him.
+
+“Lost Valley,” he repeated, in amazement. “Are we going to Lost Valley?”
+
+“You've named our destination.”
+
+“But--you don't live in Lost Valley.”
+
+“Don't I?”
+
+“Do you?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, amused at his consternation, if it were that.
+
+“I wish I had known,” he said, as if to himself.
+
+“You know now. Isn't that soon enough? Are you afraid of the place,
+because people make a mystery of it?” she demanded impatiently.
+
+“No. It isn't that.” He looked across at the valley again, and asked
+abruptly: “Is this the only way in?”
+
+“No. There is another, but this is the quickest.”
+
+“Is the other as difficult as this?”
+
+“In a way, yes. It is very much more round-about. It isn't known much by
+the public. Not many outsiders have business in the valley.”
+
+She volunteered no explanation in detail, and the man beside her said,
+with a grim laugh:
+
+“There isn't any general admission to the public this way, is there?”
+
+“No. Oh, folks can come if they want to.”
+
+He looked full in her face, and said significantly: “I thought the way
+to Lost Valley was a sort of a secret--one that those who know are not
+expected to tell.”
+
+“Oh, that's just talk. Not many come in but our friends. We've had to be
+careful lately. But you can't call a secret what a thousand folks know.”
+
+It was like a blow in the face to him. Not many but their friends! And
+she was taking him in confidently because he was her friend. What sort
+of a friend was he? he asked himself. He could not perform the task to
+which he was pledged without striking home at her. If he succeeded in
+ferreting out the Squaw Creek raiders he must send to the penitentiary,
+perhaps to death, her neighbors, and possibly her relatives. She had
+told him her father was not implicated, but a daughter's faith in her
+parent was not convincing proof of his innocence. If not her father, a
+brother might be involved. And she was innocently making it easy for him
+to meet on a friendly footing these hospitable, unsuspecting savages,
+who had shed human blood because of the unleashed passions in them!
+
+In that moment, while he looked away toward Lost Valley, he sickened of
+the task that lay before him. What would she think of him if she knew?
+
+Arlie, too, had been looking down the gulch toward the valley. Now her
+gaze came slowly round to him and caught the expression of his face.
+
+“What's the matter?” she cried.
+
+“Nothing. Nothing at all. An old heart pain that caught me suddenly.”
+
+“I'm sorry. We'll soon be home now. We'll travel slowly.”
+
+Her voice was tender with sympathy; so, too, were her eyes when he met
+them.
+
+He looked away again and groaned in his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV -- THE WARNING OF MANTRAP GULCH
+
+They followed the trail down into the cañon. As the ponies slowly picked
+their footing on the steep narrow path, he asked:
+
+“Why do they call it Mantrap Gulch?”
+
+“It got its name before my time in the days when outlaws hid here. A
+hunted man came to Lost Cañon, a murderer wanted by the law for more
+crimes than one. He was well treated by the settlers. They gave him
+shelter and work. He was safe, and he knew it. But he tried to make his
+peace with the law outside by breaking the law of the valley. He
+knew that two men were lying hid in a pocket gulch, opening from the
+valley--men who were wanted for train robbery. He wrote to the company
+offering to betray these men if they would pay him the reward and see
+that he was not punished for his crimes.
+
+“It seems he was suspected. His letter was opened, and the exits from
+the valley were both guarded. Knowing he was discovered, he tried to
+slip out by the river way. He failed, sneaked through the settlement at
+night, and slipped into the cañon here. At this end of it he found armed
+men on guard. He ran back and found the entrance closed. He was in a
+trap. He tried to climb one of the walls. Do you see that point where
+the rock juts out?”
+
+“About five hundred feet up? Yes.”
+
+“He managed to climb that high. Nobody ever knows how he did it, but
+when morning broke there he was, like a fly on a wall. His hunters came
+and saw him. I suppose he could hear them laughing as their voices came
+echoing up to him. They shot above him, below him, on either side of
+him. He knew they were playing with him, and that they would finish him
+when they got ready. He must have been half crazy with fear. Anyhow, he
+lost his hold and fell. He was dead before they reached him. From that
+day this has been called Mantrap Gulch.”
+
+The ranger looked up at the frowning walls which shut out the sunlight.
+His imagination pictured the drama--the hunted man's wild flight up the
+gulch; his dreadful discovery that it was closed; his desperate attempt
+to climb by moonlight the impossible cliff, and the tragedy that
+overtook him.
+
+The girl spoke again softly, almost as if she were in the presence of
+that far-off Nemesis. “I suppose he deserved it. It's an awful thing to
+be a traitor; to sell the people who have befriended you. We can't put
+ourselves in his place and know why he did it. All we can say is that
+we're glad--glad that we have never known men who do such things. Do you
+think people always felt a sort of shrinking when they were near him, or
+did he seem just like other men?”
+
+Glancing at the man who rode beside her, she cried out at the stricken
+look on his face. “It's your heart again. You're worn out with
+anxiety and privations. I should have remembered and come slower,” she
+reproached herself.
+
+“I'm all right--now. It passes in a moment,” he said hoarsely.
+
+But she had already slipped from the saddle and was at his bridle rein.
+“No--no. You must get down. We have plenty of time. We'll rest here till
+you are better.”
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey. He dismounted, feeling himself a
+humbug and a scoundrel. He sat down on a mossy rock, his back against
+another, while she trailed the reins and joined him.
+
+“You are better now, aren't you?” she asked, as she seated herself on an
+adjacent bowlder.
+
+Gruffly he answered: “I'm all right.”
+
+She thought she understood. Men do not like to be coddled. She began to
+talk cheerfully of the first thing that came into her head. He made the
+necessary monosyllabic responses when her speech put it up to him, but
+she saw that his mind was brooding over something else. Once she saw his
+gaze go up to the point on the cliff reached by the fugitive.
+
+But it was not until they were again in the saddle that he spoke.
+
+“Yes, he got what was coming to him. He had no right to complain.”
+
+“That's what my father says. I don't deny the justice of it, but
+whenever I think of it, I feel sorry for him.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Despite the quietness of the monosyllable, she divined an eager interest
+back of his question.
+
+“He must have suffered so. He wasn't a brave man, they say. And he was
+one against many. They didn't hunt him. They just closed the trap and
+let him wear himself out trying to get through. Think of that awful week
+of hunger and exposure in the hills before the end!”
+
+“It must have been pretty bad, especially if he wasn't a game man. But
+he had no legitimate kick coming. He took his chance and lost. It was up
+to him to pay.”
+
+“His name was David Burke. When he was a little boy I suppose his mother
+used to call him Davy. He wasn't bad then; just a little boy to be
+cuddled and petted. Perhaps he was married. Perhaps he had a sweetheart
+waiting for him outside, and praying for him. And they snuffed his life
+out as if he had been a rattlesnake.”
+
+“Because he was a miscreant and it was best he shouldn't live. Yes, they
+did right. I would have helped do it in their place.”
+
+“My father did,” she sighed.
+
+They did not speak again until they had passed from between the chill
+walls to the warm sunshine of the valley beyond. Among the rocks above
+the trail, she glimpsed some early anemones blossoming bravely.
+
+She drew up with a little cry of pleasure. “They're the first I have
+seen. I must have them.”
+
+Fraser swung from the saddle, but he was not quick enough. She reached
+them before he did, and after they had gathered them she insisted upon
+sitting down again.
+
+He had his suspicions, and voiced them. “I believe you got me off just
+to make me sit down.”
+
+She laughed with deep delight. “I didn't, but since we are here we
+shall.” And she ended debate by sitting down tailor-fashion, and
+beginning to arrange her little bouquet.
+
+A meadow lark, troubadour of spring, trilled joyously somewhere in the
+pines above. The man looked up, then down at the vivid creature busy
+with her flowers at his feet. There was kinship between the two. She,
+too, was athrob with the joy note of spring.
+
+“You're to sit down,” she ordered, without looking up from the sheaf of
+anemone blossoms she was arranging.
+
+He sank down beside her, aware vaguely of something new and poignant in
+his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V -- JED BRISCOE TAKES A HAND
+
+Suddenly a footfall, and a voice:
+
+“Hello, Arlie! I been looking for you everywhere.”
+
+The Texan's gaze took in a slim dark man, goodlooking after a fashion,
+but with dissipation written on the rather sullen face.
+
+“Well, you've found me,” the girl answered coolly.
+
+“Yes, I've found you,” the man answered, with a steady, watchful eye on
+the Texan.
+
+Miss Dillon was embarrassed at this plain hostility, but indignation too
+sparkled in her eye. “Anything in particular you want?”
+
+The newcomer ignored her question. His hard gaze challenged the
+Southerner; did more than challenge--weighed and condemned.
+
+But this young woman was not used to being ignored. Her voice took on an
+edge of sharpness.
+
+“What can I do for you, Jed?”
+
+“Who's your friend?” the man demanded bluntly, insolently.
+
+Arlie's flush showed the swift, upblazing resentment she immediately
+controlled. “Mr. Fraser--just arrived from Texas. Mr. Fraser, let me
+introduce to you Mr. Briscoe.”
+
+The Texan stepped forward to offer his hand, but Briscoe deliberately
+put both of his behind him.
+
+“Might I ask what Mr. Fraser, just arrived from Texas, is doing here?”
+ the young man drawled, contriving to make an insult of every syllable.
+
+The girl's eyes flashed dangerously. “He is here as my guest.”
+
+“Oh, as your guest!”
+
+“Doesn't it please you, Jed?”
+
+“Have I said it didn't please me?” he retorted smoothly.
+
+“Your looks say it.”
+
+He let out a sudden furious oath. “Then my looks don't lie any.”
+
+Fraser was stepping forward, but with a gesture Arlie held him back.
+This was her battle, not his.
+
+“What have you got to say about it?” she demanded.
+
+“You had no right to bring him here. Who is he anyhow?”
+
+“I think that is his business, and mine.”
+
+“I make it mine,” he declared hotly. “I've heard about this fellow
+from your father. You met up with him on the trail. He says his name is
+Fraser. You don't even know whether that is true. He may be a spy. How
+do you know he ain't?”
+
+“How do I know you aren't?” she countered swiftly.
+
+“You've known me all my life. Did you ever see him before?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Well, then!”
+
+“He risked his life to save ours.”
+
+“Risked nothing! It was a trick, I tell you.”
+
+“It makes no difference to me what you tell me. Your opinion can't
+affect mine.”
+
+“You know the feeling of the valley just now about strangers,” said
+Briscoe sullenly.
+
+“It depends on who the stranger is.”
+
+“Well, I object to this one.”
+
+“So it seems; but I don't know any law that makes me do whatever you
+want me to.” Her voice, low and clear, cut like a whiplash.
+
+Beneath the dust of travel the young man's face burned with anger.
+“We're not discussing that just now. What I say is that you had no right
+to bring him here--not now, especially. You know why,” he added, almost
+in a whisper.
+
+“If you had waited and not attempted to brow-beat me, I would have shown
+you that that is the very reason I had to bring him.”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“Never mind what I mean. You have insulted my friend, and through him,
+me. That is enough for one day.” She turned from him haughtily and spoke
+to the Texan. “If you are ready, Mr. Fraser, we'll be going now.”
+
+The ranger, whose fingers had been itching to get at the throat of this
+insolent young man, turned without a word and obediently brought the
+girl's pony, then helped her to mount. Briscoe glared, in a silent
+tempest of passion.
+
+“I think I have left a glove and my anemones where we were sitting,” the
+girl said sweetly to the Texan.
+
+Fraser found them, tightened the saddle girth, and mounted Teddy. As
+they cantered away, Arlie called to him to look at the sunset behind the
+mountains.
+
+From the moment of her dismissal of Briscoe the girl had apparently put
+him out of her thoughts. No fine lady of the courts could have done it
+with more disdainful ease. And the Texan, following her lead, played his
+part in the little comedy, ignoring the other man as completely as she
+did.
+
+The young cattleman, furious, his teeth set in impotent rage, watched
+it all with the lust to kill in his heart. When they had gone, he flung
+himself into the saddle and rode away in a tumultuous fury.
+
+Before they had covered two hundred yards Arlie turned to her companion,
+all contrition. “There! I've done it again. My fits of passion are
+always getting me into trouble. This time one of them has given you an
+enemy, and a bad one, too.”
+
+“No. He would have been my enemy no matter what you said. Soon as he
+put his eyes on me, I knew it.”
+
+“Because I brought you here, you mean?”
+
+“I don't mean only that. Some folks are born to be enemies, just as some
+are born to be friends. They've only got to look in each other's eyes
+once to know it.”
+
+“That's strange. I never heard anybody else say that. Do you really mean
+it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And did you ever have such an enemy before? Don't answer me if I
+oughtn't to ask that,” she added quickly.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In Texas. Why, here we are at a ranch!”
+
+“Yes. It's ours, and yours as long as you want to stay. Did you feel
+that you were enemies the moment you saw this man in Texas?”
+
+“I knew we were going to have trouble as soon as we looked at each
+other. I had no feeling toward him, but he had toward me.”
+
+“And did you have trouble?”
+
+“Some, before I landed him. The way it turned out he had most of it.”
+
+She glanced quickly at him. “What do you mean by 'landed'?”
+
+“I am an officer in the Texas Rangers.”
+
+“What are they? Something like our forest rangers?”
+
+“No. The duty of a Texas Ranger is to enforce the law against
+desperadoes. We prevent crime if we can. When we can't do that, we hunt
+down the criminals.”
+
+Arlie looked at him in a startled silence.
+
+“You are an officer of the law--a sort of sheriff?” she said, at last.
+
+“Yes, in Texas. This is Wyoming.” He made his distinction, knowing it
+was a false one. Somehow he had the feeling of a whipped cur.
+
+“I wish I had known. If you had only told me earlier,” she said, so low
+as to be almost a whisper.
+
+“I'm sorry. If you like, I'll go away again,” he offered.
+
+“No, no. I'm only thinking that it gives Jed a hold, gives him something
+to stir up his friends with, you know. That is, it would if he knew. He
+mustn't find out.”
+
+“Be frank. Don't make any secret of it. That's the best way,” he
+advised.
+
+She shook her head. “You don't know Jed's crowd. They'd be suspicious of
+any officer, no matter where he came from.”
+
+“Far as I can make out, that young man is going to be loaded with
+suspicions of me anyhow,” he laughed.
+
+“It isn't anything to laugh at. You don't know him,” she told him
+gravely.
+
+“And can't say I'm suffering to,” he drawled.
+
+She looked at him a little impatiently, as if he were a child playing
+with gunpowder and unaware of its potentialities.
+
+“Can't you understand? You're not in Texas with your friends all around
+you. This is Lost Valley--and Lost Valley isn't on the map. Men make
+their own law here. That is, some of them do. I wouldn't give a snap of
+my fingers for your life if the impression spread that you are a spy. It
+doesn't matter that I know you're not. Others must feel it, too.”
+
+“I see. And Mr. Briscoe will be a molder of public opinion?”
+
+“So far as he can he will. We must forestall him.”
+
+“Beat him to it, and give me a clean bill of moral health, eh?”
+
+She frowned. “This is serious business, my friend.”
+
+“I'm taking it that way,” he said smilingly.
+
+“I shouldn't have guessed it.”
+
+Yet for all his debonair ease the man had an air of quiet competence.
+His strong, bronzed face and neck, the set of his shoulders, the light
+poise of him in the saddle, the steady confidence of the gray eyes, all
+told her as much. She was aware of a curiosity about what was hidden
+behind that stone-wall face of his.
+
+“You didn't finish telling me about that enemy in Texas,” she suggested
+suddenly.
+
+“Oh, there ain't much to tell. He broke out from the pen, where I had
+put him when I was a kid. He was a desperado wanted by the authorities,
+so I arrested him again.”
+
+“Sounds easy.”
+
+“He made some trouble, shot up two or three men first.” Fraser lifted
+his hand absently.
+
+“Is that scar on your hand where he shot you?” Arlie asked.
+
+He looked up in quick surprise. “Now, how did you know that?”
+
+“You were talking of the trouble he made and you looked at your hand,”
+ she explained. “Where is he now? In the penitentiary?”
+
+“No. He broke away before I got him there.”
+
+She had another flash of inspiration. “And you came to Wyoming to get
+him again.”
+
+“Good gracious, ma'am, but you're ce'tainly a wizard! That's why I came,
+though it's a secret.”
+
+“What is he wanted for?”
+
+“Robbing a train, three murders and a few other things.”
+
+As she swung from her pony in front of the old-fashioned Southern log
+house, Artie laughed at him over her shoulder.
+
+“You're a fine officer! Tell all you know to the first girl you meet!”
+
+“Well, you see, the girl happened to be--you!”
+
+After the manner of the old-fashioned Southern house a wide “gallery”
+ bisected it from porch to rear. Saddles hung from pegs in the gallery.
+Horse blankets and bridles, spurs and saddlebags, lay here and there in
+disarray. A disjointed rifle which some one had started to clean was on
+the porch. Swiftly Arlie stripped saddle, bridle, and blanket from her
+pony and flung them down as a contribution to the general disorder, and
+at her suggestion Fraser did the same. A half-grown lad came running to
+herd the horses into a corral close at hand.
+
+“I want you when you've finished feeding, Bobbie,” Arlie told the lad.
+Then briefly to her guest: “This way, please.”
+
+She led him into a large, cheerful living room, into which, through big
+casement windows, the light streamed. It was a pleasant room, despite
+its barbaric touch. There was a grizzly bear skin before the great
+open, stone fireplace, and Navajo rugs covered the floor and hung on
+the walls. The skin of a silver-tip bear was stretched beneath a
+writing desk, a trophy of Arlie's rifle, which hung in a rack above.
+Civilization had furnished its quota to the room in a piano, some books,
+and a few photographs.
+
+The Texan observed that order reigned here, even though it did not
+interfere with the large effect of comfort.
+
+The girl left him, to return presently with her aunt, to whom she
+introduced him. Miss Ruth Dillon was a little, bright-eyed old lady,
+whose hair was still black, and her step light. Evidently she had her
+instructions, for she greeted their guest with charming cordiality, and
+thanked him for the service he had rendered her brother and her niece.
+
+Presently the boy Bobbie arrived for further orders. Arlie went to her
+desk and wrote hurriedly.
+
+“You're to give this note to my father,” she directed. “Be sure he gets
+it himself. You ought to find him down in Jackson's Pocket, if the drive
+is from Round Top to-day. But you can ask about that along the road.”
+
+When the boy had gone, Arlie turned to Fraser.
+
+“I want to tell father you're here before Jed gets to him with his
+story,” she explained. “I've asked him to ride down right away. He'll
+probably come in a few hours and spend the night here.”
+
+After they had eaten supper they returned to the living room, where a
+great fire, built by Jim the negro horse wrangler, was roaring up the
+chimney.
+
+It was almost eleven o'clock when horses galloped up and Dillon came
+into the house, followed by Jed Briscoe. The latter looked triumphant,
+the former embarrassed as he disgorged letters and newspapers from his
+pocket.
+
+“I stopped at the office to get the mail as I came down. Here's yore
+paper, Ruth.”
+
+Miss Dillon pounced eagerly upon the Gimlet Butte Avalanche, and
+disappeared with it to her bedroom. She had formerly lived in Gimlet
+Butte, and was still keenly interested in the gossip of the town.
+
+Briscoe had scored one against Arlie by meeting her father, telling his
+side of the story, and returning with him to the house. Nevertheless
+Arlie, after giving him the slightest nod her duty as hostess would
+permit, made her frontal attack without hesitation.
+
+“You'll be glad to know, dad, that Mr. Fraser is our guest. He has had
+rather a stormy time since we saw him last, and he has consented to stay
+with us a few days till things blow over.”
+
+Dillon, very ill at ease, shook hands with the Texan, and was understood
+to say that he was glad to see him.
+
+“Then you don't look it, dad,” Arlie told him, with a gleam of vexed
+laughter.
+
+Her father turned reproachfully upon her. “Now, honey, yo' done wrong to
+say that. Yo' know Mr. Fraser is welcome to stay in my house long as he
+wants. I'm proud to have him stay. Do you think I forgot already what he
+done for us?”
+
+“Of course not. Then it's all settled,” Arlie cut in, and rushed on to
+another subject. “How's the round-up coming, dad?”
+
+“We'll talk about the round-up later. What I'm saying is that Mr. Fraser
+has only got to say the word, and I'm there to he'p him till the cows
+come home.”
+
+“That's just what I told him, dad.”
+
+“Hold yore hawsses, will yo', honey? But, notwithstanding which, and not
+backing water on that proposition none, we come to another p'int.”
+
+“Which Jed made to you carefully on the way down,” his daughter
+interrupted scornfully.
+
+“It don't matter who made it. The p'int is that there are reasons why
+strangers ain't exactly welcome in this valley right now, Mr. Fraser.
+This country is full o' suspicion. Whilst it's onjust, charges are being
+made against us on the outside. Right now the settlers here have got to
+guard against furriners. Now I know yo're all right, Mr. Fraser. But my
+neighbors don't know it.”
+
+“It was our lives he saved, not our neighbors',” scoffed Arlie.
+
+“K'rect. So I say, Mr. Fraser, if yo' are out o' funds, I'll finance
+you. Wherever you want to go I'll see you git there, but I hain't got
+the right to invite you to stay in Lost Valley.”
+
+“Better send him to Gimlet Butte, dad! He killed a man in helping us
+to escape, and he 's wanted bad! He broke jail to get here! Pay his
+expenses back to the Butte! Then if there's a reward, you and Jed can
+divide it!” his daughter jeered.
+
+“What's that? Killed a man, yo' say?”
+
+“Yes. To save us. Shall we send him back under a rifle guard? Or shall
+we have Sheriff Brandt come and get him?”
+
+“Gracious goodness, gyurl, shet up whilst I think. Killed a man, eh?
+This valley has always been open to fugitives. Ain't that right, Jed?”
+
+“To fugitives, yes,” said Jed significantly. “But that fact ain't
+proved.”
+
+“Jed's getting right important. We'll soon be asking him whether we can
+stay here,” said Arlie, with a scornful laugh. “And I say it is proved.
+We met the deputies the yon side of the big cañon.”
+
+Briscoe looked at her out of dogged, half-shuttered eyes. He said
+nothing, but he looked the picture of malice.
+
+Dillon rasped his stubbly chin and looked at the Texan. Far from an
+alert-minded man, he came to conclusions slowly. Now he arrived at one.
+
+“Dad burn it, we'll take the 'fugitive' for granted. Yo' kin lie up here
+long as yo' like, friend. I'll guarantee yo' to my neighbors. I reckon
+if they don't like it they kin lump it. I ain't a-going to give up the
+man that saved my gyurl's life.”
+
+The door opened and let in Miss Ruth Dillon. The little old lady had the
+newspaper in her hand, and her beady eyes were shining with excitement.
+
+“It's all in here, Mr. Fraser--about your capture and escape. But you
+didn't tell us all of it. Perhaps you didn't know, though, that they had
+plans to storm the jail and hang you?”
+
+“Yes, I knew that,” the Texan answered coolly. “The jailer told me what
+was coming to me. I decided not to wait and see whether he was lying. I
+wrenched a bar from the window, lowered myself by my bedding, flew the
+coop, and borrowed a horse. That's the whole story, ma'am, except that
+Miss Arlie brought me here to hide me.”
+
+“Read aloud what the paper says,” Dillon ordered.
+
+His sister handed the Avalanche to her niece. Arlie found the article
+and began to read:
+
+“A dastardly outrage occurred three miles from Gimlet Butte last night.
+While on their way home from the trial of the well-known Three Pines
+sheep raid case, a small party of citizens were attacked by miscreants
+presumed to be from the Cedar Mountain country. How many of these there
+were we have no means of knowing, as the culprits disappeared in the
+mountains after murdering William Faulkner, a well-known sheep man, and
+wounding Tom Long.”
+
+There followed a lurid account of the battle, written from the point
+of view of the other side. After which the editor paid his respects to
+Fraser, though not by name.
+
+“One of the ruffians, for some unknown reason--perhaps in the hope of
+getting a chance to slay another victim--remained too long near the
+scene of the atrocity and was apprehended early this morning by that
+fearless deputy, James Schilling. He refused to give his name or any
+other information about himself. While the man is a stranger to
+Gimlet Butte, there can be no doubt that he is one of the Lost Valley
+desperadoes implicated in the Squaw Creek raid some months ago. Since
+the bullet that killed Faulkner was probably fired from the rifle
+carried by this man, it is safe to assume that the actual murderer was
+apprehended. The man is above medium height, well built and muscular,
+and carries all the earmarks of a desperate character.”
+
+Arlie glanced up from her reading to smile at Fraser. “Dad and I are
+miscreants, and you are a ruffian and a desperate character,” she told
+him gayly.
+
+“Go on, honey,” her father urged.
+
+The account told how the prisoner had been confined in the jail, and how
+the citizens, wrought up by the continued lawlessness of the Lost Valley
+district, had quietly gathered to make an example of the captured man.
+While condemning lynching in general, the Avalanche wanted to go on
+record as saying that if ever it was justifiable this was the occasion.
+Unfortunately, the prisoner, giving thus further evidence of his
+desperate nature, had cut his way out of prison with a pocketknife
+and escaped from town by means of a horse he found saddled and did not
+hesitate to steal. At the time of going to press he had not yet been
+recaptured, though Sheriff Brandt had several posses on his trail. The
+outlaw had cut the telephone wires, but it was confidently believed he
+would be captured before he reached his friends in the mountains.
+
+Arlie's eyes were shining. She looked at Briscoe and handed him the
+paper triumphantly. This was her vindication for bringing the hunted man
+to Lost Valley. He had been fighting their battles and had almost lost
+his life in doing it. Jed might say what he liked while she had this to
+refute him.
+
+“I guess that editor doesn't believe so confidently as he pretends,” she
+said. “Anyhow, he has guessed wrong. Mr. Fraser has reached his friends,
+and they'll look out for him.”
+
+Her father came to her support radiantly. “You bet yore boots they will,
+honey. Shake hands on it, Mr. Fraser. I reckon yore satisfied too, Jed.
+Eh, boy?”
+
+Briscoe viewed the scene with cynical malice. “Quite a hero, ain't he?
+If you want to know, I stand pat. Mr. Fraser from Texas don't draw
+the wool over my eyes none. Right now I serve notice to that effect.
+Meantime, since I don't aim to join the happy circle of his admirers, I
+reckon I'll duck.”
+
+He nodded impudently at Arlie, turned on his heel, and went trailing off
+with jingling spur. They heard him cursing at his horse as he mounted.
+The cruel swish of a quirt came to them, after which the swift pounding
+of a horse's hoofs. The cow pony had found its gallop in a stride.
+
+The Texan laughed lightly. “Exit Mr. Briscoe, some disappointed,” he
+murmured.
+
+He noticed that none of the others shared his mirth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI -- A SURE ENOUGH WOLF
+
+Briscoe did not return at once to the scene of the round-up. He followed
+the trail toward Jackson's Pocket, but diverged after he had gone a few
+miles and turned into one of the hundred blind gulches that ran out from
+the valley to the impassable mountain wall behind. It was known as Jack
+Rabbit Run, because its labyrinthine trails offered a retreat into which
+hunted men might always dive for safety. Nobody knew its recesses better
+than Jed Briscoe, who was acknowledged to be the leader of that faction
+in the valley which had brought it the bad name it held.
+
+Long before Jed's time there had been such a faction, then the dominant
+one of the place, now steadily losing ground as civilization seeped in,
+but still strong because bound by ties of kindred and of interest to
+the honest law-abiding majority. Of it were the outlaws who came
+periodically to find shelter here, the hasty men who had struck in heat
+and found it necessary to get beyond the law's reach for a time, and
+reckless cowpunchers, who foregathered with these, because they were
+birds of a feather. To all such, Jack Rabbit Run was a haven of rest.
+
+By devious paths the cattleman guided his horse until he came to a kind
+of pouch, guarded by a thick growth of aspens. The front of these he
+skirted, plunged into them at the farther edge, and followed a narrow
+trail which wound among them till the grove opened upon a saucer-shaped
+valley in which nestled a little log cabin. Lights gleamed from the
+windows hospitably and suggested the comfortable warmth of a log fire
+and good-fellowship. So many a hunted man had thought as he emerged from
+that grove to look down upon the valley nestling at his feet.
+
+Jed turned his horse into a corral back of the house, let out the hoot
+of an owl as he fed and watered, and returning to the cabin, gave the
+four knocks that were the signal for admission.
+
+Bolts were promptly withdrawn and the door thrown open by a slender,
+fair-haired fellow, whose features looked as if they had been roughed
+out and not finished. He grinned amiably at the newcomer and greeted him
+with: “Hello, Jed.”
+
+“Hello, Tommie,” returned Briscoe, carelessly, and let his glance pass
+to the three men seated at the table with cards and poker chips in
+front of them, The man facing Briscoe was a big, heavy-set, unmistakable
+ruffian with long, drooping, red mustache, and villainous, fishy eyes.
+It was observable that the trigger finger of his right hand was missing.
+Also, there was a nasty scar on his right cheek running from the bridge
+of the nose halfway to the ear. This gave surplusage to the sinister
+appearance he already had. To him Briscoe spoke first, attempting a
+geniality he did not feel.
+
+“How're they coming, Texas?”
+
+“You ain't heard me kicking any, have you?” the man made sullen answer.
+
+“Not out loud,” said Briscoe significantly, his eyes narrowing after a
+trick they had when he was most on his guard.
+
+“I reckon my remarks will be plumb audible when I've got any kick to
+register, seh.”
+
+“I hope not, Mr. Johnson. In this neck of woods a man is liable to get
+himself disliked if he shoots off his mouth too prevalent. Folks that
+don't like our ways can usually find a door open out of Lost Valley--if
+they don't wait too long!”
+
+“I'm some haidstrong. I reckon I'll stay.” He scowled at Jed with
+disfavor, meeting him eye to eye. But presently the rigor of his gaze
+relaxed. Me remembered that he was a fugitive from justice, and at the
+mercy of this man who had so far guessed his secret. Putting a temporary
+curb on his bilious jealousy, he sulkily added: “Leastways, if there's
+no objection, Mr. Briscoe. I ain't looking for trouble with anybody.”
+
+“A man who's looking for it usually finds it, Mr. Johnson. A man that
+ain't, lives longer and more peaceable.” At this point Jed pulled
+himself together and bottled his arrogance, remembering that he had come
+to make an alliance with this man. “But that's no way for friends to
+talk. I got a piece of news for you. We'll talk it over in the other
+room and not disturb these gentlemen.”
+
+One of the “gentlemen” grinned. He was a round-bodied, bullet-headed
+cowpuncher, with a face like burnt leather. He was in chaps, flannel
+shirt, and broad-brimmed hat. From a pocket in his chaps a revolver
+protruded. “That's right, Jed. Wrap it up proper. You'd hate to disturb
+us, wouldn't you?”
+
+“I'll not interrupt you from losing your money more than five minutes,
+Yorky,” answered Briscoe promptly.
+
+The third man at the table laughed suddenly. “Ay bane laik to know how
+yuh feel now, Yorky?” he taunted.
+
+“It ain't you that's taking my spondulix in, you big, overgrown Swede!”
+ returned Yorky amiably. “It's the gent from Texas. How can a fellow buck
+against luck that fills from a pair to a full house on the draw?”
+
+The blond giant, Siegfried--who was not a Swede, but a
+Norwegian--announced that he was seventeen dollars in the game himself.
+
+Tommie, already broke, and an onlooker, reported sadly.
+
+“Sixty-one for me, durn it!”
+
+Jed picked up a lamp, led the way to the other room, and closed the door
+behind them.
+
+“I thought it might interest you to know that there's a new arrival in
+the valley, Mr. Struve,” he said smoothly.
+
+“Who says my name's Struve?” demanded the man who called himself
+Johnson, with fierce suspicion.
+
+Briscoe laughed softly. “I say it--Wolf Struve. Up till last month your
+address for two years has been number nine thousand four hundred and
+thirty-two, care of Penitentiary Warden, Yuma, Arizona.”
+
+“Prove it. Prove it,” blustered the accused man.
+
+“Sure.” From his inside coat pocket Jed took out a printed notice
+offering a reward for the capture of Nick Struve, alias “Wolf” Struve,
+convict, who had broken prison on the night of February seventh,
+and escaped, after murdering one of the guards. A description and a
+photograph of the man wanted was appended.
+
+“Looks some like you. Don't it, Mr.--shall I say Johnson or Struve?”
+
+“Say Johnson!” roared the Texan. “That ain't me. I'm no jailbird.”
+
+“Glad to know it.” Briscoe laughed in suave triumph. “I thought you
+might be. This description sounds some familiar. I'll not read it all.
+But listen: 'Scar on right cheek, running from bridge of nose toward
+ear. Trigger finger missing; shot away when last arrested. Weight, about
+one hundred and ninety.' By the way, just out of curiosity, how heavy
+are you, Mr. Johnson? 'Height, five feet nine inches. Protuberant, fishy
+eyes. Long, drooping, reddish mustache.' I'd shave that mustache if I
+were you, Mr.--er--Johnson. Some one might mistake you for Nick Struve.”
+
+The man who called himself Johnson recognized denial as futile. He flung
+up the sponge with a blasphemous oath. “What do you want? What's your
+game? Do you want to sell me for the reward? By thunder, you'd better
+not!”
+
+Briscoe gave way to one of the swift bursts of passion to which he was
+subject. “Don't threaten me, you prison scum! Don't come here and try to
+dictate what I'm to do, and what I'm not to do. I'll sell you if I want
+to. I'll send you back to be hanged like a dog. Say the word, and I'll
+have you dragged out of here inside of forty-eight hours.”
+
+Struve reached for his gun, but the other, wary as a panther, had him
+covered while the convict's revolver was still in his pocket.
+
+“Reach for the roof! Quick--or I'll drill a hole in you! That's the
+idea. I reckon I'll collect your hardware while I'm at it. That's a heap
+better.”
+
+Struve glared at him, speechless.
+
+“You're too slow on the draw for this part of the country, my friend,”
+ jeered Briscoe. “Or perhaps, while you were at Yuma, you got out of
+practice. It's like stealing candy from a kid to beat you to it. Don't
+ever try to draw a gun again in Lost Valley while you're asleep. You
+might never waken.”
+
+Jed was in high good humor with himself. His victim looked silent murder
+at him.
+
+“One more thing, while you're in a teachable frame of mind,” continued
+Briscoe. “I run Lost Valley. What I say, goes here. Get that soaked into
+your think-tank, my friend. Ever since you came, you've been disputing
+that in your mind. You've been stirring up the boys against me. Think
+I haven't noticed it? Guess again, Mr. Struve. You'd like to be boss
+yourself, wouldn't you? Forget it. Down in Texas you may be a bad, bad
+man, a sure enough wolf, but in Wyoming you only stack up to coyote
+size. Let this slip your mind, and I'll be running Lost Valley after
+your bones are picked white by the buzzards.”
+
+“I ain't a-goin' to make you any trouble. Didn't I tell you that
+before?” growled Struve reluctantly.
+
+“See you don't, then. Now I'll come again to my news. I was telling you
+that there's another stranger in this valley, Mr. Struve. Hails from
+Texas, too. Name of Fraser. Ever hear of him?”
+
+Briscoe was hardly prepared for the change which came over the Texan at
+mention of that name. The prominent eyes stared, and a deep, apoplectic
+flush ran over the scarred face. The hand that caught at the wall
+trembled with excitement.
+
+“You mean Steve Fraser--Fraser of the Rangers!” he gasped.
+
+“That's what I'm not sure of. I got to milling it over after I left him,
+and it come to me I'd seen him or his picture before. You still got that
+magazine with the article about him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I looked it over hurriedly. Let me see his picture again, and I'll tell
+you if it's the same man.”
+
+“It's in the other room.”
+
+“Get it.”
+
+Struve presently returned with the magazine, and, opening it, pointed to
+a photograph of a young officer in uniform, with the caption underneath:
+
+      LIEUTENANT STEPHEN FRASER OF THE TEXAS RANGERS
+
+     Who, single-handed, ran down and brought to justice
+     the worst gang of outlaws known in recent years.
+
+“It's the same man,” Briscoe announced.
+
+The escaped convict's mouth set in a cruel line.
+
+“One of us, either him or me, never leaves this valley alive,” he
+announced.
+
+Jed laughed softly and handed back the revolver. “That's the way to
+talk. My friend, if you mean that, you'll need your gun. Here's hoping
+you beat him to it.”
+
+“It won't be an even break this time if I can help it.”
+
+“I gather that it was, last time.”
+
+“Yep. We drew together.” Struve interlarded his explanation with oaths.
+“He's a devil with a gun. See that?” He held up his right band.
+
+“I see you're shy your most useful finger, if that's what you mean.”
+
+“Fraser took it off clean at twenty yards. I got him in the hand, too,
+but right or left he's a dead shot. He might 'a' killed me if he hadn't
+wanted to take me alive. Before I'm through with him he'll wish he had.”
+
+“Well, you don't want to make any mistake next time. Get him right.”
+
+“I sure will.” Hitherto Struve had been absorbed in his own turbid
+emotions, but he came back from them now with a new-born suspicion
+in his eyes. “Where do you come in, Mr. Briscoe? Why are you so plumb
+anxious I should load him up with lead? If it's a showdown, I'd some
+like to see your cards too.”
+
+Jed shrugged. “My reasons ain't urgent like yours. I don't favor spies
+poking their noses in here. That's all there's to it.”
+
+Jed had worked out a plot as he rode through the night from the Dillon
+ranch--one so safe and certain that it pointed to sure success. Jed was
+no coward, but he had a spider-like cunning that wove others as dupes
+into the web of his plans.
+
+The only weakness in his position lay in himself, in that sudden boiling
+up of passion in him that was likely to tear through his own web and
+destroy it. Three months ago he had given way to one of these outbursts,
+and he knew that any one of four or five men could put a noose around
+his neck. That was another reason why such a man as this Texas ranger
+must not be allowed to meet and mix with them.
+
+It was his cue to know as much as he could of every man that came into
+the valley. Wherefore he had run down the record of Struve from the
+reward placard which a detective agency furnished him of hundreds of
+criminals who were wanted. What could be more simple than to stir up the
+convict, in order to save himself, to destroy the ranger who had run him
+down before? There would be a demand so insistent for the punishment of
+the murderer that it could not be ignored. He would find some pretext
+to lure Struve from the valley for a day or two, and would arrange it
+so that he would be arrested while he was away. Thus he would be rid
+of both these troublesome intruders without making a move that could be
+seen.
+
+It was all as simple as A B C. Already Struve had walked into the trap.
+As Jed sat down to take a hand in the poker game that was in progress,
+he chuckled quietly to himself. He was quite sure that he was already
+practically master of the situation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII -- THE ROUND-UP
+
+“Would you like to take in the round-up to-day?”
+
+Arlie flung the question at Fraser with a frank directness of sloe-black
+eyes that had never known coquetry. She was washing handkerchiefs, and
+her sleeves were rolled to the elbows of the slender, but muscular,
+coffee-brown arms.
+
+“I would.”
+
+“If you like you may ride out with me to Willow Spring. I have some
+letters to take to dad.”
+
+“Suits me down to the ground, ma'am.”
+
+It was a morning beautiful even for Wyoming. The spring called potently
+to the youth in them. The fine untempered air was like wine, and out
+of a blue sky the sun beat pleasantly down through a crystal-clear
+atmosphere known only to the region of the Rockies. Nature was preaching
+a wordless sermon on the duty of happiness to two buoyant hearts that
+scarce needed it.
+
+Long before they reached the scene of the round-up they could hear the
+almost continual bawl of worried cattle, and could even see the cloud
+of dust they stirred. They passed the remuda, in charge of two lads
+lounging sleepily in their saddles with only an occasional glance at the
+bunch of grazing horses they were watching. Presently they looked down
+from a high ridge at the busy scene below.
+
+Out of Lost Valley ran a hundred rough and wooded gulches to the
+impassable cliff wall which bounded it. Into one of these they now
+descended slowly, letting their ponies pick a way among the loose stones
+and shale which covered the steep hillside.
+
+What their eyes fell upon was cattle-land at its busiest. Several
+hundred wild hill cattle were gathered in the green draw, and around
+them was a cordon of riders holding the gather steady. Now and again one
+of the cows would make a dash to escape, and instantly the nearest rider
+would wheel, as on a batter's plate, give chase, and herd the animal
+back after a more or less lengthy pursuit.
+
+Several of the riders were cutting out from the main herd cows with
+unmarked calves, which last were immediately roped and thrown. Usually
+it took only an instant to determine with whose cow the calf had been,
+and a few seconds to drive home the correct brand upon the sizzling
+flank. Occasionally the discussion was more protracted, in order to
+solve a doubt as to the ownership, and once a calf was released that it
+might again seek its mother to prove identity.
+
+Arlie observed that Fraser's eyes were shining.
+
+“I used to be a puncher myse'f,” he explained. “I tell you it feels good
+to grip a saddle between your knees, and to swallow the dust and hear
+the bellow of the cows. I used to live in them days. I sure did.”
+
+A boyish puncher galloped past with a whoop and waved his hat to Arlie.
+For two weeks he had been in the saddle for fourteen hours out of the
+twenty-four. He was grimy with dust, and hollow-eyed from want of sleep.
+A stubbly beard covered his brick-baked face. But the unquenchable
+gayety of the youthful West could not be extinguished. Though his
+flannel shirt gaped where the thorns had torn it, and the polka-dot
+bandanna round his throat was discolored with sweat, he was as blithely
+debonair as ever.
+
+“That's Dick France. He's a great friend of mine,” Arlie explained.
+
+“Dick's in luck,” Fraser commented, but whether because he was enjoying
+himself so thoroughly or because he was her friend the ranger did not
+explain.
+
+They stayed through the day, and ate dinner at the tail of the chuck
+wagon with the cattlemen. The light of the camp fires, already blazing
+in the nipping night air, shone brightly. The ranger rode back with her
+to the ranch, but next morning he asked Arlie if she could lend him an
+old pair of chaps discarded by her father.
+
+She found a pair for him.
+
+“If you don't mind, I'll ride out to the round-up and stay with the boys
+a few days,” he suggested.
+
+“You're going to ride with them,” she accused.
+
+“I thought I would. I'm not going to saddle myse'f on you two ladies
+forever.”
+
+“You know we're glad to have you. But that isn't it. What about your
+heart? You know you can't ride the range.”
+
+He flushed, and knew again that feeling of contempt for himself, or, to
+be more exact, for his position.
+
+“I'll be awful careful, Miss Arlie,” was all he found to say.
+
+She could not urge him further, lest he misunderstand her.
+
+“Of course, you know best,” she said, with a touch of coldness.
+
+He saddled Teddy and rode back. The drive for the day was already on,
+but he fell in beside young France and did his part. Before two days had
+passed he was accepted as one of these hard-riding punchers, for he was
+a competent vaquero and stood the grueling work as one born to it. He
+was, moreover, well liked, both because he could tell a good story and
+because these sons of Anak recognized in him that dynamic quality of
+manhood they could not choose but respect. In this a fortunate accident
+aided him.
+
+They were working Lost Creek, a deep and rapid stream at the point where
+the drive ended. The big Norwegian, Siegfried, trying to head off a wild
+cow racing along the bank with tail up, got too near the edge. The bank
+caved beneath the feet of his pony, and man and horse went head first
+into the turbid waters. Fraser galloped up at once, flung himself from
+his saddle, and took in at a glance the fact that the big blond Hercules
+could not swim.
+
+The Texan dived for him as he was going down, got hold of him by the
+hair, and after a struggle managed somehow to reach the farther shore.
+As they both lay there, one exhausted, and the other fighting for the
+breath he had nearly lost forever, Dillon reached the bank.
+
+“Is it all right, Steve?” he called anxiously.
+
+“All right,” grinned the ranger weakly. “He'll go on many a spree yet.
+Eh, Siegfried?”
+
+The Norwegian nodded. He was still frightened and half drowned. It was
+not till they were riding up the creek to find a shallow place they
+could ford that he spoke his mind.
+
+“Ay bane all in ven you got me, pardner.”
+
+“Oh, you were still kicking.”
+
+“Ay bane t'ink Ay had van chance not to get out. But Ay bane not forget
+dees. Eef you ever get in a tight place, send vor Sig Siegfried.”
+
+“That's all right, Sig.”
+
+Nobody wasted any compliments on him. After the fashion of their kind,
+they guyed the Norwegian about the bath he had taken. Nevertheless,
+Fraser knew that he had won the liking of these men, as well as their
+deep respect. They began to call him by his first name, which hitherto
+only Dillon had done, and they included him in the rough, practical
+jokes they played on each other.
+
+One night they initiated him--an experience to be both dreaded and
+desired. To be desired because it implies the conferring of the
+thirty-second degree of the freemasonry of Cattleland's approval; to
+be dreaded because hazing is mild compared with some features of the
+exercises.
+
+Fraser was dragged from sweet slumber, pegged face down on his blankets,
+with a large-sized man at the extremity of each arm and leg, and
+introduced to a chapping. Dick France wielded the chaps vigorously upon
+the portions of his anatomy where they would do the most execution. The
+Texan did not enjoy it, but he refrained from saying so. When he was
+freed, he sat down painfully on a saddle and remarked amiably:
+
+“You're a beautiful bunch, ain't you? Anybody got any smoking?”
+
+This proper acceptance of their attentions so delighted these overgrown
+children that they dug up three bottles of whisky that were kept in camp
+for rattlesnake bites, and made Rome howl. They had ridden all day, and
+for many weary days before that; but they were started toward making a
+night of it when Dillon appeared.
+
+Dillon was boss of the round-up--he had been elected by general consent,
+and his word was law. He looked round upon them with a twinkling eye,
+and wanted to know how long it was going to last. But the way he put his
+question was:
+
+“How much whisky is there left?”
+
+Finding there was none, he ordered them all back to their blankets.
+After a little skylarking, they obeyed. Next day Fraser rode the hills,
+a sore, sore man. But nobody who did not know could have guessed it. He
+would have died before admitting it to any of his companions. Thus he
+won the accolade of his peers as a worthy horse-man of the hills.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII -- THE BRONCHO BUSTERS
+
+Jed Briscoe rejoined the round-up the day following Fraser's initiation.
+He took silent note of the Texan's popularity, of how the boys all
+called him “Steve” because he had become one of them, and were ready
+either to lark with him or work with him. He noticed, too, that the
+ranger did his share of work without a whimper, apparently enjoying the
+long, hard hours in the saddle. The hill riding was of the roughest, and
+the cattle were wild as deers and as agile. But there was no break-neck
+incline too steep for Steve Fraser to follow.
+
+Once Jed chanced upon Steve stripped for a bath beside the creek, and he
+understood the physical reason for his perfect poise. The wiry, sinuous
+muscles, packed compactly without obtrusion, played beneath the skin
+like those of a panther. He walked as softly and as easily as one, with
+something of the rippling, unconscious grace of that jungle lord. It was
+this certainty of himself that vivified the steel-gray eyes which looked
+forth unafraid, and yet amiably, upon a world primitive enough to demand
+proof of every man who would hold the respect of his fellows.
+
+Meanwhile, Briscoe waited for Struve and his enemy to become entangled
+in the net he was spinning. He made no pretense of fellowship with
+Fraser; nor, on the other hand, did he actively set himself against
+him with the men. He was ready enough to sneer when Dick France grew
+enthusiastic about his new friend, but this was to be expected from one
+of his jaundiced temper.
+
+“Who is this all-round crackerjack you're touting, Dick?” he asked
+significantly.
+
+France was puzzled. “Who is he? Why, he's Steve Fraser.”
+
+“I ain't asking you what his name is. I'm asking who he is. What does
+he do for a living? Who recommended him so strong to the boys that they
+take up with him so sudden?”
+
+“I don't care what he does for a living. Likely, he rides the range in
+Texas. When it comes to recommendations, he's got one mighty good one
+written on his face.”
+
+“You think so, do you?”
+
+“That's what I think, Jed. He's the goods--best of company, a
+straight-up rider, and a first-rate puncher. Ask any of the boys.”
+
+“I'm using my eyes, Dick. They tell me all I need to know.”
+
+“Well, use them to-morrow. He's going to take a whirl at riding Dead
+Easy. Next day he's going to take on Rocking Horse. If he makes good on
+them, you'll admit he can ride.”
+
+“I ain't saying he can't ride. So can you. If it's plumb gentle, I can
+make out to stick on a pony myself.”
+
+“Course you can ride. Everybody knows that. You're the best ever. Any
+man that can win the championship of Wyoming----But you'll say yourself
+them strawberry roans are wicked devils.”
+
+“He hasn't ridden them yet, Dick.”
+
+“He's going to.”
+
+“We'll be there to see it. Mebbe he will. Mebbe he won't. I've known men
+before who thought they were going to.”
+
+It was in no moment of good-natured weakness that Fraser had consented
+to try riding the outlaw horses. Nor had his vanity anything to do with
+it. He knew a time might be coming when he would need all the prestige
+and all the friendship he could earn to tide him over the crisis. Jed
+Briscoe had won his leadership, partly because he could shoot quicker
+and straighter, ride harder, throw a rope more accurately, and play
+poker better than his companions.
+
+Steve had a mind to show that he, too, could do some of these things
+passing well. Wherefore, he had let himself be badgered good-naturedly
+into trying a fall with these famous buckers. As the heavy work of the
+round-up was almost over, Dillon was glad to relax discipline enough to
+give the boys a little fun.
+
+The remuda was driven up while the outfit was at breakfast. His friends
+guyed Steve with pleasant prophecy.
+
+“He'll be hunting leather about the fourth buck!”
+
+“If he ain't trying to make of himse'f one of them there Darius Green
+machines!” suggested another.
+
+“Got any last words, Steve? Dead Easy most generally eats 'em alive,”
+ Dick derided.
+
+“Sho! Cayn't you see he's so plumb scared he cayn't talk?”
+
+Fraser grinned and continued to eat. When he had finished he got
+his lariat from the saddle, swung to Siegfried's pony, and rode
+unobtrusively forward to the remuda. The horses were circling round and
+round, so that it was several minutes before he found a chance. When he
+did, the rope snaked forward and dropped over the head of the strawberry
+roan. The horse stood trembling, making not the least resistance, even
+while the ranger saddled and cinched.
+
+But before the man settled to the saddle, the outlaw was off on its
+furious resistance. It went forward and up into the air with a plunging
+leap. The rider swung his hat and gave a joyous whoop. Next instant
+there was a scatter of laughing men as the horse came toward them in a
+series of short, stiff-legged bucks which would have jarred its rider
+like a pile driver falling on his head had he not let himself grow limp
+to meet the shock.
+
+All the tricks of its kind this unbroken five-year-old knew. Weaving,
+pitching, sunfishing, it fought superbly, the while Steve rode with the
+consummate ease of a master. His sinuous form swayed instinctively to
+every changing motion of his mount. Even when it flung itself back in
+blind fury, he dropped lightly from the saddle and into it again as the
+animal struggled to its feet.
+
+The cook waved a frying pan in frantic glee. “Hurra-ay! You're the
+goods, all right, all right.”
+
+“You bet. Watch Steve fan him. And he ain't pulled leather yet. Not
+once.”
+
+An unseen spectator was taking it in from the brow of a little hill
+crowned with a group of firs. She had reached this point just as the
+Texan had swung to the saddle, and she watched the battle between horse
+and man intently. If any had been there to see, he might have observed
+a strange fire smouldering in her eyes. For the first time there was
+filtering through her a vague suspicion of this man who claimed to have
+heart trouble, and had deliberately subjected himself to the terrific
+strain of such a test. She had seen broncho busters get off bleeding
+at mouth and nose and ears after a hard fight, and she had never seen a
+contest more superbly fought than this one. But full of courage as the
+horse was, it had met its master and began to know it.
+
+The ranger's quirt was going up and down, stinging Dead Easy to more
+violent exertions, if possible. But the outlaw had shot its bolt. The
+plunges grew less vicious, the bucks more feeble. It still pitched,
+because of the unbroken gameness that defied defeat, but so mechanically
+that the motions could be forecasted.
+
+Then Steve began to soothe the brute. Somehow the wild creatute became
+aware that this man who was his master was also disposed to be friendly.
+Presently it gave up the battle, quivering in every limb. Fraser slipped
+from the saddle, and putting his arm across its neck began to gentle the
+outlaw. The animal had always looked the incarnation of wickedness. The
+red eyes in its ill-shaped head were enough to give one bad dreams.
+A quarter of an hour before, it had bit savagely at him. Now it stood
+breathing deep, and trembling while its master let his hand pass gently
+over the nose and neck with soft words that slowly won the pony back
+from the terror into which it had worked itself.
+
+“You did well, Mr. Fraser from Texas,” Jed complimented him, with a
+smile that thinly hid his malice. “But it won't do to have you going
+back to Texas with the word that Wyoming is shy of riders. I ain't any
+great shakes, but I reckon I'll have to take a whirl at Rocking Horse.”
+ He had decided to ride for two reasons. One was that he had glimpsed the
+girl among the firs; the other was to dissipate the admiration his rival
+had created among the men.
+
+Briscoe lounged toward the remuda, rope in hand. It was his cue to
+get himself up picturesquely in all the paraphernalia of the cowboy.
+Black-haired and white-toothed, lithe as a wolf, and endowed with a
+grace almost feline, it was easy to understand how this man appealed to
+the imagination of the reckless young fellows of this primeval valley.
+Everything he did was done well. Furthermore, he looked and acted the
+part of leader which he assumed.
+
+Rocking Horse was in a different mood from its brother. It was hard to
+rope, and when Jed's raw-hide had fallen over its head it was necessary
+to reënforce the lariat with two others. Finally the pony had to be
+flung down before a saddle could be put on. When Siegfried, who had been
+kneeling on its head, stepped back, the outlaw staggered to its feet,
+already badly shaken, to find an incubus clamped to the saddle.
+
+No matter how it pitched, the human clothespin stuck to his seat, and
+apparently with as little concern as if he had been in a rowboat gently
+moved to and fro by the waves. Jed rode like a centaur, every motion
+attuned to those of the animal as much as if he were a part of it. No
+matter how it pounded or tossed, he stuck securely to the hurricane deck
+of the broncho.
+
+Once only he was in danger, and that because Rocking Horse flung
+furiously against the wheel of a wagon and ground the rider's leg till
+he grew dizzy with the pain. For an instant he caught at the saddle horn
+to steady himself as the roan bucked into the open again.
+
+“He's pulling leather!” some one shouted.
+
+“Shut up, you goat!” advised the Texan good-naturedly. “Can't you see
+his laig got jammed till he's groggy? Wonder is, he didn't take the
+dust! They don't raise better riders than he is.”
+
+“By hockey! He's all in. Look out! Jed's falling,” France cried, running
+forward.
+
+It looked so for a moment, then Jed swam back to clear consciousness
+again, and waved them back. He began to use his quirt without mercy.
+
+“Might know he'd game it out,” remarked Yorky.
+
+He did. It was a long fight, and the horse was flecked with bloody foam
+before its spirit and strength failed. But the man in the saddle kept
+his seat till the victory was won.
+
+Steve was on the spot to join heartily the murmur of applause, for he
+was too good a sportsman to grudge admiration even to his enemy.
+
+“You're the one best bet in riders, Mr. Briscoe. It's a pleasure to
+watch you,” he said frankly.
+
+Jed's narrowed eyes drifted to him. “Oh, hell!” he drawled with insolent
+contempt, and turned on his heel.
+
+From the clump of firs a young woman was descending, and Jed went to
+meet her.
+
+“You rode splendidly,” she told him with vivid eyes. “Were you hurt when
+you were jammed again the wagon? I mean, does it still hurt?” For she
+noticed that he walked with a limp.
+
+“I reckon I can stand the grief without an amputation. Arlie, I got
+something to tell you.”
+
+She looked at him in her direct fashion and waited.
+
+“It's about your new friend.” He drew from a pocket some leaves torn out
+of a magazine. His finger indicated a picture. “Ever see that gentleman
+before?”
+
+The girl looked at it coolly. “It seems to be Mr. Fraser taken in his
+uniform; Lieutenant Fraser, I should say.”
+
+The cattleman's face fell. “You know, then, who he is, and what he's
+doing here.”
+
+Without evasion, her gaze met his. “I understood him to say he was an
+officer in the Texas Rangers. You know why he is here.”
+
+“You're right, I do. But do you?”
+
+“Well, what is it you mean? Out with it, Jed,” she demanded impatiently.
+
+“He is here to get a man wanted in Texas, a man hiding in this valley
+right now.”
+
+“I don't believe it,” she returned quickly. “And if he is, that's not
+your business or mine. It's his duty, isn't it?”
+
+“I ain't discussing that. You know the law of the valley, Arlie.”
+
+“I don't accept that as binding, Jed. Lots of people here don't. Because
+Lost Valley used to be a nest of miscreants, it needn't always be. I
+don't see what right we've got to set ourselves above the law.”
+
+“This valley has always stood by hunted men when they reached it. That's
+our custom, and I mean to stick to it.”
+
+“Very well. I hold you to that,” she answered quickly. “This man Fraser
+is a hunted man. He's hunted because of what he did for me and dad. I
+claim the protection of the valley for him.”
+
+“He can have it--if he's what he says he is. But why ain't he been
+square with us? Why didn't he tell who he was?”
+
+“He told me.”
+
+“That ain't enough, Arlie. If he did, you kept it quiet. We all had a
+right to know.”
+
+“If you had asked him, he would have told you.”
+
+“I ain't so sure he would. Anyhow, I don't like it. I believe he is here
+to get the man I told you of. Mebbe that ain't all.”
+
+“What more?” she scoffed.
+
+“This fellow is the best range detective in the country. My notion is
+he's spying around about that Squaw Creek raid.”
+
+Under the dusky skin she flushed angrily. “My notion is you're daffy,
+Jed. Talk sense, and I'll listen to you. You haven't a grain of proof.”
+
+“I may get some yet,” he told her sulkily.
+
+She laughed her disbelief. “When you do, let me know.”
+
+And with that she gave her pony the signal to more forward.
+
+Nevertheless, she met the ranger at the foot of the little hill with
+distinct coldness. When he came up to shake hands, she was too busy
+dismounting to notice.
+
+“Your heart must be a good deal better. I suppose Lost Valley agrees
+with you.” She had swung down on the other side of the horse, and her
+glance at him across the saddle seat was like a rapier thrust.
+
+He was aware at once of being in disgrace with her, and it chafed him
+that he had no adequate answer to her implied charge.
+
+“My heart's all right,” he said a little gruffly.
+
+“Yes, it seems to be, lieutenant.”
+
+She trailed the reins and turned away at once to find her father. The
+girl was disappointed in him. He had, in effect, lied to her. That was
+bad enough; but she felt that his lie had concealed something, how much
+she scarce dared say. Her tangled thoughts were in chaos. One moment she
+was ready to believe the worst; the next, it was impossible to conceive
+such a man so vile a spy as to reward hospitality with treachery.
+
+Yet she remembered now that it had been while she was telling of the
+fate of the traitor Burke that she had driven him to his lie. Or had he
+not told it first when she pointed out Lost Valley at his feet? Yes,
+it was at that moment she had noticed his pallor. He had, at least,
+conscience enough to be ashamed of what he was doing. But she recognized
+a wide margin of difference between the possibilities of his guilt.
+It was one thing to come to the valley for an escaped murderer; it was
+quite another to use the hospitality of his host as a means to betray
+the friends of that host. Deep in her heart she could not find it
+possible to convict him of the latter alternative. He was too much a
+man, too vitally dynamic. No; whatever else he was, she felt sure he
+was not so hopelessly lost to decency. He had that electric spark of
+self-respect which may coexist with many faults, but not with treachery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX -- A SHOT FROM BALD KNOB
+
+A bunch of young steers which had strayed from their range were to be
+driven to the Dillon ranch, and the boss of the rodeo appointed France
+and Fraser to the task.
+
+“Yo'll have company home, honey,” he told his daughter, “and yo'll be
+able to give the boys a hand if they need it. These hill cattle are
+still some wild, though we've been working them a week. Yo're a heap
+better cowboy than some that works more steady at the business.”
+
+Briscoe nodded. “You bet! I ain't forgot that day Arlie rode Big Timber
+with me two years ago. She wasn't sixteen then, but she herded them hill
+steers like they belonged to a milk bunch.”
+
+He spoke his compliment patly enough, but somehow the girl had an
+impression that he was thinking of something else. She was right, for as
+he helped gather the drive his mind was busy with a problem. Presently
+he dismounted to tighten a cinch, and made a signal to a young fellow
+known as Slim Leroy. The latter was a new and tender recruit to Jed's
+band of miscreants. He drew up beside his leader and examined one of the
+fore hoofs of his pony.
+
+“Slim, I'm going to have Dillon send you for the mail to-day. When he
+tells you, that's the first you know about it. Understand? You'll have
+to take the hill cut to Jack Rabbit Run on your way in. At the cabin
+back of the aspens, inquire for a man that calls himself Johnson. If
+he's there, give him this message: 'This afternoon from Bald Knob.'
+Remember! Just those words, and nothing more. If he isn't there, forget
+the message. You'll know the man you want because he is shy his trigger
+finger and has a ragged scar across his right cheek. Make no mistake
+about this, Slim.”
+
+“Sure I won't.”
+
+Briscoe, having finished cinching, swung to his saddle and rode up to
+say good-by to Arlie.
+
+“Hope you'll have no trouble with this bunch. If you push right along
+you'd ought to get home by night,” he told her.
+
+Arlie agreed carelessly. “I don't expect any trouble with them. So-long,
+Jed.”
+
+It would not have been her choice to ride home with the lieutenant of
+rangers, but since her father had made the appointment publicly she did
+not care to make objection. Yet she took care to let Fraser see that he
+was in her black books. The men rode toward the rear of the herd, one on
+each side, and Arlie fell in beside her old playmate, Dick. She laughed
+and talked with him about a hundred things in which Steve could have had
+no part, even if he had been close enough to catch more than one word
+out of twenty. Not once did she even look his way. Quite plainly she had
+taken pains to forget his existence.
+
+“It was Briscoe's turn the other day,” mused the Texan. “It's mine now.
+I wonder when it will be Dick's to get put out in the cold!”
+
+Nevertheless, though he tried to act the philosopher, it cut him that
+the high-spirited girl had condemned him. He felt himself in a false
+position from which he could not easily extricate himself. The worst
+of it was that if it came to a showdown he could not expect the simple
+truth to exonerate him.
+
+From where they rode there drifted to him occasionally the sound of the
+gay voices of the young people. It struck him for the first time that
+he was getting old. Arlie could not be over eighteen, and Dick
+perhaps twenty-one. Maybe young people like that thought a fellow of
+twenty-seven a Methusaleh.
+
+After a time the thirsty cattle smelt water and hit a bee line so
+steadily for it that they needed no watching. Every minute or two one
+of the leaders stretched out its neck and let out a bellow without
+slackening its pace.
+
+Steve lazed on his pony, shifting his position to ease his cramped limbs
+after the manner of the range rider. In spite of himself, his eyes would
+drift toward the jaunty little figure on the pinto. The masculine in him
+approved mightily her lissom grace and the proud lilt of her dark
+head, with its sun-kissed face set in profile to him. He thought her
+serviceable costume very becoming, from the pinched felt hat pinned to
+the dark mass of hair, and the red silk kerchief knotted loosely round
+the pretty throat, to the leggings beneath the corduroy skirt and the
+flannel waist with sleeves rolled up in summer-girl fashion to leave the
+tanned arms bare to the dimpled elbows.
+
+The trail, winding through a narrow defile, brought them side by side
+again.
+
+“Ever notice what a persistent color buckskin is, Steve?” inquired
+France, by way of bringing him into the conversation. “It's strong in
+every one of these cattle, though the old man has been trying to get rid
+of it for ten years.”
+
+“You mustn't talk to me, Dick,” responded his friend gravely. “Little
+Willie told a lie, and he's being stood in a corner.”
+
+Arlie flushed angrily, opened her mouth to speak, and, changing her
+mind, looked at him witheringly. He didn't wither, however. Instead, he
+smiled broadly, got out his mouth organ, and cheerfully entertained them
+with his favorite, “I Met My Love In the Alamo.”
+
+The hot blood under dusky skin held its own in her cheeks. She was
+furious with him, and dared not trust herself to speak. As soon as they
+had passed through the defile she spurred forward, as if to turn the
+leaders. France turned to his friend and laughed ruefully.
+
+“She's full of pepper, Steve.”
+
+The ranger nodded. “She's all right, Dick. If you want to know, she's
+got a right to make a doormat of me. I lied to her. I was up against
+it, and I kinder had to. You ride along and join her. If you want to get
+right solid, tell her how many kinds of a skunk I am. Worst of it is, I
+ain't any too sure I'm not.”
+
+“I'm sure for you then, Steve,” the lad called back, as he loped forward
+after the girl.
+
+He was so sure, that he began to praise his friend to Arlie, to tell her
+of what a competent cowman he was, how none of them could make a cut or
+rope a wild steer like him. She presently wanted to know whether Dick
+could not find something more interesting to talk about.
+
+He could not help smiling at her downright manner. “You've surely got it
+in for him, Arlie. I thought you liked him.”
+
+She pulled up her horse, and looked at him. “What made you think that?
+Did he tell you so?”
+
+Dick fairly shouted. “You do rub it in, girl, when you've got a down on
+a fellow. No, he didn't tell me. You did.”
+
+“Me?” she protested indignantly. “I never did.”
+
+“Oh, you didn't say so, but I don't need a church to fall on me before I
+can take a hint. You acted as though you liked him that day you and him
+came riding into camp.”
+
+“I didn't do any such thing, Dick France. I don't like him at all,” very
+decidedly.
+
+“All the boys do--all but Jed. I don't reckon he does.”
+
+“Do I have to like him because the boys do?” she demanded.
+
+“O' course not.” Dick stopped, trying to puzzle it out. “He says you
+ain't to blame, that he lied to you. That seems right strange, too. It
+ain't like Steve to lie.”
+
+“How do you know so much about him? You haven't known him a week.”
+
+“That's what Jed says. I say it ain't a question of time. Some men I've
+knew ten years I ain't half so sure of. He's a man from the ground up.
+Any one could tell that, before they had seen him five minutes.”
+
+Secretly, the girl was greatly pleased. She so wanted to believe that
+Dick was right. It was what she herself had thought.
+
+“I wish you'd seen him the day he pulled Siegfried out of Lost Creek.
+Tell you, I thought they were both goners,” Dick continued.
+
+“I expect it was most ankle-deep,” she scoffed. “Hello, we're past Bald
+Knob!”
+
+“They both came mighty nigh handing in their checks.”
+
+“I didn't know that, though I knew, of course, he was fearless,” Arlie
+said.
+
+“What's that?” Dick drew in his horse sharply, and looked back.
+
+The sound of a rifle shot echoed from hillside to hillside. Like a
+streak of light, the girl's pinto flashed past him. He heard her give a
+sobbing cry of anguish. Then he saw that Steve was slipping very slowly
+from his saddle.
+
+A second shot rang out. The light was beginning to fail, but he made out
+a man's figure crouched among the small pines on the shoulder of Bald
+Knob. Dick jerked out his revolver as he rode back, and fired twice. He
+was quite out of pistol range, but he wanted the man in ambush to see
+that help was at hand. He saw Arlie fling herself from her pony in time
+to support the Texan just as he sank to the ground.
+
+“She'll take care of Steve. It's me for that murderer,” the young man
+thought.
+
+Acting upon that impulse, he slid from his horse and slipped into the
+sagebrush of the hillside. By good fortune he was wearing a gray shirt
+of a shade which melted into that of the underbrush. Night falls swiftly
+in the mountains, and already dusk was softly spreading itself over the
+hills.
+
+Dick went up a draw, where young pines huddled together in the trough;
+and from the upper end of this he emerged upon a steep ridge, eyes and
+ears alert for the least sign of human presence. A third shot had rung
+out while he was in the dense mass of foliage of the evergreens, but now
+silence lay heavy all about him. The gathering darkness blurred detail,
+so that any one of a dozen bowlders might be a shield for a crouching
+man.
+
+Once, nerves at a wire edge from the strain on him, he thought he saw a
+moving figure. Throwing up his gun, he fired quickly. But he must
+have been mistaken, for, shortly afterward, he heard some one crashing
+through dead brush at a distance.
+
+“He's on the run, whoever he is. Guess I'll get back to Steve,” decided
+France wisely.
+
+He found his friend stretched on the ground, with his head in Arlie's
+lap.
+
+“Is it very bad?” he asked the girl.
+
+“I don't know. There's no light. Whatever shall we do?” she moaned.
+
+“I'm a right smart of a nuisance, ain't I?” drawled the wounded man
+unexpectedly.
+
+She leaned forward quickly. “Where are you hit?”
+
+“In the shoulder, ma'am.”
+
+“Can you ride, Steve? Do you reckon you could make out the five miles?”
+ Dick asked.
+
+Arlie answered for him. She had felt the inert weight of his heavy body
+and knew that he was beyond helping himself. “No. Is there no house
+near? There's Alec Howard's cabin.”
+
+“He's at the round-up, but I guess we had better take Steve there--if we
+could make out to get him that far.”
+
+The girl took command quietly. “Unsaddle Teddy.”
+
+She had unloosened his shirt and was tying her silk kerchief over the
+wound, from which blood was coming in little jets.
+
+“We can't carry him,” she decided. “It's too far. We'll have to lift him
+to the back of the horse, and let him lie there. Steady, Dick. That's
+right. You must hold him on, while I lead the horse.”
+
+Heavy as he was, they somehow hoisted him, and started. He had fainted
+again, and hung limply, with his face buried in the mane of the pony. It
+seemed an age before the cabin loomed, shadow-like, out of the darkness.
+They found the door unlocked, as usual, and carried him in to the bed.
+
+“Give me your knife, Dick,” Arlie ordered quietly. “And I want water. If
+that's a towel over there, bring it.”
+
+“Just a moment. I'll strike a light, and we'll see where we're at.”
+
+“No. We'll have to work in the dark. A light might bring them down on
+us.” She had been cutting the band of the shirt, and now ripped it so as
+to expose the wounded shoulder.
+
+Dick took a bucket to the creek, and presently returned with it. In his
+right hand he carried his revolver. When he reached the cabin he gave an
+audible sigh of relief and quickly locked the door.
+
+“Of course you'll have to go for help, Dick. Bring old Doc Lee.”
+
+“Why, Arlie, I can't leave you here alone. What are you talking about?”
+
+“You'll have to. It's the only thing to do. You'll have to give me your
+revolver. And, oh, Dick, don't lose a moment on the way.”
+
+He was plainly troubled. “I just can't leave you here alone, girl. What
+would your father say if anything happened? I don't reckon anything
+will, but we can't tell. No, I'll stay here, too. Steve must take his
+chance.”
+
+“You'll not stay.” She flamed round upon him, with the fierce passion
+of a tigress fighting for her young. “You'll go this minute--this very
+minute!”
+
+“But don't you see I oughtn't to leave you? Anybody would tell you
+that,” he pleaded.
+
+“And you call yourself his friend,” she cried, in a low, bitter voice.
+
+“I call myself yours, too,” he made answer doggedly.
+
+“Then go. Go this instant. You'll go, anyway; but if you're my friend,
+you'll go gladly, and bring help to save us both.”
+
+“I wisht I knew what to do,” he groaned.
+
+Her palms fastened on his shoulders. She was a creature transformed.
+Such bravery, such feminine ferocity, such a burning passion of the
+spirit, was altogether outside of his experience of her or any other
+woman. He could no more resist her than he could fly to the top of Bald
+Knob.
+
+“I'll go, Arlie.”
+
+“And bring help soon. Get Doc Lee here soon as you can. Leave word for
+armed men to follow. Don't wait for them.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Take his Teddy horse. It can cover ground faster than yours.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+With plain misgivings, he left her, and presently she heard the sound of
+his galloping horse. It seemed to her for a moment as if she must call
+him back, but she strangled the cry in her throat. She locked the door
+and bolted it, then turned back to the bed, upon which the wounded man
+was beginning to moan in his delirium.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X -- DOC LEE
+
+Arlie knew nothing of wounds or their treatment. All she could do was
+to wash the shoulder in cold water and bind it with strips torn from her
+white underskirt. When his face and hands grew hot with the fever, she
+bathed them with a wet towel. How badly he was hurt--whether he might
+not even die before Dick's return--she had no way of telling. His
+inconsequent babble at first frightened her, for she had never before
+seen a person in delirium, nor heard of the insistence with which one
+harps upon some fantasy seized upon by a diseased mind.
+
+“She thinks you're a skunk, Steve. So you are. She's dead right--dead
+right--dead right. You lied to her, you coyote! Stand up in the corner,
+you liar, while she whangs at you with a six-gun! You're a skunk--dead
+right.”
+
+So he would run on in a variation of monotony, the strong, supple,
+masterful man as helpless as a child, all the splendid virility stricken
+from him by the pressure of an enemy's finger. The eyes that she had
+known so full of expression, now like half-scabbarded steel, and now
+again bubbling from the inner mirth of him, were glazed and unmeaning.
+The girl had felt in him a capacity for silent self-containment; and
+here he was, picking at the coverlet with restless fingers, prattling
+foolishly, like an infant.
+
+She was a child of impulse, sensitive and plastic. Because she had been
+hard on him before he was struck down, her spirit ran open-armed to make
+amends. What manner of man he was she did not know. But what availed
+that to keep her, a creature of fire and dew, from the clutch of
+emotions strange and poignant? He had called himself a liar and
+a coyote, yet she knew it was not true, or at worst, true in some
+qualified sense. He might be hard, reckless, even wicked in some
+ways. But, vaguely, she felt that if he were a sinner he sinned with
+self-respect. He was in no moral collapse, at least. It was impossible
+to fit him to her conception of a spy. No, no! Anything but that!
+
+So she sat there, her fingers laced about her knee, as she leaned
+forward to wait upon the needs she could imagine for him, the dumb
+tragedy of despair in her childish face.
+
+The situation was one that made for terror. To be alone with a wounded
+man, his hurt undressed, to hear his delirium and not to know whether
+he might not die any minute--this would have been enough to cause
+apprehension. Add to it the darkness, her deep interest in him, the
+struggle of her soul, and the dread of unseen murder stalking in the
+silent night.
+
+Though her thought was of him, it was not wholly upon him. She sat where
+she could watch the window, Dick's revolver in another chair beside her.
+It was a still, starry night, and faintly she could see the hazy purple,
+mountain line. Somewhere beneath those uncaring stars was the man who
+had done this awful thing. Was he far, or was he near? Would he come to
+make sure he had not failed? Her fearful heart told her that he would
+come.
+
+She must have fought her fears nearly an hour before she heard the
+faintest of sounds outside. Her hand leaped to the revolver. She sat
+motionless, listening, with nerves taut. It came again presently, a
+deadened footfall, close to the door. Then, after an eternity, the latch
+clicked softly. Some one, with infinite care, was trying to discover
+whether the door was locked.
+
+His next move she anticipated. Her eyes fastened on the window, while
+she waited breathlessly. Her heart was stammering furiously. Moments
+passed, in which she had to set her teeth to keep from screaming aloud.
+The revolver was shaking so that she had to steady the barrel with her
+left hand. A shadow crossed one pane, the shadow of a head in profile,
+and pushed itself forward till shoulders, arm, and poised revolver
+covered the lower sash. Very, very slowly the head itself crept into
+sight.
+
+Arlie fired and screamed simultaneously. The thud of a fall, the scuffle
+of a man gathering himself to his feet again, the rush of retreating
+steps, all merged themselves in one single impression of fierce,
+exultant triumph.
+
+Her only regret was that she had not killed him. She was not even sure
+that she had hit him, for her bullet had gone through the glass within
+an inch of the inner woodwork. Nevertheless, she knew that he had had a
+shock that would carry him far. Unless he had accomplices with him--and
+of that there had been no evidence at the time of the attack from Bald
+Knob--he would not venture another attempt. Of one thing she was sure.
+The face that had looked in at the window was one she had never seen
+before, In this, too, she found relief--for she knew now that the face
+she had expected to see follow the shadow over the pane had been that of
+Jed Briscoe; and Jed had too much of the courage of Lucifer incarnate
+in him to give up because an unexpected revolver had been fired in his
+face.
+
+Time crept slowly, but it could hardly have been a quarter of an hour
+later that she heard the galloping of horses.
+
+“It is Dick!” she cried joyfully, and, running to the door, she unbolted
+and unlocked it just as France dragged Teddy to a halt and flung himself
+to the ground.
+
+The young man gave a shout of gladness at sight of her.
+
+“Is it all right, Arlie?”
+
+“Yes. That is--I don't know. He is delirious. A man came to the window,
+and I shot at him. Oh, Dick, I'm so glad you're back.”
+
+In her great joy, she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. Old
+Doctor Lee, dismounting more leisurely, drawled his protest.
+
+“Look-a-here, Arlie. I'm the doctor. Where do I come in?”
+
+“I'll kiss you, too, when you tell me he'll get well.” The
+half-hysterical laugh died out of her voice, and she caught him fiercely
+by the arm. “Doc, doc, don't let him die,” she begged.
+
+He had known her all her life, had been by the bedside when she came
+into the world, and he put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a
+little hug as they passed into the room.
+
+“We'll do our level best, little girl.”
+
+She lit a lamp, and drew the window curtain, so that none could see from
+the outside. While the old doctor arranged his instruments and bandages
+on chairs, she waited on him. He noticed how white she was, for he said,
+not unkindly:
+
+“I don't want two patients right now, Arlie. If you're going to keel
+over in a faint right in the middle of it, I'll have Dick help.”
+
+“No, no, I won't, doc. Truly, I won't,” she promised.
+
+“All right, little girl. We'll see how game you are. Dick, hold the
+light. Hold it right there. See?”
+
+The Texan had ceased talking, and was silent, except for a low moan,
+repeated at regular intervals. The doctor showed Arlie how to administer
+the anaesthetic after he had washed the wound. While he was searching
+for the bullet with his probe she flinched as if he had touched a bare
+nerve, but she stuck to her work regardless of her feelings, until the
+lead was found and extracted and the wound dressed.
+
+Afterward, Dick found her seated on a rock outside crying hysterically.
+He did not attempt to cope with the situation, but returned to the house
+and told Lee.
+
+“Best thing for her. Her nerves are overwrought and unstrung. She'll be
+all right, once she has her cry out. I'll drift around, and jolly her
+along.”
+
+The doctor presently came up and took a seat beside her.
+
+“Wha--what do you think, doctor?” she sobbed.
+
+“Well, I think it's tarnation hot operating with a big kerosene lamp six
+inches from your haid,” he said, as he mopped his forehead.
+
+“I mean--will he--get well?”
+
+Lee snorted. “Well, I'd be ashamed of him if he didn't. If he lets a
+nice, clean, flesh wound put him out of business he don't deserve to
+live. Don't worry any about him, young lady. Say, I wish I had zwei beer
+right now, Arlie.”
+
+“You mean it? You're not just saying it to please me?”
+
+“Of course, I mean it,” he protested indignantly. “I wish I had three.”
+
+“I mean, are you sure he'll get well?” she explained, a faint smile
+touching her wan face.
+
+“Yes, I mean that, too, but right now I mean the beer most. Now, honest,
+haven't I earned a beer?”
+
+“You've earned a hundred thousand, doc. You're the kindest and dearest
+man that ever lived,” she cried.
+
+“Ain't that rather a large order, my dear?” he protested mildly. “I
+couldn't really use a hundred thousand. And I'd hate to be better than
+Job and Moses and Pharaoh and them Bible characters. Wouldn't I have to
+give up chewing? Somehow, a halo don't seem to fit my haid. It's most
+too bald to carry one graceful.... You may do that again if you want
+to.” This last, apropos of the promised reward which had just been paid
+in full.
+
+Arlie found she could manage a little laugh by this time.
+
+“Well, if you ain't going to, we might as well go in and have a look at
+that false-alarm patient of ours,” he continued. “We'll have to sit up
+all night with him. I was sixty-three yesterday. I'm going to quit this
+doctor game. I'm too old to go racing round the country nights just
+because you young folks enjoy shooting each other up. Yes, ma'am, I'm
+going to quit. I serve notice right here. What's the use of having a
+good ranch and some cattle if you can't enjoy them?”
+
+As the doctor had been serving notice of his intention to quit doctoring
+for over ten years, Arlie did not take him too seriously. She knew him
+for what he was--a whimsical old fellow, who would drop in the saddle
+before he would let a patient suffer; one of the old school, who loved
+his work but liked to grumble over it.
+
+“Maybe you'll be able to take a rest soon. You know that young doctor
+from Denver, who was talking about settling here----”
+
+This, as she knew, was a sore point with him. “So you're tired of me,
+are you? Want a new-fangled appendix cutter from Denver, do you? Time to
+shove old Doc Lee aside, eh?”
+
+“I didn't say that, doc,” she repented.
+
+“Huh! You meant it. Wonder how many times he'd get up at midnight and
+plow through three-foot snow for six miles to see the most ungrateful,
+squalling little brat----”
+
+“Was it me, doc?” she ungrammatically demanded.
+
+“It was you, Miss Impudence.”
+
+They had reached the door, but she held him there a moment, while she
+laughed delightedly and hugged him. “I knew it was me. As if we'd let
+our old doc go, or have anything to do with a young ignoramus from
+Denver! Didn't you know I was joking? Of course you did.”
+
+He still pretended severity. “Oh, I know you. When it comes to wheedling
+an old fool, you've got the rest of the girls in this valley beat to a
+fare-you-well.”
+
+“Is that why you always loved me?” she asked, with a sparkle of mischief
+in her eye.
+
+“I didn't love you. I never did. The idea!” he snorted. “I don't know
+what you young giddy pates are coming to. Huh! Love you!”
+
+“I'll forgive you, even if you did,” she told him sweetly.
+
+“That's it! That's it!” he barked. “You forgive all the young idiots
+when they do. And they all do--every last one of them. But I'm too old
+for you, young lady. Sixty-three yesterday. Huh!”
+
+“I like you better than the younger ones.”
+
+“Want us all, do you? Young and old alike. Well, count me out.”
+
+He broke away, and went into the house. But there was an unconquerably
+youthful smile dancing in his eyes. This young lady and he had made love
+to each other in some such fashion ever since she had been a year old.
+He was a mellow and confirmed old bachelor, but he proposed to continue
+their innocent coquetry until he was laid away, no matter which of the
+young bucks of the valley had the good fortune to win her for a wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI -- THE FAT IN THE FIRE
+
+For two days Fraser remained in the cabin of the stockman Howard, France
+making it his business to see that the place was never left unguarded
+for a moment. At the end of that time the fever had greatly abated, and
+he was doing so well that Doctor Lee decided it would be better to move
+him to the Dillon ranch for the convenience of all parties.
+
+This was done, and the patient continued steadily to improve. His
+vigorous constitution, helped by the healthy, clean, outdoor life he
+had led, stood him in good stead. Day by day he renewed the blood he
+had lost. Soon he was eating prodigious dinners, and between meals was
+drinking milk with an egg beaten in it.
+
+On a sunny forenoon, when he lay in the big window of the living room,
+reading a magazine, Arlie entered, a newspaper in her hand. Her eyes
+were strangely bright, even for her, and she had a manner of repressed
+excitement, Her face was almost colorless.
+
+“Here's some more in the Avalanche about our adventure near Gimlet
+Butte,” she told him, waving the paper.
+
+“Nothing like keeping in the public eye,” said Steve, grinning. “I don't
+reckon our little picnic at Bald Knob is likely to get in the Avalanche,
+though. It probably hasn't any correspondent at Lost Valley. Anyhow, I'm
+hoping not.”
+
+“Mr. Fraser, there is something in this paper I want you to explain.
+But tell me first when it was you shot this man Faulkner. I mean at just
+what time in the fight.”
+
+“Why, I reckon it must have been just before I ducked.”
+
+“That's funny, too.” She fixed her direct, fearless gaze on him. “The
+evidence at the coroner's jury shows that it was in the early part of
+the fight he was shot, before father and I left you.”
+
+“No, that couldn't have been, Miss Arlie, because----”
+
+“Because----” she prompted, smiling at him in a peculiar manner.
+
+He flushed, and could only say that the newspapers were always getting
+things wrong.
+
+“But this is the evidence at the coroner's inquest,” she said, falling
+grave again on the instant. “I understand one thing now, very clearly,
+and that is that Faulkner was killed early in the fight, and the other
+man was wounded in the ankle near the finish.”
+
+He shook his head obstinately. “No, I reckon not.”
+
+“Yet it is true. What's more, you knew it all the time.”
+
+“You ce'tainly jump to conclusions, Miss Arlie.”
+
+“And you let them arrest you, without telling them the truth! And they
+came near lynching you! And there's a warrant out now for your arrest
+for the murder of Faulkner, while all the time I killed him, and you
+knew it!”
+
+He gathered together his lame defense. “You run ahaid too fast for me,
+ma'am. Supposing he was hit while we were all there together, how was I
+to know who did it?”
+
+“You knew it couldn't have been you, for he wasn't struck with a
+revolver. It couldn't have been dad, since he had his shotgun loaded
+with buckshot.”
+
+“What difference did it make?” he wanted to know impatiently. “Say I'd
+have explained till kingdom come that I borrowed the rifle from a friend
+five minutes after Faulkner was hit--would anybody have believed me?
+Would it have made a bit of difference?”
+
+Her shining eyes were more eloquent than a thousand tongues. “I don't
+say it would, but there was always the chance. You didn't take it. You
+would have let them hang you, without speaking the word that brought me
+into it. Why?”
+
+“I'm awful obstinate when I get my back up,” he smiled.
+
+“That wasn't it. You did it to save a girl you had never seen but once.
+I want to know why.”
+
+“All right. Have it your own way. But don't ask me to explain the
+whyfors. I'm no Harvard professor.”
+
+“I know,” she said softly. She was not looking at him, but out of the
+window, and there were tears in her voice.
+
+“Sho! Don't make too much of it. We'll let it go that I ain't all
+coyote, after all. But that don't entitle me to any reward of merit.
+Now, don't you cry, Miss Arlie. Don't you.”
+
+She choked back the tears, and spoke in deep self-scorn. “No! You don't
+deserve anything except what you've been getting from me--suspicion
+and distrust and hard words! You haven't done anything worth speaking
+of--just broke into a quarrel that wasn't yours, at the risk of your
+life; then took it on your shoulders to let us escape; and, afterward,
+when you were captured, refused to drag me in, because I happen to be a
+girl! But it's not worth mentioning that you did all this for strangers,
+and that later you did not tell even me, because you knew it would
+trouble me that I had killed him, though in self-defense. And to think
+that all the time I've been full of hateful suspicions about you! Oh,
+you don't know how I despise myself!”
+
+She let her head fall upon her arm on the table, and sobbed.
+
+Fraser, greatly disturbed, patted gently the heavy coil of blue-black
+hair.
+
+“Now, don't you, Arlie; don't you. I ain't worth it. Honest, I ain't. I
+did what it was up to me to do. Not a thing more. Dick would have done
+it. Any of the boys would. Now, let's look at what you've done for me.”
+
+From under the arm a muffled voice insisted she had done nothing but
+suspect him.
+
+“Hold on, girl. Play fair. First off you ride sixty miles to help me
+when I'm hunted right hard. You bring me to your home in this valley
+where strangers ain't over and above welcome just now. You learn I'm an
+officer and still you look out for me and fight for me, till you make
+friends for me. It's through you I get started right with the boys. On
+your say-so they give me the glad hand. You learn I've lied to you, and
+two or three hours later you save my life. You sit there steady, with my
+haid in your lap, while some one is plugging away at us. You get me to a
+house, take care of my wounds, and hold the fort alone in the night till
+help comes. Not only that, but you drive my enemy away. Later, you bring
+me home, and nurse me like I was a long-lost brother. What I did for you
+ain't in the same class with what you've done for me.”
+
+“But I was suspicious of you all the time.”
+
+“So you had a right to be. That ain't the point, which is that a girl
+did all that for a man she thought might be an enemy and a low-down spy.
+Men are expected to take chances like I did, but girls ain't. You took
+'em. If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't tell you all the thanks I
+feel.”
+
+“Ah! It makes it worse that you're that kind of a man. But I'm going to
+show you whether I trust you.” Her eyes were filled with the glad light
+of her resolve. She spoke with a sort of proud humility. “Do you know,
+there was a time when I thought you might have--I didn't really believe
+it, but I thought it just possible--that you might have come here to get
+evidence against the Squaw Creek raiders? You'll despise me, but it's
+the truth.”
+
+His face lost color. “And now?” he asked quietly.
+
+“Now? I would as soon suspect my father--or myself! I'll show you what I
+think. The men in it were Jed Briscoe and Yorky and Dick France.”
+
+“Stop,” he cried hoarsely.
+
+“Is it your wound?” she said quickly.
+
+“No. That's all right. But you musn't tell----”
+
+“I'm telling, to show whether I trust you. Jed and Yorky and Dick and
+Slim----”
+
+She stopped to listen. Her father's voice was calling her. She rose from
+her seat.
+
+“Wait a moment. There's something I've got to tell you,” the Texan
+groaned.
+
+“I'll be back in a moment. Dad wants to see me about some letters.”
+
+And with that she was gone. Whatever the business was, it detained her
+longer than she expected. The minutes slipped away, and still she did
+not return. A step sounded in the hall, a door opened, and Jed Briscoe
+stood before him.
+
+“You're here, are you?” he said.
+
+The Texan measured looks with him. “Yes, I'm here.”
+
+“Grand-standing still, I reckon.”
+
+“If you could only learn to mind your own affairs,” the Texan suggested
+evenly.
+
+“You'll wish I could before I'm through with you.”
+
+“Am I to thank you for that little courtesy from Bald Knob the other
+evening?”
+
+“Not directly. At three hundred yards, I could have shot a heap
+straighter than that. The fool must have been drunk.”
+
+“You'll have to excuse him. It was beginning to get dark. His intentions
+were good.”
+
+There was a quick light step behind him, and Arlie came into the room.
+She glanced quickly from one to the other, and there was apprehension in
+her look.
+
+“I've come to see Lieutenant Fraser on business,” Briscoe explained,
+with an air patently triumphant.
+
+Arlie made no offer to leave the room. “He's hardly up to business yet,
+is he?” she asked, as carelessly as she could.
+
+“Then we'll give it another name. I'm making a neighborly call to ask
+how he is, and to return some things he lost.”
+
+Jed's hand went into his pocket and drew forth leisurely a photograph.
+This he handed to Arlie right side up, smiling the while, with a kind of
+masked deviltry.
+
+“Found it in Alec Howard's cabin. Seems your coat was hanging over the
+back of a chair, lieutenant, and this and a paper fell out. One of the
+boys must have kicked it to one side, and it was overlooked. Later, I
+ran across it. So I'm bringing it back to you.”
+
+In spite of herself Arlie's eyes fell to the photograph. It was a
+snapshot of the ranger and a very attractive young woman. They were
+smiling into each other's eyes with a manner of perfect and friendly
+understanding. To see it gave Arlie a pang. Flushing at her mistake, she
+turned the card over and handed it to the owner.
+
+“Sorry. I looked without thinking,” she said in a low voice.
+
+Fraser nodded his acceptance of her apology, but his words and his eyes
+were for his enemy. “You mentioned something else you had found, seems
+to me.”
+
+Behind drooping eyelids Jed was malevolently feline. “Seems to me I
+did.”
+
+From his pocket came slowly a folded paper. He opened and looked it
+over at leisure before his mocking eyes lifted again to the wounded man.
+“This belongs to you, too, but I know you'll excuse me if I keep it to
+show to the boys before returning it.”
+
+“So you've read it,” Arlie broke in scornfully.
+
+He grinned at her, and nodded. “Yes, I've read it, my dear. I had to
+read it, to find out whose it was. Taken by and large, it's a right
+interesting document, too.”
+
+He smiled at the ranger maliciously, yet with a certain catlike pleasure
+in tormenting his victim. Arlie began to feel a tightening of her
+throat, a sinking of the heart. But Fraser looked at the man with a
+quiet, scornful steadfastness. He knew what was coming, and had decided
+upon his course.
+
+“Seems to be a kind of map, lieutenant. Here's Gimlet Butte and the Half
+Way House and Sweetwater Dam and the blasted pine. Looks like it might
+be a map from the Butte to this part of the country. Eh, Mr. Fraser from
+Texas?”
+
+“And if it is?”
+
+“Then I should have to ask you how you come by it, seeing as the map is
+drawn on Sheriff Brandt's official stationery,” Jed rasped swiftly.
+
+“I got it from Sheriff Brandt, Mr. Briscoe, since you want to know.
+You're not entitled to the information, but I'll make you a gift of it.
+He gave it to me to guide me here.”
+
+Even Briscoe was taken aback. He had expected evasion, denial, anything
+but a bold acceptance of his challenge. His foe watched the wariness
+settle upon him by the narrowing of his eyes.
+
+“So the sheriff knew you were coming?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I thought you broke jail. That was the story I had dished up to me.”
+
+“I did, with the help of the sheriff.”
+
+“Oh, with the help of the sheriff? Come to think of it, that sounds
+right funny--a sheriff helping his prisoner to escape.”
+
+“Yet it is true, as it happens.”
+
+“I don't doubt it, lieutenant. Fact is, I had some such notion all the
+time. Now, I wonder why-for he took so friendly an interest in you.”
+
+“I had a letter of introduction to him from a friend in Texas. When he
+knew who I was, he decided he couldn't afford to have me lynched without
+trying to save me.”
+
+“I see. And the map?”
+
+“This was the only part of the country in which I would be safe from
+capture. He knew I had a claim on some of the Cedar Mountain people,
+because it was to help them I had got into trouble.”
+
+“Yes, I can see that.” Arlie nodded quickly. “Of course, that is just
+what the sheriff would think.”
+
+“Folks can always see what they want to, Arlie,” Jed commented. “Now, I
+can't see all that, by a lot.”
+
+“It isn't necessary you should, Mr. Briscoe,” Fraser retorted.
+
+“Or else I see a good deal more, lieutenant,” Jed returned, with his
+smooth smile. “Mebbe the sheriff helped you on your way because you're
+such a good detective. He's got ambitions, Brandt has. So has Hilliard,
+the prosecuting attorney. Happen to see him, by the way?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Jed nodded. “I figured you had. Yes, it would be Hilliard worked the
+scheme out, I expect.”
+
+“You're a good deal of a detective yourself, Mr. Briscoe,” the Texan
+laughed hardily. “Perhaps I could get you a job in the rangers.”
+
+“There may be a vacancy there soon,” Jed agreed.
+
+“What's the use of talking that way, Jed? Are you threatening Mr.
+Fraser? If anything happens to him, I'll remember this,” Arlie told him.
+
+“Have I mentioned any threats, Arlie? It is well known that Lieutenant
+Fraser has enemies here. It don't take a prophet to tell that, after
+what happened the other night.”
+
+“Any more than it takes a prophet to tell that you are one of them.”
+
+“I play my own hand. I don't lie down before him, or any other man. He'd
+better not get in my way, unless he's sure he's a better man than I am.”
+
+“But he isn't in your way,” Arlie insisted. “He has told a plain story.
+I believe every word of it.”
+
+“I notice he didn't tell any of his plain story until we proved it on
+him. He comes through with his story after he's caught with the
+goods. Don't you know that every criminal that is caught has a smooth
+explanation?”
+
+“I haven't any doubt Mr. Briscoe will have one when his turn comes,” the
+ranger remarked.
+
+Jed wheeled on him. His eyes glittered menace. “You've said one word too
+much. I'll give you forty-eight hours to get out of this valley.”
+
+“How dare you, Jed--and in my house!” Arlie cried. “I won't have it. I
+won't have blood shed between you.”
+
+“It's up to him,” answered the cattleman, his jaw set like a vise.
+“Persuade him to git out, and there'll be no blood shed.”
+
+“You have no right to ask it of him. You ought not----” She stopped,
+aware of the futility of urging a moral consideration upon the man, and
+fell back upon the practical. “He couldn't travel that soon, even if he
+wanted to. He's not strong enough. You know that.”
+
+“All right. We'll call it a week. If he's still here a week from to-day,
+there will be trouble.”
+
+With that, he turned on his heel and left the room. They heard his spurs
+trailing across the porch and jingling down the steps, after which
+they caught a momentary vision of him, dark and sinister, as his horse
+flashed past the window.
+
+The ranger smiled, but rather seriously. “The fat's in the fire now,
+sure enough, ma'am.”
+
+She turned anxiously upon him. “Why did you tell him all that? Why did
+you let him go away, believing you were here as a spy to trap him and
+his friends?”
+
+“I let him have the truth. Anyhow, I couldn't have made good with a
+denial. He had the evidence. I can't keep him from believing what he
+wants to.”
+
+“He'll tell all his friends. He'll exaggerate the facts and stir up
+sentiment against you. He'll say you came here as a detective, to get
+evidence against the Squaw Creek raiders.”
+
+“Then he'll tell the truth!”
+
+She took it in slowly, with a gathering horror. “The truth!” she
+repeated, almost under her breath. “You don't mean----You can't
+mean----Are you here as a spy upon my friends?”
+
+“I didn't know they were your friends when I took the job. If you'll
+listen, I'll explain.”
+
+Words burst from her in gathering bitterness.
+
+“What is there to explain, sir? The facts cry to heaven. I brought you
+into this valley, gave you the freedom of our home against my father's
+first instinct. I introduced you to my friends, and no doubt they told
+you much you wanted to know. They are simple, honest folks, who don't
+know a spy when they see one. And I--fool that I am--I vouched for you.
+More, I stood between you and the fate you deserved. And, lastly, in my
+blind conceit, I have told you the names of the men in the Squaw Creek
+trouble. If I had only known--and I had all the evidence, but I was so
+blind I would not see you were a snake in the grass.”
+
+He put out a hand to stop her, and she drew back as if his touch were
+pollution. From the other side of the room, she looked across at him in
+bitter scorn.
+
+“I shall make arrangements to have you taken out of the valley at once,
+sir.”
+
+“You needn't take the trouble, Miss Arlie. I'm not going out of the
+valley. If you'll have me taken to Alec Howard's shack, which is where
+you brought me from, I'll be under obligations to you.”
+
+“Whatever you are, I'm not going to have your blood on my hands. You've
+got to leave the valley.”
+
+“I have to thank you for all your kindness to me. If you'd extend it a
+trifle further and listen to what I've got to say, I'd be grateful.”
+
+“I don't care to hear your excuses. Go quickly, sir, before you meet the
+end you deserve, and give up the poor men I have betrayed to you.” She
+spoke in a choked voice, as if she could scarce breathe.
+
+“If you'd only listen before you----”
+
+“I've listened to you too long. I was so sure I knew more than my
+father, than my friends. I'll listen no more.”
+
+The Texan gave it up. “All right, ma'am. Just as you say. If you'll
+order some kind of a rig for me, I'll not trouble you longer. I'm sorry
+that it's got to be this way. Maybe some time you'll see it different.”
+
+“Never,” she flashed passionately, and fled from the room.
+
+He did not see her again before he left. Bobbie came to get him in a
+light road trap they had. The boy looked at him askance, as if he knew
+something was wrong. Presently they turned a corner and left the ranch
+shut from sight in a fold of the hills.
+
+At the first division of the road Fraser came to a difference of opinion
+with Bobbie.
+
+“Arlie said you was going to leave the valley. She told me I was to take
+you to Speed's place.”
+
+“She misunderstood. I am going to Alec Howard's.”
+
+“But that ain't what she told me.”
+
+Steve took the reins from him, and turned into the trail that led to
+Howard's place. “You can explain to her, Bobbie, that you couldn't make
+me see it that way.”
+
+An hour later, he descended upon Howard--a big, rawboned ranchman, who
+had succumbed quickly to a deep friendship for this “Admirable Crichton”
+ of the plains.
+
+“Hello, Steve! Glad to death to see you. Hope you've come to stay, you
+old pie eater,” he cried joyously, at sight of the Texan.
+
+Fraser got down. “Wait here a moment, Bobbie. I want to have a talk with
+Alec. I may go on with you.”
+
+They went into the cabin, and Fraser sat down. He was still far from
+strong.
+
+“What's up, Steve?” the rancher asked.
+
+“You asked me to stay, Alec. Before I say whether I will or not, I've
+got a story to tell you. After I've told it, you can ask me again if you
+want me to stop with you. If you don't ask me, I'll ride off with the
+boy.”
+
+“All right. Fire ahead, old hoss. I'll ask you fast enough.”
+
+The Texan told his story from the beginning. Only one thing he
+omitted--that Arlie had told him the name of the Squaw Creek raiders.
+
+“There are the facts, Alec. You've got them from beginning to end. It's
+up to you. Do you want me here?”
+
+“Before I answer that, I'll have to put a question myse'f, Steve. Why do
+you want to stay? Why not leave the valley while you're still able to?”
+
+“Because Jed Briscoe put it up to me that I'd got to leave within a
+week. I'll go when I'm good and ready.”
+
+Alec nodded his appreciation of the point. “Sure. You don't want to
+sneak out, with yore tail betwixt yore laigs. That brings up another
+question, Steve. What about the Squaw Creek sheep raiders? Just
+for argument, we'll put it that some of them are my friends. You
+understand--just for argument. Are you still aiming to run them down?”
+
+Fraser met his frank question frankly. “No, Alec, I've had to give up
+that notion long since--soon as I began to guess they were friends of
+Miss Arlie. I'm going back to tell Hilliard so. But I ain't going to be
+run out by Briscoe.”
+
+“Good enough. Put her there, son. This shack's yore home till hell
+freezes over, Steve.”
+
+“You haven't any doubts about me, Alec. If you have, better say so now.”
+
+“Doubts? I reckon not. Don't I know a man when I see one? I'm plumb
+surprised at Arlie.” He strode to the door, and called to Bobbie: “Roll
+along home, son. Yore passenger is going to stay a spell with me.”
+
+“Of course, I understand what this means, Alec. Jed and his crowd aren't
+going to be any too well pleased when they learn you have taken me in.
+They may make you trouble,” the ranger said.
+
+The big cow man laughed. “Oh, cut it out, Steve. Jed don't have to O. K.
+my guest list. Not on yore life. I'm about ready for a ruction with that
+young man, anyway. He's too blamed bossy. I ain't wearing his brand.
+Fact is, I been having notions this valley has been suffering from too
+much Briscoe. Others are sharing that opinion with me. Ask Dick France.
+Ask Arlie, for that matter.”
+
+“I'm afraid I'm off that young lady's list of friends.”
+
+“Sho! She'll come round. She's some hot-haided. It always was her way
+to get mad first, and find out why afterward. But don't make any mistake
+about her, Steve. She's the salt of the earth, Arlie Dillon is. She
+figured it out you wasn't playing it quite on the square with her. Onct
+she's milled it around a spell, she'll see things different. I've
+knowed her since she was knee-high, and I tell you she's a game little
+thoroughbred.”
+
+The Texan looked at him a moment, then stared out of the window.
+
+“We won't quarrel about that any, Alec. I'll indorse those sentiments,
+and then some, even if she did call me a snake in the grass.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII -- THE DANCE
+
+The day after Fraser changed his quarters, Dick France rode up to the
+Howard ranch. Without alighting, he nodded casually to Alec, and then to
+his guest.
+
+“Hello, Steve! How's the shoulder?”
+
+“Fine and dandy.”
+
+“You moved, I see.” The puncher grinned.
+
+“If you see it for yourself, I'll not attempt to deny it.”
+
+“Being stood in the corner some more, looks like! Little Willie been
+telling some more lies?”
+
+“Come in, Dick, and I'll put you wise.”
+
+Steve went over the story again. When he mentioned the Squaw Creek raid,
+he observed that his two friends looked quickly at each other and
+then away. He saw, however, that Dick took his pledge in regard to the
+raiders at face value, without the least question of doubt. He made only
+one comment on the situation.
+
+“If Jed has served notice that he's going after you, Steve, he'll
+ce'tainly back the play. What's more, he won't be any too particular how
+he gets you, just so he gets you. He may come a-shooting in the open.
+Then, again, he may not. All according to how the notion strikes him.”
+
+“That's about it,” agreed Howard.
+
+“While it's fresh on my mind, I'll unload some more comfort. You've got
+an enemy in this valley you don't know about.”
+
+“The one that shot me?”
+
+“I ain't been told that. I was to say, 'One enemy more than he knows
+of.'”
+
+“Who told you to say it?”
+
+“I was to forget to tell you that, Steve.”
+
+“Then I must have a friend more than I know of, too.”
+
+“I ain't so sure about that. You might call her a hostile friend.”
+
+“It's a lady, then. I can guess who.”
+
+“Honest, I didn't mean to tell you, Steve. It slipped out.”
+
+“I won't hold it against you.”
+
+“She sent for me last night, and this morning I dropped round. Now, what
+do you reckon she wanted with me?”
+
+“Give it up.”
+
+“I'm to take a day off and ride around among the boys, so as to see them
+before Jed does. I'm to load 'em up with misrepresentations about how
+you and the sheriff happen to be working in cahoots. I gathered that the
+lady is through with you, but she don't want your scalp collected by the
+boys.”
+
+“I'm learning to be thankful for small favors,” Fraser said dryly. “She
+figures me up a skunk, but hates to have me massacreed in her back yard.
+Ain't that about it, Dick?”
+
+“Somewheres betwixt and between,” France nodded. “Say, you lads going to
+the dance at Millikan's?”
+
+“Didn't know there was one.”
+
+“Sure. Big doings. Monday night. Always have a dance after the spring
+round-up. Jed and his friends will be there--that ought to fetch you!”
+ Dick grinned.
+
+“I haven't noticed any pressing invitation to my address yet,” said
+Steve.
+
+“I'm extending it right now. Millikan told me to pass the word among
+the boys. Everybody and his neighbor invited.” Dick lit a cigar, and
+gathered up his reins. “So-long, boys. I got to be going.” Over his
+shoulder he fired another joyous shot as he cantered away. “I
+reckon that hostile friend will be there, too, Steve, if that's any
+inducement.”
+
+Whether it was an inducement is not a matter of record, but certain it
+is that the Texan found it easy to decide to go. Everybody in the valley
+would be there, and absence on his part would be construed as weakness,
+even as a confession of guilt. He had often observed that a man's
+friends are strong for him only when he is strong for himself.
+
+Howard and his guest drove to Millikan's Draw, for the wound of the
+latter was still too new to stand so long a horseback ride. They arrived
+late, and the dance was already in full swing. As they stabled and fed
+the team, they could hear the high notes of the fiddles and the singsong
+chant of the caller.
+
+“Alemane left. Right han' t'yer pardner, an' gran' right and left.
+Ev-v-rybody swing.”
+
+The ranch house was a large one, the most pretentious in the valley.
+A large hall opened into a living room and a dining room, by means of
+large double doors, which had been drawn back, so as to make one room of
+them.
+
+As they pushed their way through the crowd of rough young fellows who
+clustered round the door, as if afraid their escape might be cut off,
+Fraser observed that the floor was already crowded with dancers.
+
+The quadrille came to an end as he arrived, and, after they had seated
+their partners, red-faced perspiring young punchers swelled the knot
+around the door.
+
+Alec stayed to chaff with them, while the Texan sauntered across the
+floor and took a seat on one of the benches which lined the walls. As he
+did so, a man and his partner, so busy in talk with each other that they
+had not observed who he was, sat down beside him in such position that
+the young woman was next him. Without having looked directly at either
+of them, Fraser knew that the girl was Arlie Dillon, and her escort Jed
+Briscoe. She had her back half turned toward him, so that, even after
+she was seated she did not recognize her neighbor.
+
+Steve smiled pleasantly, and became absorbed in a rather noisy bout
+of repartee going on between one swain and his lass, not so absorbed,
+however, as not to notice that he and his unconscious neighbors were
+becoming a covert focus of attention. He had already noticed a shade
+of self-consciousness in the greeting of those whom he met, a hint of a
+suggestion that he was on trial. Among some this feeling was evidently
+more pronounced. He met more than one pair of eyes that gave back to his
+genial nod cold hostility.
+
+At such an affair as this, Jed Briscoe was always at his best. He was
+one of the few men in the valley who knew how to waltz well, and music
+and rhythm always brought out in him a gay charm women liked. His
+lithe grace, his assurance, his ease of manner and speech, always
+differentiated him from the other ranchmen.
+
+No wonder rumor had coupled his name with that of Arlie as her future
+husband. He knew how to make light love by implication, to skate around
+the subject skilfully and boldly with innuendo and suggestion.
+
+Arlie knew him for what he was--a man passionate and revengeful, the
+leader of that side of the valley's life which she deplored. She did not
+trust him. Nevertheless, she felt his fascination. He made that appeal
+to her which a graceless young villain often does to a good woman who
+lets herself become interested in trying to understand the sinner and
+his sins. There was another reason why just now she showed him special
+favor. She wanted to blunt the edge of his anger against the Texan
+ranger, though her reason for this she did not admit even to herself.
+
+She had--oh, she was quite sure of this--no longer any interest in
+Fraser except the impersonal desire to save his life. Having thought it
+all over, she was convinced that her friends had nothing to fear from
+him as a spy. That was what he had tried to tell her when she would not
+listen.
+
+Deep in her heart she knew why she had not listened. It had to do with
+that picture of a pretty girl smiling up happily into his eyes--a thing
+she had not forgotten for one waking moment since. Like a knife the
+certainty had stabbed her heart that they were lovers. Her experience
+had been limited. Kodaks had not yet reached Lost Valley as common
+possessions. In the mountains no girl had her photograph taken beside a
+man unless they had a special interest in each other. And the manner of
+these two had implied the possession of a secret not known to the world.
+
+So Arlie froze her heart toward the Texan, all the more because he had
+touched her girlish imagination to sweet hidden dreams of which her
+innocence had been unnecessarily ashamed. He had spoken no love to her,
+nor had he implied it exactly. There had been times she had thought
+something more than friendship lay under his warm smile. But now she
+scourged herself for her folly, believed she had been unmaidenly, and
+set her heart to be like flint against him. She had been ready to give
+him what he had not wanted. Before she would let him guess it she would
+rather die, a thousand times rather, she told herself passionately.
+
+She presently became aware that attention was being directed toward her
+and Jed and somebody who sat on the other side of her. Without looking
+round, she mentioned the fact in a low voice to her partner of the dance
+just finished. Jed looked up, and for the first time observed the man
+behind her. Instantly the gayety was sponged from his face.
+
+“Who is it?” she asked.
+
+“That man from Texas.”
+
+Arlie felt the blood sting her cheeks. The musicians were just starting
+a waltz. She leaned slightly toward Jed, and said, in a low voice:
+
+“Did you ask me to dance this with you?”
+
+He had not, but he did now. He got to his feet, with shining eyes, and
+whirled her off. The girl did not look toward the Texan. Nevertheless,
+as they circled the room, she was constantly aware of him. Sitting
+there, with a smile on his strong face, apparently unperturbed, he gave
+no hint of the stern fact that he was circled by enemies, any one
+of whom might carry his death in a hip pocket. His gaze was serene,
+unabashed, even amused.
+
+The young woman was irritably suspicious that he found her anger
+amusing, just as he seemed to find the dangerous position in which he
+was placed. Yet her resentment coexisted with a sympathy for him that
+would not down. She believed he was marked for death by a coterie of
+those present, chief of whom was the man smiling down into her face from
+half-shut, smouldering eyes.
+
+Her heart was a flame of protest against their decree, all the more
+so because she held herself partly responsible for it. In a panic of
+repentance, she had told Dick of her confession to the ranger of
+the names of the Squaw Creek raiders, and France had warned his
+confederates. He had done this, not because he distrusted Fraser, but
+because he felt it was their due to get a chance to escape if they
+wanted to do so.
+
+Always a creature of impulse, Arlie had repented her repentance when too
+late. Now she would have fought to save the Texan, but the horror of
+it was that she could not guess how the blow would fall. She tried to
+believe he was safe, at least until the week was up.
+
+When Dick strolled across the floor, sat down beside Steve, and began
+casually to chat with him, she could have thanked the boy with tears. It
+was equivalent to a public declaration of his intentions. At least, the
+ranger was not friendless. One of the raiders was going to stand by him.
+Besides Dick, he might count on Howard; perhaps on others.
+
+Jed was in high good humor. All along the line he seemed to be winning.
+Arlie had discarded this intruder from Texas and was showing herself
+very friendly to the cattleman. The suspicion of Fraser which he had
+disseminated was bearing fruit; and so, more potently, was the word the
+girl had dropped incautiously. He had only to wait in order to see his
+rival wiped out. So that, when Arlie put in her little plea, he felt it
+would not cost him anything to affect a large generosity.
+
+“Let him go, Jed. He is discredited. Folks are all on their guard before
+him now. He can't do any harm here. Dick says he is only waiting out
+his week because of your threat. Don't make trouble. Let him sneak back
+home, like a whipped cur,” she begged.
+
+“I don't want any trouble with him, girl. All I ask is that he leave the
+valley. Let Dick arrange that, and I'll give him a chance.”
+
+She thanked him, with a look that said more than words.
+
+It was two hours later, when she was waltzing with Jed again, that Arlie
+caught sight of a face that disturbed her greatly. It was a countenance
+disfigured by a ragged scar, running from the bridge of the nose. She
+had last seen it gazing into the window of Alec Howard's cabin on a
+certain never-to-be-forgotten night.
+
+“Who is that man--the one leaning against the door jamb, just behind
+Slim Leroy?” she asked.
+
+“He's a fellow that calls himself Johnson. His real name is Struve,” Jed
+answered carelessly.
+
+“He's the man that shot the Texas lieutenant,” she said.
+
+“I dare say. He's got a good reason for shooting him. The man broke out
+of the Arizona penitentiary, and Fraser came north to rearrest him. At
+least, that's my guess. He wouldn't have been here to-night if he hadn't
+figured Fraser too sick to come. Watch him duck when he learns the
+ranger's here.”
+
+At the first opportunity Arlie signaled to Dick that she wanted to see
+him. Fraser, she observed, was no longer in the dancing rooms. Dick took
+her out from the hot room to the porch.
+
+“Let's walk a little, Dick. I want to tell you something.”
+
+They sauntered toward the fine grove of pines that ran up the hillside
+back of the house.
+
+“Did you notice that man with the scar, Dick?” she presently asked.
+
+“Yes. I ain't seen him before. Must be one of the Rabbit Run guys, I
+take it.”
+
+“I've seen him. He's the man that shot your friend. He was the man I
+shot at when he looked in the window.”
+
+“Sure, Arlie?”
+
+“Dead sure, Dick. He's an escaped convict, and he has a grudge at
+your friend. He is afraid of him, too. Look out for Lieutenant Fraser
+to-night. Don't let him wander around outside. If he does, there may be
+murder done.”
+
+Even as she spoke, there came a sound from the wooded hillside--the
+sound of a stifled cry, followed by an imprecation and the heavy
+shuffling of feet.
+
+“Listen, Dick!”
+
+For an instant he listened. Then: “There's trouble in the grove, and I'm
+not armed,” he cried.
+
+“Never mind! Go--go!” she shrieked, pushing him forward.
+
+For herself, she turned, and ran like a deer for the house.
+
+Siegfried was sitting on the porch, whittling a stick.
+
+“They--they're killing Steve--in the grove,” she panted.
+
+Without a word he rolled off, like a buffalo cow, toward the scene of
+action.
+
+Arlie pushed into the house and called for Jed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII -- THE WOLF HOWLS
+
+As Steve strolled out into the moonlight, he left behind him the
+monotonous thumping of heavy feet and the singsong voice of the caller.
+
+         “Birdie fly out,
+          Crow hop in,
+          Join all hands
+         And circle ag'in.”
+
+came to him, in the high, strident voice of Lute Perkins. He took a deep
+breath of fresh, clean air, and looked about him. After the hot, dusty
+room, the grove, with its green foliage, through which the moonlight
+filtered, looked invitingly cool. He sauntered forward, climbed the hill
+up which the wooded patch straggled, and sat down, with his back to a
+pine.
+
+Behind the valley rampart, he could see the dim, saw-toothed Teton
+peaks, looking like ghostly shapes in the moonlight. The night was
+peaceful. Faint and mellow came the sound of jovial romping from the
+house; otherwise, beneath the distant stars, a perfect stillness held.
+
+How long he sat there, letting thoughts happen dreamily rather than
+producing them of gray matter, he did not know. A slight sound, the
+snapping of a twig, brought his mind to alertness without causing the
+slightest movement of his body.
+
+His first thought was that, in accordance with dance etiquette in the
+ranch country, his revolver was in its holster under the seat of the
+trap in which they had driven over. Since his week was not up, he had
+expected no attack from Jed and his friends. As for the enemy, of whom
+Arlie had advised him, surely a public dance was the last place to tempt
+one who apparently preferred to attack from cover. But his instinct was
+certain. He did not need to look round to know he was trapped.
+
+“I'm unarmed. You'd better come round and shoot me from in front. It
+will look better at the inquest,” he said quietly.
+
+“Don't move. You're surrounded,” a voice answered.
+
+A rope snaked forward and descended over the ranger's head, to be jerked
+tight, with a suddenness that sent a pain like a knife thrust through
+the wounded shoulder. The instinct for self-preservation was already at
+work in him. He fought his left arm free from the rope that pressed it
+to his side, and dived toward the figure at the end of the rope. Even as
+he plunged, he found time to be surprised that no revolver shot echoed
+through the night, and to know that the reason was because his enemies
+preferred to do their work in silence.
+
+The man upon whom he leaped gave a startled oath and stumbled backward
+over a root.
+
+Fraser, his hand already upon the man's throat, went down too. Upon him
+charged men from all directions. In the shadows, they must have
+hampered each other, for the ranger, despite his wound--his shoulder was
+screaming with pain--got to his knees, and slowly from his knees to his
+feet, shaking the clinging bodies from him.
+
+Wrenching his other hand from under the rope, he fought them back as a
+hurt grizzly does the wolf pack gathered for the kill. None but a very
+powerful man could ever have reached his feet. None less agile and
+sinewy than a panther could have beaten them back as at first he did.
+They fought in grim silence, yet the grove was full of the sounds of
+battle. The heavy breathing, the beat of shifting feet, the soft impact
+of flesh striking flesh, the thud of falling bodies--of these the air
+was vocal. Yet, save for the gasps of sudden pain, no man broke silence
+save once.
+
+“The snake'll get away yet!” a hoarse voice cried, not loudly, but with
+an emphasis that indicated strong conviction.
+
+Impossible as it seemed, the ranger might have done it but for an
+accident. In the struggle, the rope had slipped to a point just below
+his knees. Fighting his way down the hill, foot by foot, the Texan felt
+the rope tighten. One of his attackers flung himself against his chest
+and he was tripped. The pack was on him again. Here there was more
+light, and though for a time the mass swayed back and forth, at last
+they hammered him down by main strength. He was bound hand and foot, and
+dragged back to the grove.
+
+They faced their victim, panting deeply from their exertions. Fraser
+looked round upon the circle of distorted faces, and stopped at one.
+Seen now, with the fury and malignancy of its triumph painted upon it,
+the face was one to bring bad dreams.
+
+The lieutenant, his chest still laboring heavily, racked with the
+torture of his torn shoulder, looked into that face out of the only calm
+eyes in the group.
+
+“So it's you, Struve?”
+
+“Yes, it's me--me and my friends.”
+
+“I've been looking for you high and low.”
+
+“Well, you've found me,” came the immediate exultant answer.
+
+“I reckon I'm indebted to you for this.” Fraser moved his shoulder
+slightly.
+
+“You'll owe me a heap more than that before the night's over.”
+
+“Your intentions were good then, I expect. Being shy a trigger finger
+spoils a man's aim.”
+
+“Not always.”
+
+“Didn't like to risk another shot from Bald Knob, eh? Must be some
+discouraging to hit only once out of three times at three hundred yards,
+and a scratch at that.”
+
+The convict swore. “I'll not miss this time, Mr. Lieutenant.”
+
+“You'd better not, or I'll take you back to the penitentiary where I put
+you before.”
+
+“You'll never put another man there, you meddling spy,” Struve cried
+furiously.
+
+“I'm not so sure of that. I know what you've got against me, but I
+should like to know what kick your friends have coming,” the ranger
+retorted.
+
+“You may have mine, right off the reel, Mr. Fraser, or whatever you call
+yourself. You came into this valley with a lie on your lips. We played
+you for a friend, and you played us for suckers. All the time you was
+in a deal with the sheriff for you know what. I hate a spy like I do a
+rattlesnake.”
+
+It was the man Yorky that spoke. Steve's eyes met his.
+
+“So I'm a spy, am I?”
+
+“You know best.”
+
+“Anyhow, you're going to shoot me first, and find out afterward?”
+
+“Wrong guess. We're going to hang you.” Struve, unable to keep back
+longer his bitter spleen, hissed this at him.
+
+“Yes, that's about your size, Struve. You can crow loud now, when the
+odds are six to one, with the one unarmed and tied at that. But what I
+want to know is--are you playing fair with your friends? Have you told
+them that every man in to-night's business will hang, sure as fate? Have
+you told them of those cowardly murders you did in Arizona and Texas?
+Have you told them that your life is forfeit, anyway? Do they know
+you're trying to drag them into your troubles? No? You didn't tell them
+that. I'm surprised at you, Struve.”
+
+“My name's Johnson.”
+
+“Not in Arizona, it isn't. Wolf Struve it is there, wanted for murder
+and other sundries.” He turned swiftly from him to his confederates.
+“You fools, you're putting your heads into a noose. He's in already, and
+wants you in, too. Test him. Throw the end of that rope over the limb,
+and stand back, while he pulls me up alone. He daren't--not for his
+life, he daren't. He knows that whoever pulls on that rope hangs himself
+as surely as he hangs me.”
+
+The men looked at each other, and at Struve. Were they being led into
+trouble to pay this man's scores off for him? Suspicion stirred uneasily
+in them.
+
+“That's right, too. Let Johnson pull him up,” Slim Leroy said sullenly.
+
+“Sure. You've got more at stake than we have. It's up to you, Johnson,”
+ Yorky agreed.
+
+“That's right,” a third chipped in.
+
+“We'll all pull together, boys,” Struve insinuated. “It's only a bluff
+of his. Don't let him scare you off.”
+
+“He ain't scaring me off any,” declared Yorky. “He's a spy, and he's
+getting what is coming to him. But you're a stranger too, Johnson. I
+don't trust you any--not any farther than I can see you, my friend.
+I'll stand for being an aider and abettor, but I reckon if there's
+any hanging to be done you'll have to be the sheriff,” replied Yorky
+stiffly.
+
+Struve turned his sinister face on one and another of them. His lips
+were drawn back, so that the wolfish teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He
+felt himself being driven into a trap, from which there was no escape.
+He dared not let Fraser go with his life, for he knew that, sooner
+or later, the ranger would run him to earth, and drag him back to
+the punishment that was awaiting him in the South. Nor did he want to
+shoulder the responsibility of murdering this man before five witnesses.
+
+Came the sound of running footsteps.
+
+“What's that?” asked Slim nervously.
+
+“Where are you, Steve?” called a voice.
+
+“Here,” the ranger shouted back.
+
+A moment later Dick France burst into the group. “What's doing?” he
+panted.
+
+The ranger laughed hardily. “Nothing, Dick. Nothing at all. Some of the
+boys had notions of a necktie party, but they're a little shy of sand.
+Have you met Mr. Struve, Dick? I know you're acquainted with the others,
+Mr. Struve is from Yuma. An old friend of mine. Fact is, I induced him
+to locate at Yuma.”
+
+Dick caught at the rope, but Yorky flung him roughly back.
+
+“This ain't your put in, France,” he said. “It's up to Johnson.” And to
+the latter: “Get busy, if you're going to.”
+
+“He's a spy on you-all, just the same as he is on me,” blurted the
+convict.
+
+“That's a lie, Struve,” pronounced the lieutenant evenly. “I'm going to
+take you back with me, but I've got nothing against these men. I want
+to announce right now, no matter who tells a different story, that I
+haven't lost any Squaw Creek raiders and I'm not hunting any.”
+
+“You hear? He came into this valley after me.”
+
+“Wrong again, Struve. I didn't know you were here. But I know now, and
+I serve notice that I'm going to take you back with me, dead or alive.
+That's what I'm paid for, and that's what I'm going to do.”
+
+It was amazing to hear this man, with a rope round his neck, announce
+calmly what he was going to do to the man who had only to pull that rope
+to send him into eternity. The very audacity of it had its effect.
+
+Slim spoke up. “I don't reckon we better go any farther with this thing,
+Yorky.”
+
+“No, I don't reckon you had,” cut in Dick sharply. “I'll not stand for
+it.”
+
+Again the footsteps of a running man reached them. It was Siegfried. He
+plunged into the group like a wild bull, shook the hair out of his eyes,
+and planted himself beside Fraser. With one backward buffet of his great
+arm he sent Johnson heels over head. He caught Yorky by the shoulders,
+strong man though the latter was, and shook him till his teeth rattled,
+after which he flung him reeling a dozen yards to the ground. The
+Norwegian was reaching for Dick when Fraser stopped him.
+
+“That's enough of a clean-up right now, Sig. Dick butted in like you to
+help me,” he explained.
+
+“The durned coyotes!” roared the big Norseman furiously, leaping at
+Leroy and tossing him over his head as an enraged bull does. He turned
+upon the other three, shaking his tangled mane, but they were already in
+flight.
+
+“I'll show them. I'll show them,” he kept saying as he came back to the
+man he had rescued.
+
+“You've showed them plenty, Sig. Cut out the rough house before you maim
+some of these gents who didn't invite you to their party.”
+
+The ranger felt the earth sway beneath him as he spoke. His wound had
+been torn loose in the fight, and was bleeding. Limply he leaned against
+the tree for support.
+
+It was at this moment he caught sight of Arlie and Briscoe as they ran
+up. Involuntarily he straightened almost jauntily. The girl looked at
+him with that deep, eager look of fear he had seen before, and met that
+unconquerable smile of his.
+
+The rope was still round his neck and the coat was stripped from his
+back. He was white to the lips, and she could see he could scarce
+stand, even with the support of the pine trunk. His face was bruised and
+battered. His hat was gone; and hidden somewhere in his crisp short hair
+was a cut from which blood dripped to the forehead. The bound arm had
+been torn from its bandages in the unequal battle he had fought. But
+for all his desperate plight he still carried the invincible look that
+nothing less than death can rob some men of.
+
+The fretted moonlight, shifting with the gentle motion of the foliage
+above, fell full upon him now and showed a wet, red stain against the
+white shirt. Simultaneously outraged nature collapsed, and he began to
+sink to the ground.
+
+Arlie gave a little cry and ran forward. Before he reached the ground
+he had fainted; yet scarcely before she was on her knees beside him with
+his head in her arms.
+
+“Bring water, Dick, and tell Doc Lee to come at once. He'll be in
+the back room smoking. Hurry!” She looked fiercely round upon the men
+assembled. “I think they have killed him. Who did this? Was it you,
+Yorky? Was it you that murdered him?”
+
+“I bane t'ink it take von hoondred of them to do it,” said Siegfried.
+“Dat fallar, Johnson, he bane at the bottom of it.”
+
+“Then why didn't you kill him? Aren't you Steve's friend? Didn't he save
+your life?” she panted, passion burning in her beautiful eyes.
+
+Siegfried nodded. “I bane Steve's friend, yah! And Ay bane kill Johnson
+eef Steve dies.”
+
+Briscoe, furious at this turn of the tide which had swept Arlie's
+sympathies back to his enemy, followed Struve as he sneaked deeper into
+the shadow of the trees. The convict was nursing a sprained wrist when
+Jed reached him.
+
+“What do you think you've been trying to do, you sap-headed idiot?” Jed
+demanded. “Haven't you sense enough to choose a better time than one
+when the whole settlement is gathered to help him? And can't you ever
+make a clean job of it, you chuckle-minded son of a greaser?”
+
+Struve turned, snarling, on him. “That'll be enough from you, Briscoe.
+I've stood about all I'm going to stand just now.”
+
+“You'll stand for whatever I say,” retorted Jed. “You've cooked your
+goose in this valley by to-night's fool play. I'm the only man that can
+pull you through. Bite on that fact, Mr. Struve, before you unload your
+bile on me.”
+
+The convict's heart sank. He felt it to be the truth. The last thing he
+had heard was Siegfried's threat to kill him.
+
+Whether Fraser lived or died he was in a precarious position and he knew
+it.
+
+“I know you're my friend, Jed,” he whined. “I'll do what you say. Stand
+by me and I'll sure work with you.”
+
+“Then if you take my advice you'll sneak down to the corral, get your
+horse, and light out for the run. Lie there till I see you.”
+
+“And Siegfried?”
+
+“The Swede won't trouble you unless this Texan dies. I'll send you word
+in time if he does.”
+
+Later a skulking shadow sneaked into the corral and out again. Once out
+of hearing, it leaped to the back of the horse and galloped wildly into
+the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV -- HOWARD EXPLAINS
+
+Two horsemen rode into Millikan's Draw and drew up in front of the big
+ranch house. To the girl who stepped to the porch to meet them they gave
+friendly greeting. One of them asked:
+
+“How're things coming, Arlie?”
+
+“Better and better every day, Dick. Yesterday the doctor said he was out
+of danger.”
+
+“It's been a tough fight for Steve,” the other broke in. “Proper nursing
+is what pulled him through. Doc says so.”
+
+“Did he say that, Alec? I'll always think it was doc. He fought for that
+life mighty hard, boys.”
+
+Alec Howard nodded: “Doc Lee's the stuff. Here he comes now, talking of
+angels.”
+
+Doctor Lee dismounted and grinned. “Which of you lads is she making love
+to now?”
+
+Arlie laughed. “He can't understand that I don't make love to anybody
+but him,” she explained to the younger men.
+
+“She never did to me, doc,” Dick said regretfully.
+
+“No, we were just talking about you, doc.”
+
+“Fire ahead, young woman,” said the doctor, with assumed severity. “I'm
+here to defend myself now.”
+
+“Alec was calling you an angel, and I was laughing at him,” said the
+girl demurely.
+
+“An angel--huh!” he snorted.
+
+“I never knew an angel that chewed tobacco, or one that could swear the
+way you do when you're mad,” continued Arlie.
+
+“I don't reckon your acquaintance with angels is much greater than mine,
+Miss Arlie Dillon. How's the patient?”
+
+“He's always wanting something to eat, and he's cross as a bear.”
+
+“Good for him! Give him two weeks now and he'll be ready to whip his
+weight in wild cats.”
+
+The doctor disappeared within, and presently they could hear his loud,
+cheerful voice pretending to berate the patient.
+
+Arlie sat down on the top step of the porch.
+
+“Boys, I don't know what I would have done if he had died. It would have
+been all my fault. I had no business to tell him the names of you boys
+that rode in the raid, and afterward to tell you that I told him,” she
+accused herself.
+
+“No, you had no business to tell him, though it happens he's safe as a
+bank vault,” Howard commented.
+
+“I don't know how I came to do it,” the girl continued. “Jed had made me
+suspicious of him, and then I found out something fine he had done
+for me. I wanted him to know I trusted him. That was the first thing
+I thought of, and I told it. He tried to stop me, but I'm such an
+impulsive little fool.”
+
+“We all make breaks, Arlie. You'll not do it again, anyhow,” France
+comforted.
+
+Doctor Lee presently came out and pronounced that the wounded man was
+doing well. “Wants to see you boys. Don't stay more than half an hour.
+If they get in your way, sweep 'em out, Arlie.”
+
+The cowpunchers entered the sick room with the subdued, gingerly tread
+of professional undertakers.
+
+“I ain't so had as that yet, boys,” the patient laughed. “You're allowed
+to speak above a whisper. Doc thinks I'll last till night, mebbe, if I'm
+careful.”
+
+They told him all the gossip of the range--how young Ford had run
+off with Sallie Laundon and got married to her down at the Butte; how
+Siegfried had gone up and down the valley swearing he would clean out
+Jack Rabbit Run if Steve died; how Johnson had had another row with Jed
+and had chosen to take water rather than draw. Both of his visitors,
+however, had something on their minds they found some difficulty in
+expressing.
+
+Alec Howard finally broached it.
+
+“Arlie told you the names of some of the boys that were in the Squaw
+Creek sheep raid. She made a mistake in telling you anything, but we'll
+let that go in the discard. It ain't necessary that you should know the
+names of the others, but I'm going to tell you one of them, Steve.”
+
+“No, I don't want to know.”
+
+“This is my say-so. His name is Alec Howard.”
+
+“I'm sorry to hear that, Alec. I don't know why you have told me.”
+
+“Because I want you to know the facts of that raid, Steve. No killing
+was on the program. That came about in a way none of us could foresee.”
+
+“This is how it was, Steve,” explained Dick. “Word came that Campeau was
+going to move his sheep into the Squaw Creek district. Sheep never had
+run there. It was understood the range there was for our cattle. We had
+set a dead line, and warned them not to cross it. Naturally, it made us
+sore when we heard about Campeau.
+
+“So some of us gathered together hastily and rode over. Our intentions
+were declared. We meant to drive the sheep back and patrol the dead
+line. It was solemnly agreed that there was to be no shooting, not even
+of sheep.”
+
+The story halted here for a moment before Howard took it up again.
+“Things don't always come out the way you figure them. We didn't
+anticipate any trouble. We outnumbered them two to one. We had the
+advantage of the surprise. You couldn't guess that for anything but a
+cinch, could you?”
+
+“And it turned out different?”
+
+“One of us stumbled over a rock as we were creeping forward. Campeau
+heard us and drew. The first shot came from them. Now, I'm going to tell
+you something you're to keep under your own hat. It will surprise you a
+heap when I tell you that one man on our side did all the damage. He was
+at the haid of the line, and it happens he is a dead shot. He is liable
+to rages, when he acts like a crazy man. He got one now. Before we could
+put a stopper on him, he had killed Campeau and Jennings, and wounded
+the herders. The whole thing was done before you could wink an eye six
+times. For just about that long we stood there like roped calves.
+Then we downed the man in his tracks, slammed him with the butt of a
+revolver.”
+
+Howard stopped and looked at the ranger before he spoke again. His voice
+was rough and hoarse.
+
+“Steve, I've seen men killed before, but I never saw anything so
+awful as that. It was just like they had been struck by lightning for
+suddenness. There was that devil scattering death among them and the
+poor fellows crumpling up like rabbits. I tell you every time I think of
+it the thing makes me sick.”
+
+The ranger nodded. He understood. The picture rose before him of a man
+in a Berserk rage, stark mad for the moment, playing Destiny on that
+lonely, moonlit hill. The face his instinct fitted to the irresponsible
+murderer was that of Jed Briscoe. Somehow he was sure of that, beyond
+the shadow of a doubt. His imagination conceived that long ride back
+across the hills, the deep agonies of silence, the fierce moments of
+vindictive accusation. No doubt for long the tug of conscience was with
+them in all their waking hours, for these men were mostly simple-minded
+cattlemen caught in the web of evil chance.
+
+“That's how it was, Steve. In as long as it takes to empty a Winchester,
+we were every one of us guilty of a murder we'd each have given a laig
+to have stopped. We were all in it, all tied together, because we had
+broke the law to go raiding in the first place. Technically, the man
+that emptied that rifle wasn't any more guilty than us poor wretches
+that stood frozen there while he did it. Put it that we might shave the
+gallows, even then the penitentiary would bury us. There was only one
+thing to do. We agreed to stand together, and keep mum.”
+
+“Is that why you're telling me, Alec?” Fraser smiled.
+
+“We ain't telling you, not legally,” the cow-puncher answered coolly.
+“If you was ever to say we had, Dick and me would deny it. But we ain't
+worrying any about you telling it. You're a clam, and we know it. No,
+we're telling you, son, because we want you to know about how it was.
+The boys didn't ride out to do murder. They rode out simply to drive the
+sheep off their range.”
+
+The Texan nodded. “That's about how I figured it. I'm glad you told
+me, boys. I reckon I don't need to tell you I'm padlocked in regard to
+this.”
+
+Arlie came to the door and looked in. “It's time you boys were going.
+Doc said a half hour.”
+
+“All right, Arlie,” responded Dick. “So-long, Steve. Be good, you old
+pie eater.”
+
+After they had gone, the Texan lay silent for a long time. He
+understood perfectly their motive in telling him the story. They had not
+compromised themselves legally, since a denial would have given them
+two to one in the matter of witnesses. But they wished him to see that,
+morally, every man but one who rode on that raid was guiltless of the
+Squaw Creek murders.
+
+Arlie came in presently, and sat down near the window with some
+embroidery.
+
+“Did the boys tire you?” she asked, noting his unusual silence.
+
+“No. I was thinking about what they told me. They were giving me the
+inside facts of the Squaw Creek raid.”
+
+She looked up in surprise. “They were?” A little smile began to dimple
+the corners of her mouth. “That's funny, because they had just got
+through forgiving me for what I told you.”
+
+“What they told me was how the shooting occurred.”
+
+“I don't know anything about that. When I told you their names I was
+only telling what I had heard people whisper. That's all I knew.”
+
+“You've been troubled because your friends were in this, haven't you?
+You hated to think it of them, didn't you?” he asked.
+
+“Yes. It has troubled me a lot.”
+
+“Don't let it trouble you any more. One man was responsible for all the
+bloodshed. He went mad and saw red for half a minute. Before the rest
+could stop him, the slaughter was done. The other boys aren't guilty of
+that, any more than you or I.”
+
+“Oh, I'm glad--I'm glad,” she cried softly. Then, looking up quickly to
+him: “Who was the man?” she asked.
+
+“I don't know. It is better that neither of us should know that.”
+
+“I'm glad the boys told you. It shows they trust you.”
+
+“They figure me out a white man,” he answered carelessly.
+
+“Ah! That's where I made my mistake.” She looked at him bravely, though
+the color began to beat into her cheeks beneath the dusky tan. “Yet I
+knew it all the time--in my heart. At least, after I had given myself
+time to think it over. I knew you couldn't be that. If I had given you
+time to explain--but I always think too late.”
+
+His eyes, usually so clear and steely, softened at her words. “I'm
+satisfied if you knew--in your heart.”
+
+“I meant----” she began, with a flush.
+
+“Now, don't spoil it, please,” he begged.
+
+Under his steady, half-smiling gaze, her eyes fell. Two weeks ago she
+had been a splendid young creature, as untaught of life as one of the
+wild forest animals and as unconsciously eager for it. But there had
+come a change over her, a birth of womanhood from that night when she
+had stood between Stephen Fraser and death. No doubt she would often
+regret it, but she had begun to live more deeply. She could never go
+back to the care-free days when she could look all men in the face
+with candid, girlish eyes. The time had come to her, as it must to all
+sensitive of life, when she must drink of it, whether she would or no.
+
+“Because I'd rather you would know it in your heart than in your mind,”
+ he said.
+
+Something sweet and terrifying, with the tingle and warmth of rare wine
+in it, began to glow in her veins. Eyes shy, eager, frightened, met his
+for an instant. Then she remembered the other girl. Something hard as
+steel ran through her. She turned on her heel and left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV -- THE TEXAN PAYS A VISIT
+
+From that day Fraser had a new nurse. Arlie disappeared, and her aunt
+replaced her a few hours later and took charge of the patient. Steve
+took her desertion as an irritable convalescent does, but he did not let
+his disappointment make him unpleasant to Miss Ruth Dillon.
+
+“I'm a chump,” he told himself, with deep disgust. “Hadn't any more
+sense than to go scaring off the little girl by handing out a line of
+talk she ain't used to. I reckon now she's done with me proper.”
+
+He continued to improve so rapidly that within the prescribed two weeks
+he was on horseback again, though still a little weak and washed
+out. His first ride of any length was to the Dillon ranch. Siegfried
+accompanied him, and across the Norwegian's saddle lay a very
+business-like rifle.
+
+As they were passing the mouth of a cañon, the ranger put a casual
+question: “This Jack Rabbit Run, Sig?”
+
+“Yah. More men wanted bane lost in that gulch than any place Ay knows
+of.”
+
+“That so? I'm going in there to-morrow to find that man Struve,” his
+friend announced carelessly.
+
+The big blonde giant looked at him. “Yuh bain't, Steve? Why, yuh bain't
+fit to tackle a den uh wild cats.” An admiring grin lit the Norwegian's
+face. “Durn my hide, yuh've got 'em all skinned for grit, Steve. Uh
+course, Ay bane goin' with yuh.”
+
+“If it won't get you in bad with your friends I'll be glad to have you,
+Sig.”
+
+“They bain't my friends. Ay bane shook them, an' served notice to that
+effect.”
+
+“Glad of it.”
+
+“Yuh bane goin' in after Struve only?”
+
+“Yes. He's the only man I want.”
+
+“Then Ay bane go in, and bring heem out to yuh.”
+
+Fraser shook his head. “No, old man, I've got to play my own hand.”
+
+“Ay t'ink it be a lot safer f'r me to happen in an' get heem,”
+ remonstrated Siegfried.
+
+“Safer for me,” corrected the lieutenant, smiling. “No, I can't work
+that way. I've got to take my own chances. You can go along, though, on
+one condition. You're not to interfere between me and Struve. If some
+one else butts in, you may ask him why, if you like.
+
+“Ay bane t'ink yuh von fool, Steve. But Ay bane no boss. Vat yuh says
+goes.”
+
+They found Arlie watering geraniums in front of the house. Siegfried
+merely nodded to her and passed on to the stables with the horses.
+Fraser dismounted, offering her his hand and his warm smile.
+
+He had caught her without warning, and she was a little shy of him. Not
+only was she embarrassed, but she saw that he knew it. He sat down on
+the step, while she continued to water her flowers.
+
+“You see your bad penny turned up again, Miss Arlie,” he said.
+
+“I didn't know you were able to ride yet, Lieutenant Fraser.”
+
+“This is my first try at it. Thought I'd run over and say 'Thank you' to
+my nurse.”
+
+“I'll call auntie,” she said quickly.
+
+He shook his head. “Not necessary, Miss Arlie. I settled up with her. I
+was thinking of the nurse that ran off and left me.”
+
+She was beginning to recover herself. “You want to thank her for leaving
+while there was still hope,” she said, with a quick little smile.
+
+“Why did you do it? I've been mighty lonesome the past two weeks,” he
+said quietly.
+
+“You would be, of course. You are used to an active outdoor life, and I
+suppose the boys couldn't get round to see you very often.”
+
+“I wasn't thinking of the boys,” he meditated aloud.
+
+Arlie blushed; and to hide her embarrassment she called to Jimmie, who
+was passing: “Bring up Lieutenant Fraser's Teddy. I want him to see how
+well we're caring for his horse.”
+
+As a diversion, Teddy served very well. Horse and owner were both
+mightily pleased to see each other. While the animal rubbed its nose
+against his coat, the ranger teased and petted it.
+
+“Hello, you old Teddy hawss. How air things a-comin', pardner?” he
+drawled, with a reversion to his Texas speech. “Plumb tickled to death
+to meet up with yore old master, ain't you? How come it you ain't fallen
+in love with this young lady and forgot Steve?”
+
+“He thinks a lot of me, too,” Arlie claimed promptly.
+
+“Don't blame you a bit, Teddy. I'll ce'tainly shake hands with you on
+that. But life's jest meetin' and partin', old hawss. I got to take you
+away for good, day after to-morrow.”
+
+“Where are you going?” the girl asked quickly. Then, to cover the swift
+interest of her question: “But, of course, it is time you were going
+back to your business.”
+
+“No, ma'am, that is just it. Seems to me either too soon or too late to
+be going.”
+
+She had her face turned from him, and was busy over her plants, to hide
+the tremulous dismay that had shaken her at his news.
+
+She did not ask him what he meant, nor did she ask again where he was
+going. For the moment, she could not trust her voice to say more.
+
+“Too late, because I've seen in this valley some one I'll never forget,
+and too soon because that some one will forget me, sure as a gun,” he
+told her.
+
+“Not if you write to him.”
+
+“It isn't a him. It's my little nurse.”
+
+“I'll tell auntie how you feel about it, and I'm sure she won't forget
+you.”
+
+“You know mighty well I ain't talking about auntie.”
+
+“Then I suppose you must mean me.”
+
+“That's who I'm meaning.”
+
+“I think I'll be able to remember you if I try--by Teddy,” she answered,
+without looking at him, and devoted herself to petting the horse.
+
+“Is it--would it be any use to say any more, Arlie?” he asked, in a low
+voice, as he stood beside her, with Teddy's nose in his hands.
+
+“I--I don't know what you mean, sir. Please don't say anything more
+about it.” Then again memory of the other girl flamed through her. “No,
+it wouldn't--not a bit of use, not a bit,” she broke out fiercely.
+
+“You mean you couldn't----”
+
+The flame in her face, the eyes that met his, as if drawn by a magnet,
+still held their anger, but mingled with it was a piteous plea for
+mercy. “I--I'm only a girl. Why don't you let me alone?” she cried
+bitterly, and hard upon her own words turned and ran from the room.
+
+Steve looked after her in amazed surprise. “Now don't it beat the band
+the way a woman takes a thing.”
+
+Dubiously he took himself to the stable and said good-by to Dillon.
+
+An hour later she went down to dinner still flushed and excited. Before
+she had been in the room two minutes her father gave her a piece of
+startling news.
+
+“I been talking to Steve. Gracious, gyurl, what do you reckon that boy's
+a-goin' to do?”
+
+Arlie felt the color leap into her cheeks.
+
+“What, dad?”
+
+“He's a'goin' back to Gimlet Butte, to give himself up to Brandt, day
+after to-morrow.”
+
+“But--what for?” she gasped.
+
+“Durned if I know! He's got some fool notion about playin' fair.
+Seems he came into the Cedar Mountain country to catch the Squaw Creek
+raiders. Brandt let him escape on that pledge. Well, he's give up that
+notion, and now he thinks, dad gum it, that it's up to him to surrender
+to Brandt again.”
+
+The girl's eyes were like stars. “And he's going to go back there and
+give himself up, to be tried for killing Faulkner.”
+
+Dillon scratched his head. “By gum, gyurl, I didn't think of that. We
+cayn't let him go.”
+
+“Yes, we can.”
+
+“Why, honey, he didn't kill Faulkner, looks like. We cayn't let him go
+back there and take our medicine for us. Mebbe he would be lynched. It's
+a sure thing he'd be convicted.”
+
+“Never mind. Let him go. I've got a plan, dad.” Her vivid face was alive
+with the emotion which spoke in it. “When did he say he was going?” she
+asked buoyantly.
+
+“Day after to-morrow. Seems he's got business that keeps him hyer
+to-morrow. What's yore idee, honey?”
+
+She got up, and whispered it in his ear. His jaw dropped, and he stared
+at her in amazement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI -- THE WOLF BITES
+
+Steve came drowsily to consciousness from confused dreams of a cattle
+stampede and the click of rifles in the hands of enemies who had the
+drop on him. The rare, untempered sunshine of the Rockies poured into
+his window from a world outside, wonderful as the early morning of
+creation. The hillside opposite was bathed miraculously in a flood of
+light, in which grasshoppers fiddled triumphantly their joy in life.
+The sources of his dreams discovered themselves in the bawl of thirsty
+cattle and the regular clicking of a windmill.
+
+A glance at his watch told him that it was six o'clock.
+
+“Time to get up, Steve,” he told himself, and forthwith did.
+
+He chose a rough crash towel, slipped on a pair of Howard's moccasins,
+and went down to the river through an ambient that had the sparkle and
+exhilaration of champagne. The mountain air was still finely crisp with
+the frost, in spite of the sun warmth that was beginning to mellow it.
+Flinging aside the Indian blanket he had caught up before leaving the
+cabin, he stood for an instant on the bank, a human being with the
+physical poise, compactness, and lithe-muscled smoothness of a tiger.
+
+Even as he plunged a rifle cracked. While he dived through the air,
+before the shock of the icy water tingled through him, he was planning
+his escape. The opposite bank rose ten feet above the stream. He kept
+under the water until he came close to this, then swam swiftly along it
+with only his head showing, so as to keep him out of sight as much as
+possible.
+
+Half a stone's throw farther the bank fell again to the water's edge,
+the river having broadened and grown shallow, as mountain creeks do.
+The ranger ran, stooping, along the bank, till it afforded him no more
+protection, then dashed across the stony-bottomed stream to the shelter
+of the thick aspens beyond.
+
+Just as he expected, a shot rang from far up the mountainside. In
+another instant he was safe in the foliage of the young aspens.
+
+In the sheer exhilaration of his escape he laughed aloud.
+
+“Last show to score gone, Mr. Struve. I figured it just right. He waited
+too long for his first shot. Then the bank hid me. He wasn't expecting
+to see me away down the stream, so he hadn't time to sight his second
+one.”
+
+Steve wound his way in and out among the aspens, working toward the tail
+of them, which ran up the hill a little way and dropped down almost to
+the back door of the cabin. Upon this he was presently pounding.
+
+Howard let him in. He had a revolver in his hand, the first weapon he
+could snatch up.
+
+“You durned old idiot! It's a wonder you ain't dead three ways for
+Sunday,” he shouted joyfully at sight of him. “Ain't I told you 'steen
+times to do what bathin' you got to do, right here in the shack?”
+
+The Texan laughed again. Naked as that of Father Adam, his splendid body
+was glowing with the bath and the exercise.
+
+“He's ce'tainly the worst chump ever, Alec. Had me in sight all the
+way down to the creek, but waited till I wasn't moving. Reckon he was
+nervous. Anyhow, he waited just one-tenth of a second too late. Shot
+just as I leaned forward for my dive. He gave me a free hair-cut
+though.”
+
+A swath showed where the bullet had mowed a furrow of hair so close that
+in one place it had slightly torn the scalp.
+
+“He shot again, didn't he?”
+
+“Yep. I swam along the far bank, so that he couldn't get at me, and
+crossed into the aspens. He got another chance as I was crossing, but he
+had to take it on the fly, and missed.”
+
+The cattleman surveyed the hillside cautiously through the front window.
+“I reckon he's pulled his freight, most likely. But we'll stay cooped
+for a while, on the chance. You're the luckiest cuss I ever did see.
+More lives than a cat.”
+
+Howard laid his revolver down within reach, and proceeded to light
+a fire in the stove, from which rose presently the pleasant odors of
+aromatic coffee and fried ham and eggs.
+
+“Come and get it, Steve,” said Howard, by way of announcing breakfast.
+“No, you don't. I'll take the window seat, and at that we'll have the
+curtain drawn.”
+
+They were just finishing breakfast when Siegfried cantered up.
+
+“You bane ready, Steve?” he called in.
+
+Howard appeared in the doorway. “Say, Sig, go down to the corral and
+saddle up Teddy for Steve, will you? Some of his friends have been
+potshotting at him again. No damage done, except to my feelings, but
+there's nothing like being careful.”
+
+Siegfried's face darkened. “Ay bane like for know who it vas?”
+
+Howard laughed. “Now, if you'll tell Steve that he'll give you as much
+as six bits, Sig. He's got notions, but they ain't worth any more than
+yours or mine. Say, where you boys going to-day? I've a notion to go
+along.”
+
+“Oh, just out for a little pasear,” Steve answered casually. “Thought
+you were going to work on your south fence to-day.”
+
+“Well, I reckon I better. It sure needs fixing. You lads take good care
+of yourselves. I don't need to tell you not to pass anywhere near the
+run, Sig,” he grinned, with the manner of one giving a superfluous
+warning.
+
+Fraser looked at Siegfried, with a smile in his eyes. “No, we'll not
+pass the run to-day, Alec.”
+
+A quarter of an hour later they were in the saddle and away. Siegfried
+did not lead his friend directly up the cañon that opened into Jack
+Rabbit Run, but across the hills to a pass, which had to be taken on
+foot. They left the horses picketed on a grassy slope, and climbed the
+faint trail that went steeply up the bowlder-strewn mountain.
+
+The ascent was so steep that the last bit had to be done on all
+fours. It was a rock face, though by no means an impossible one, since
+projecting ledges and knobs offered a foothold all the way. From the
+summit, the trail edged its way down so precipitously that twice fallen
+pines had to be used as ladders for the descent.
+
+As soon as they were off the rocks, the big blonde gave the signal for
+silence. “Ay bane t'ink we might meet up weeth some one,” he whispered,
+and urged Steve to follow him as closely as possible.
+
+It was half an hour later that Sig pointed out a small clearing ahead of
+them. “Cabin's right oop on the edge of the aspens. See it?”
+
+The ranger nodded assent.
+
+“Ay bane go down first an' see how t'ings look.”
+
+When the Norwegian entered the cabin, he saw two men seated at a table,
+playing seven up. The one facing him was Tommie, the cook; the other was
+an awkward heavy-set fellow, whom he knew for the man he wanted, even
+before the scarred, villainous face was twisted toward him.
+
+Struve leaped instantly to his feet, overturning his chair in his haste.
+He had not met the big Norseman since the night he had attempted to hang
+Fraser.
+
+“Ay bane not shoot yuh now,” Siegfried told him.
+
+“Right sure of that, are you?” the convict snarled, his hand on his
+weapon. “If you've got any doubts, now's the time to air them, and we'll
+settle this thing right now.”
+
+“Ay bane not shoot, Ay tell you.”
+
+Tommie, who had ducked beneath the table at the prospect of trouble, now
+cautiously emerged.
+
+“I ain't lost any pills from either of your guns, gents,” he explained,
+with a face so laughably and frankly frightened that both of the others
+smiled.
+
+“Have a drink, Siegfried,” suggested Struve, by way of sealing the
+treaty. “Tommie, get out that bottle.”
+
+“Ay bane t'ink Ay look to my horse first,” the Norwegian answered, and
+immediately left by way of the back door not three minutes before Jed
+Briscoe entered by the front one.
+
+Jed shut the door behind him and looked at the convict.
+
+“Well?” he demanded.
+
+Struve faced him sullenly, without answering.
+
+“Tommie, vamos,” hinted Briscoe gently, and as soon as the cook had
+disappeared, he repeated his monosyllable: “Well?”
+
+“It didn't come off,” muttered the other sulkily.
+
+“Just what I expected. Why not?”
+
+Struve broke into a string of furious oaths. “Because I missed
+him--missed him twice, when he was standing there naked before me. He
+was coming down to the creek to take a bath, and I waited till he was
+close. I had a sure bead on him, and he dived just as I fired. I got
+another chance, when he was running across, farther down, and, by
+thunder, I missed again.”
+
+Jed laughed, and the sound of it was sinister.
+
+“Couldn't hit the side of a house, could you? You're nothing but a cheap
+skate, a tin-horn gambler, run down at the heels. All right. I'm through
+with you. Lieutenant Fraser, from Texas, can come along and collect
+whenever he likes. I'll not protect a false alarm like you any longer.”
+
+Struve looked at him, as a cornered wolf might have done. “What will you
+do?”
+
+“I'll give you up to him. I'll tell him to come in and get you. I'll
+show him the way in, you white-livered cur!” bullied the cattleman,
+giving way to one of his rages.
+
+“You'd better not,” snarled the convict. “Not if you want to live.”
+
+As they stood facing each other in a panting fury the door opened, to
+let in Siegfried and the ranger.
+
+Jed's rage against Struve died on the spot. He saw his enemy, the
+ranger, before him, and leaped to the conclusion that he had come
+to this hidden retreat to run him down for the Squaw Creek murders.
+Instantly, his hand swept to the hilt of his revolver.
+
+That motion sealed his doom. For Struve knew that Siegfried had brought
+the ranger to capture him, and suspected in the same flash that Briscoe
+was in on the betrayal. Had not the man as good as told him so, not
+thirty seconds before? He supposed that Jed was drawing to kill or cover
+him, and, like a flash of lightning, unscabbarded and fired.
+
+“You infernal Judas, I'll get you anyhow,” he cried.
+
+Jed dropped his weapon, and reeled back against the wall, where he hung
+for a moment, while the convict pumped a second and a third bullet into
+his body. Briscoe was dead before Fraser could leap forward and throw
+his arms round the man who had killed him.
+
+Between them, they flung Struve to the ground, and disarmed him. The
+convict's head had struck as he went down, and it was not for some
+little time that he recovered fully from his daze. When he did his hands
+were tied behind him.
+
+“I didn't go for to kill him,” he whimpered, now thoroughly frightened
+at what he had done. “You both saw it, gentlemen. You did, lieutenant.
+So did you, Sig. It was self-defense. He drew on me. I didn't go to do
+it.”
+
+Fraser was examining the dead man's wounds. He looked up, and said to
+his friend: “Nothing to do for him, Sig. He's gone.”
+
+“I tell you, I didn't mean to do it,” pleaded Struve. “Why, lieutenant,
+that man has been trying to get me to ambush you for weeks. I'll swear
+it.” The convict was in a panic of terror, ready to curry favor with the
+man whom he held his deadliest enemy. “Yes, lieutenant, ever since you
+came here. He's been egging me on to kill you.”
+
+“And you tried it three times?”
+
+“No, sir.” He pointed vindictively at the dead man, lying face up on the
+floor. “It was him that ambushed you this morning. I hadn't a thing to
+do with it.”
+
+“Don't lie, you coward.”
+
+They carried the body to the next room and put it on a bed. Tommie was
+dispatched on a fast horse for help.
+
+Late in the afternoon he brought back with him Doctor Lee, and half an
+hour after sunset Yorky and Slim galloped up. They were for settling
+the matter out of hand by stringing the convict Struve up to the nearest
+pine, but they found the ranger so very much on the spot that they
+reconsidered.
+
+“He's my prisoner, gentlemen. I came in here and took him--that is, with
+the help of my friend Siegfried. I reckon if you mill it over a spell,
+you'll find you don't want him half as bad as we do,” he said mildly.
+
+“What's the matter with all of us going in on this thing, lieutenant?”
+ proposed Yorky.
+
+“I never did see such a fellow for necktie parties as you are, Yorky.
+Not three weeks ago, you was invitin' me to be chief mourner at one
+of your little affairs, and your friend Johnson was to be master of
+ceremonies. Now you've got the parts reversed. No, I reckon we'll have
+to disappoint you this trip.”
+
+“What are you going to do with him?” asked Yorky, with plain
+dissatisfaction.
+
+“I'm going to take him down to Gimlet Butte. Arizona and Wyoming and
+Texas will have to scrap it out for him there.”
+
+“When, you get him there,” Yorky said significantly.
+
+“Yes, when I get him there,” answered the Texan blandly, carefully
+oblivious of the other's implication.
+
+The moon was beginning to show itself over a hill before the Texan and
+Siegfried took the road with their captive. Fraser had carelessly let
+drop a remark to the effect that they would spend the night at the
+Dillon ranch.
+
+His watch showed eleven o'clock before they reached the ranch, but he
+pushed on without turning in and did not stop until they came to the
+Howard place.
+
+They roused Alec from sleep, and he cooked them a post-midnight supper,
+after which he saddled his cow pony, buckled on his belt, and took down
+his old rifle from the rack.
+
+“I'll jog along with you lads and see the fun,” he said.
+
+Their prisoner had not eaten. The best he could do was to gulp down some
+coffee, for he was in a nervous chill of apprehension. Every gust of
+wind seemed to carry to him the patter of pursuit. The hooting of an owl
+sent a tremor through him.
+
+“Don't you reckon we had better hurry?” he had asked with dry lips more
+than once, while the others were eating.
+
+He asked it again as they were setting off.
+
+Howard looked him over with rising disgust, without answering.
+Presently, he remarked, apropos of nothing: “Are all your Texas wolves
+coyotes, Steve?”
+
+He would have liked to know at least that it was a man whose life he was
+protecting, even though the fellow was also a villain. But this crumb of
+satisfaction was denied him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII -- ON THE ROAD TO GIMLET BUTTE
+
+“We'll go out by the river way,” said Howard tentatively. “Eh, what
+think, Sig? It's longer, but Yorky will be expecting us to take the
+short cut over the pass.”
+
+The Norwegian agreed. “It bane von chance, anyhow.”
+
+By unfrequented trails they traversed the valley till they reached the
+cañon down which poured Squaw Creek on its way to the outside world.
+A road ran alongside this for a mile or two, but disappeared into the
+stream when the gulch narrowed. The first faint streaks of gray dawn
+were lightening the sky enough for Fraser to see this. He was riding in
+advance, and commented upon it to Siegfried, who rode with him.
+
+The Norwegian laughed. “Ay bane t'ink we do some wadin'.”
+
+They swung off to the right, and a little later splashed through the
+water for a few minutes and came out into a spreading valley beyond the
+sheer walls of the retreat they had left. Taking the road again, they
+traveled faster than they had been able to do before.
+
+“Who left the valley yesterday for Gimlet Butte, Sig?” Howard asked,
+after it was light enough to see. “I notice tracks of two horses.”
+
+“Ay bane vondering. Ay t'ink mebbe West over----”
+
+“I reckon not. This ain't the track of his big bay. Must 'a' been
+yesterday, too, because it rained the night before.”
+
+For some hours they could see occasionally the tracks of the two horses,
+but eventually lost them where two trails forked.
+
+“Taking the Sweetwater cutout to the Butte, I reckon,” Howard surmised.
+
+They traveled all day, except for a stop about ten o'clock for
+breakfast, and another late in the afternoon, to rest the horses. At
+night, they put up at a ranch house, and were in the saddle again early
+in the morning. Before noon, they struck a telephone line, and Fraser
+called up Brandt at a ranch.
+
+“Hello! This Sheriff Brandt? Lieutenant Fraser, of the Texas Rangers, is
+talking. I'm on my way to town with a prisoner. We're at Christy's, now.
+There will, perhaps, be an attempt to take him from us. I'll explain the
+circumstances later.... Yes.... Yes.... We can hold him, I think, but
+there may be trouble.... Yes, that's it. We have no legal right to
+detain him, I suppose.... That's what I was going to suggest. Better
+send about four men to meet us. We'll come in on the Blasted Pine road.
+About nine to-night, I should think.”
+
+As they rode easily along the dusty road, the Texan explained his plan
+to his friends.
+
+“We don't want any trouble with Yorky's crowd. We ain't any of us
+deputies, and my commission doesn't run in Wyoming, of course. My notion
+is to lie low in the hills two or three hours this afternoon, and give
+Brandt a chance to send his men out to meet us. The responsibility will
+be on them, and we can be sworn in as deputies, too.”
+
+They rested in a grassy draw, about fifteen miles from town, and took
+the trail again shortly after dark. It was an hour later that Fraser,
+who had an extraordinary quick ear, heard the sound of men riding toward
+them. He drew his party quickly into the shadows of the hills, a little
+distance from the road.
+
+They could hear voices of the advancing party, and presently could make
+out words.
+
+“I tell you, they've got to come in on this road, Slim,” one of the men
+was saying dogmatically. “We're bound to meet up with them. That's all
+there is to it.”
+
+“Yorky,” whispered Howard, in the ranger's ear.
+
+They rode past in pairs, six of them in all. As chance would have it,
+Siegfried's pony, perhaps recognizing a friend among those passing,
+nickered shrilly its greeting. Instantly, the riders drew up.
+
+“Where did that come from?” Yorky asked, in a low voice.
+
+“From over to the right. I see men there now See! Up against that hill.”
+ Slim pointed toward the group in the shadow.
+
+Yorky hailed them. “That you, Sig?”
+
+“Yuh bane von good guesser,” answered the Norwegian.
+
+“How many of you are there?”
+
+“Four, Yorky,” Fraser replied.
+
+“There are six of us. We've got you outnumbered, boys.”
+
+Very faintly there came to the lieutenant the beat of horses' feet. He
+sparred for time.
+
+“What do you want, Yorky?”
+
+“You know what we want. That murderer you've got there--that's what we
+want.”
+
+“We're taking him in to be tried, Yorky. Justice will be done to him.”
+
+“Not at Gimlet Butte it won't. No jury will convict him for killing Jed
+Briscoe, from Lost Valley. We're going to hang him, right now.”
+
+“You'll have to fight for him, my friend, and before you do that I want
+you to understand the facts.”
+
+“We understand all the facts we need to, right now.”
+
+The lieutenant rode forward alone. He knew that soon they too would hear
+the rhythmic beat of the advancing posse.
+
+“We've got all night to settle this, boys. Let's do what is fair and
+square. That's all I ask.”
+
+“Now you're shouting, lieutenant. That's all we ask.”
+
+“It depends on what you mean by fair and square,” another one spoke up.
+
+The ranger nodded amiably at him. “That you, Harris? Well, let's look at
+the facts right. Here's Lost Valley, that's had a bad name ever since
+it was inhabited. Far as I can make out its settlers are honest men,
+regarded outside as miscreants. Just as folks were beginning to forget
+it, comes the Squaw Creek raid. Now, I'm not going into that, and I'm
+not going to say a word against the man that lies dead up in the hills.
+But I'll say this: His death solves a problem for a good many of the
+boys up there. I'm going to make it my business to see that the facts
+are known right down in Gimlet Butte. I'm going to lift the blame from
+the boys that were present, and couldn't help what happened.”
+
+Yorky was impressed, but suspicion was not yet banished from his mind.
+“You seem to know a lot about it, lieutenant.”
+
+“No use discussing that, Yorky. I know what I know. Here's the great big
+point: If you lynch the man that shot Jed, the word will go out that the
+valley is still a nest of lawless outlaws. The story will be that the
+Squaw Creek raiders and their friends did it. Just as the situation is
+clearing up nicely, you'll make it a hundred times worse by seeming to
+indorse what Jed did on Squaw Creek.”
+
+“By thunder, that's right,” Harris blurted.
+
+Fraser spoke again. “Listen, boys. Do you hear horses galloping? That
+is Sheriff Brandt's deputies, coming to our assistance. You've lost
+the game, but you can save your faces yet. Join us, and kelp escort the
+prisoner to town. Nobody need know why you came out. We'll put it that
+it was to guard against a lynching.”
+
+The men looked at each other sheepishly. They had been outwitted, and in
+their hearts were glad of it. Harris turned to the ranger with a
+laugh. “You're a good one, Fraser. Kept us here talking, while your
+reënforcements came up. Well, boys, I reckon we better join the
+Sunday-school class.”
+
+So it happened that when Sheriff Brandt and his men came up they found
+the mountain folk united. He was surprised at the size of the force with
+the Texan.
+
+“You're certainly of a cautious disposition, lieutenant. With eight men
+to help you, I shouldn't have figured you needed my posse,” he remarked.
+
+“It gives you the credit of bringing in the prisoner, sheriff,” Steve
+told him unblushingly, voicing the first explanation that came to his
+mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII -- A WITNESS IN REBUTTAL
+
+Two hours later, Lieutenant Fraser was closeted with Brandt and
+Hilliard. He told them his story--or as much of it as he deemed
+necessary. The prosecuting attorney heard him to an end before he gave a
+short, skeptical laugh.
+
+“It doesn't seem to me you've quite lived up to your reputation,
+lieutenant,” he commented.
+
+“I wasn't trying to,” retorted Steve.
+
+“What do you mean by that?”
+
+“I have told you how I got into the valley. I couldn't go in there and
+betray my friends.”
+
+Hilliard wagged his fat forefinger. “How about betraying our trust? How
+about throwing us down? We let you escape, after you had given us your
+word to do this job, didn't we?”
+
+“Yes. I had to throw you down. There wasn't any other way.”
+
+“You tell a pretty fishy story, lieutenant. It doesn't stand to reason
+that one man did all the mischief on that Squaw Creek raid.”
+
+“It is true. Not a shadow of a doubt of it. I'll bring you three
+witnesses, if you'll agree to hold them guiltless.”
+
+“And I suppose I'm to agree to hold you guiltless of Faulkner's death,
+too?” the lawyer demanded.
+
+“I didn't say that. I'm here, Mr. Hilliard, to deliver my person,
+because I can't stand by the terms of our agreement. I think I've been
+fair with you.”
+
+Hilliard looked at Brandt, with twinkling eyes. It struck Fraser that
+they had between them some joke in which he was not a sharer.
+
+“You're willing to assume full responsibility for the death of Faulkner,
+are you? Ready to plead guilty, eh?”
+
+Fraser laughed. “Just a moment. I didn't say that. What I said was that
+I'm here to stand my trial. It's up to you to prove me guilty.”
+
+“But, in point of fact, you practically admit it.”
+
+“In point of fact, I would prefer not to say so. Prove it, if you can.”
+
+“I have witnesses here, ready to swear to the truth, lieutenant.”
+
+“Aren't your witnesses prejudiced a little?”
+
+“Maybe.” The smile on Hilliard's fat face broadened. “Two of them are
+right here. Suppose we find out.”
+
+He stepped to the door of the inner office, and opened it. From the
+room emerged Dillon and his daughter. The Texan looked at Arlie in blank
+amazement.
+
+“This young lady says she was present, lieutenant, and knows who fired
+the shot that killed Faulkner.”
+
+The ranger saw only Arlie. His gaze was full of deep reproach. “You came
+down here to save me,” he said, in the manner of one stating a fact.
+
+“Why shouldn't I? Ought I to have let you suffer for me? Did you think I
+was so base?”
+
+“You oughtn't to have done it. You have brought trouble on yourself.”
+
+Her eyes glowed with deep fires. “I don't care. I have done what was
+right. Did you think dad and I would sit still and let you pay forfeit
+for us?”
+
+The lieutenant's spirits rejoiced at the thing she had done, but his
+mind could not forget what she must go through.
+
+“I'm glad and I'm sorry,” he said simply.
+
+Hilliard came, smiling, to relieve the situation. “I've got a piece of
+good news for both of you. Two of the boys that were in that shooting
+scrap three miles from town came to my office the other day and admitted
+that they attacked you. It got noised around that there was a girl
+in it, and they were anxious to have the thing dropped. I don't think
+either of you need worry about it any more.”
+
+Dillon gave a shout. “Glory, hallelujah!” He had been much troubled, and
+his relief shone on his face. “I say, gentlemen, that's the best news
+I've heard in twenty years. Let's go celebrate it with just one.”
+
+Brandt and Hilliard joined him, but the Texan lingered.
+
+“I reckon I'll join you later, gentlemen,” he said.
+
+While their footsteps died away he looked steadily at Arlie. Her eyes
+met his and held fast. Beneath the olive of her cheeks, a color began to
+glow.
+
+He held out both his hands. The light in his eyes softened, transfigured
+his hard face. “You can't help it, honey. It may not be what you would
+have chosen, but it has got to be. You're mine.”
+
+Almost beneath her breath she spoke. “You forgot--the other girl.”
+
+“What other girl? There is none--never was one.”
+
+“The girl in the picture.”
+
+His eyes opened wide. “Good gracious! She's been married three months to
+a friend of mine. Larry Neill his name is.”
+
+“And she isn't your sweetheart at all? Never was?”
+
+“I don't reckon she ever was. Neill took that picture himself. We were
+laughing, because I had just been guying them about how quick they got
+engaged. She was saying I'd be engaged myself before six months. And I
+am. Ain't I?”
+
+She came to him slowly--first, the little outstretched hands, and then
+the soft, supple, resilient body. Slowly, too, her sweet reluctant lips
+came round to meet his.
+
+“Yes, Steve, I'm yours. I think I always have been, even before I knew
+you.”
+
+“Even when you hated me?” he asked presently.
+
+“Most of all, when I hated you,” She laughed happily. “That was just
+another way of love.”
+
+“We'll have fifty years to find out all the different ways,” the man
+promised.
+
+“Fifty years. Oh, Steve!”
+
+She gave a happy little sigh, and nestled closer.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Texas Ranger, by William MacLeod Raine
+
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