William MacLeod Raine - The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine

"Cared for you? As a wolf does for a lamb!"

"At first, maybe—but not afterward. Don't you see he was sorry? Everything shows that."

"And to show that he was sorry, he had poor Jesus Menendez killed!"

"No—he didn't know about that till I told him."

"Till you told him?"

"Yes. When I freed him and took him to my room."

"So you freed him— and took him to your room? " She had never heard her father speak in such a voice, so full at once of anger and incredulous horror.

"Don't look at me like that, father! Don't you see—can't you see——Oh, why are you so cruel to me?" She buried her face in her forearm against the rock.

Her father caught her arm so savagely that a spasm of pain shot through her. "None of that! Give me the truth. Now—this instant!"

Anger at his injustice welled up in her. "You've had the truth. I knew of the attack on the sheep camp—heard of it on the way home from school, from Manuel. Do you think I've lived with you eighteen years for nothing? I knew what you would do, and I tried to save you from yourself. There was no place where he would be safe but in my room. I took him there, and slept with Anna. I did right. I would do it again."

"Slept with Anna, did you?"

She felt again that furious tide of blood sweep into her face. "Yes. From the time of the shooting."

"Goddlemighty, gyurl, I wisht you'd keep out of my business."

"And let you do murder?"

"Why did you save him? Because you love him?" demanded Sanderson fiercely.

"Because I love you . But you're too blind to see it."

"And him—do you love him? Answer me!"

"No!" she flamed. "But if I did, I would be loving a man. He wouldn't take odds of five to one against an enemy."

Her father's great black eyes chiselled into hers. "Are you lying to me, girl?"

Weaver spoke out quietly. "I expect I can answer that, Mr. Sanderson. Your daughter has given me to understand that I'm about as mean a thing as God ever made."

But Phyl was beyond caution now. Her resentment against her father, for that he had forced her to drag out the secret things of her heart and speak of them in the presence of the man concerned, boiled into words—quick, eager, full of passion.

"I take it all back then—every word of it!" she cried. "You are braver, kinder, more generous to me than my own people—more chivalrous. You would have gone to your death without telling them that I took you to my room. But my own father, who has known me all my life, insults me grossly."

"I was wrong," Sanderson admitted uneasily.

Keller climbed the pasture fence, and came running up at the same time as Phil and Slim.

"Menendez is alive!" he cried. "He is at the Twin Star Ranch. The boys there are taking care of him, and the doctor says he will pull through."

"Who told you?"

"Bob Tryon. I met him not five minutes ago. He is on his way here."

This put a new face on things. If Menendez were still alive, Weaver could be held to await developments. Moreover, since the sheep herder was a prisoner at the Twin Star Ranch, retaliation would follow any measures taken against the cattleman.

Phyllis gave a glad little cry. "Then it's all right now."

Weaver's face crinkled to a leathery grin. "Mighty unfortunate—ain't it, boys? Puts a kind of a kink in our plans for the little entertainment we were figuring on pulling off. But maybe you've a notion of still going on with it."

"If we don't, it won't be on your account, seh, I don't reckon," Sanderson answered reluctantly.

But though he would not admit it, the old man was beginning to admire this big fellow, who could afford to miss his enemies on purpose even in the midst of a deadly duel. He was coming to a grudging sense of quality in Weaver. The cattleman might be many things that were evil, but undeniably he possessed also those qualities which on the frontier count for more than civilized virtues. He was game to the core. And he knew how to keep his mouth shut at the right time, no matter what it was going to cost him. On the whole Buck Weaver would stand the acid test, the old soldier was coming to think. And because he did not want to believe any good of his enemy, old Jim Sanderson, when he was alone in the corral with the horses or on a hillside driving his sheep, would shake his gnarled fist impotently and swear fluently until his surcharged feelings were relieved.

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Two riders followed the trail to Yeager's Spur—one a man, brown and forceful; the other a girl, with sunshine in her dancing eyes and a voice full of the lilt of laughter. What they might come to be to each other both were already speculating about, though neither knew as yet. They were the best of friends—good comrades, save when chance eyes said unguardedly too much. For the girl that sufficed, but it was not enough for the man. He knew that he had found the one woman he wanted for his wife. But Phyllis only wondered, let her thoughts rove over many things. For instance, why queer throbs and sudden shyness swept her soft young body. She liked Larrabie Keller—oh, so much!—but her untutored heart could not quite tell her whether she loved him. His eyes drilled into her electric pulsations whenever they met hers. The youth in him called to the youth in her. She admired him. He stirred her imagination, and yet—and yet——

They rode through a valley of gold and russet, all warm with yellow sunlight. In front of them, the Spur projected from the hill ridge into the mountain park.

"Then I think you're a cow-puncher looking for a job, but not very anxious to find one," she was hazarding, answering a question.

"No. That leaves you one more guess."

"That forces me to believe that you are what you say you are," she mocked; "just a plain, prosaic homesteader."

She had often considered in her mind what business might be his, that could wait while he lingered week after week and rode trail with the cowboys; but it had not been the part of hospitality to ask questions of her friend. This might seem to imply a doubt, and of doubt she had none. To-day, he himself had broached the subject. Having brought it up, he now dropped it for the time.

He had shaded his eyes, and was gazing at something that held his attention—a little curl of smoke, rising from the wash in front of them.

"What is it?" she asked, impatient that his mind could so easily be diverted from her.

"That is what I'm going to find out. Stay here!"

Rifle in hand, Keller slipped forward through the brush. His imperative "Stay here!" annoyed her just a little. She uncased her rifle, dropped from the saddle as he had done, and followed him through the cacti. Her stealthy advance did not take her far before she came to the wash.

There Keller was standing, crouched like a panther ready for the spring, quite motionless and silent—watching now the bushes that fringed the edge of the wash, and now the smoke spiral rising faintly from the embers of a fire.

Slowly the man's tenseness relaxed. Evidently he had made up his mind that death did not lurk in the bushes, for he slid down into the wash and stepped across to the fire. Phyllis started to follow him, but at the first sound of slipping rubble her friend had her covered.

"I told you not to come," he reproached, lowering his rifle as soon as he recognized her.

"But I wanted to come. What is it? Why are you so serious?"

His eyes were busy making an inventory of the situation, his mind, too, was concentrated on the thing before him.

"Do you think it is rustlers? Is that what you mean?" she asked quickly.

"Wait a minute and I'll tell you what I think." He finished making his observations and returned to her. "First, I'll tell you something else, something that nobody in the neighborhood knows but you and Jim Yeager. I belong to the ranger force. Lieutenant O'Connor sent me here to clean up this rustling that has been going on for several years."