Phil swallowed hard. He had grown white beneath the tan. The thing they were about to do seemed awful to him.
"Good God! You're not going to murder him, are you?" protested Larrabie.
"He murdered poor Jesus Menendez, didn't he?"
"You mean you're going to shoot him down in cold blood?"
"What's the matter with hanging?" Slim asked brutally.
"No," spoke up Keller quickly.
The old man nodded agreement. "No—they didn't hang Menendez."
"Your sheep herder died—if he died at all, and we have no proof of it—with a gun in his hands," Larrabie said.
"That's right," admitted Phil quickly. "That's right. We got to give him a chance."
"What sort of a chance would you like to give him?" Sanderson asked of the boy.
"Let him fight for his life. Give him a gun, and me one. We'll settle this for good and all."
The eyes of the old Confederate gleamed, though he negatived the idea promptly.
"That wouldn't be a square deal, Phil. He's our prisoner, and he has killed one of our men. It wouldn't be right for one of us to meet him on even terms."
"Give me a gun, and I'll meet all of you!" cried Weaver, eyes gleaming.
"By God, you're on! That's a sporting proposition," Sanderson retorted promptly. "Lets us out, too. I don't fancy killing in cold blood, myself. Of course we'll get you, but you'll have a run for your money first, by gum."
"Maybe you'll get me, and maybe you won't. Is this little vendetta to be settled with revolvers, or rifles?"
"Make it rifles," Phil suggested quickly.
There was always a chance that, if the battle were fought at long range, the cattleman might reach the hill cañons in safety.
Keller was helpless. He lived in a man's world, where each one fought for his own head and took his own fighting chance. Weaver had proposed an adjustment of the difficulty, and his enemies had accepted his offer. Even if the Sandersons would have tolerated further interference, the cattleman would not.
Moreover Keller's hands were tied as to taking sides. He could not fight by the side of the owner of the Twin Star Ranch against the father and brother of Phyllis. There was only one thing to do, and that offered little hope. He slipped quietly from the room and from the house, swung to the back of a horse he found saddled in the place and galloped wildly down the road toward the schoolhouse.
Phyllis had much influence over her father. If she could reach the scene in time, she might prevent the duel.
His pony went up and down the hills as in a moving-picture play.
Meanwhile terms of battle were arranged at once, without haggling on either side. Weaver was to have a repeating Winchester and a belt full of cartridges, the others such weapons as they chose. The duel was to start with two hundred and fifty yards separating the combatants, but this distance could be increased or diminished at will. Such cover as was to be found might be used.
"Whatever's right suits me," the cattleman said. "I can't say more than that you are doing handsomely by me. I reckon I'll make that declaration to some of your help, if you don't mind."
The horse wrangler and the Mexican waiter were sent for, and to them the owner of the place explained what was about to occur. Their eyes stuck out, and their chins dropped, but neither of the two had anything to say.
"We're telling you boys so you may know it's all right. I proposed this thing. If I'm shot, nobody is to blame but myself. Understand?" Weaver drove the idea home.
The wrangler got out an automatic "Sure," and Manuel an amazed "Si, senor," upon which they were promptly retired from the scene.
Having prepared and tested their weapons, the parties to the difficulty repaired to the pasture.
"I'd like to try out this gun, if you don't mind. It's a new proposition to me," the cattleman said.
"Go to it," nodded Slim, seating himself tailor-fashion on the ground and rolling a cigarette. He was a black, bilious-tempered fellow, but this particular kind of gameness appealed to him.
Weaver glanced around, threw the rifle to his shoulder, and fired immediately. A chicken, one hundred and fifty yards away, fell over.
"Accidents will happen," suggested Slim.
"That accident happened through the neck, you'll find," Weaver retorted calmly.
"Betcher."
Buck dropped another rooster.
"You ain't happy unless you're killing something of ours," Slim grinned. "Well, if you're satisfied with your gun, we'll go ahead and see how good you are on humans."
They measured the distance, and Sanderson called: "Are you ready?"
"I reckon," came back the answer.
The father gave the signal—the explosion of a revolver. Even as it flashed, Buck doubled up like a jack rabbit and leaped for the shelter of a live oak, some thirty yards distant. Four rifles spoke almost at the same instant, so that between the first and the last not a second intervened. One of them cracked a second time. But the runner did not stop until he reached the tree and dropped behind its spreading roots.
"Hunt cover, boys!" the father gave orders. "Don't any of you expose yourself. We'll have to outflank him, but we'll take our time about it."
He got this out in staccato jerks, the last part of it not until all were for the moment safe. The strange thing was that Weaver had not fired once as they scurried for shelter, even though Phil's foot had caught in a root and held him prisoner for an instant while he freed it. But as they began circling round him carefully, he fired—first at one of them and then at another. His shooting was close, but not one of them was hit. Recalling the incident of the chickens, this seemed odd. In Slim's phrasing, he did not seem to be so good on "humans."
Behind his live oak, Buck was so well protected that only a chance shot could reach him before his enemies should outflank him. How long that would have taken nobody ever found out; for an intervention occurred in the form of a flying Diana, on horseback, taking the low fence like a huntress.
It was Phyllis, hatless, her hair flying loose—a picture long to be remembered. Straight as an arrow she rode for Weaver, flung herself from the saddle, and ran forward to him, waving her handkerchief as a signal to her people to cease firing.
"Thank God, I'm in time!" she cried, her voice deep with feeling. Then, womanlike, she leaned against the tree, and gave way to the emotion that had been pent within her.
Buck patted her shoulders with awkward tenderness.
"Don't you! Don't you!" he implored.
Her collapse lasted only a short time. She dried her tears, and stilled her sobs. "I must see my father," she said.
The old man was already hurrying forward, and as he ran he called to his boys not to shoot. Phyl would not move a single step of the way to meet him, lest they take advantage of her absence to keep up the firing.
"How under heaven did you get here?" Buck asked her.
"Mr. Keller came to meet me. I took his horse, and he is bringing the buggy. I heard firing, so I cut straight across," she explained.
"You shouldn't have come. You might have been hit."
She wrung her hands in distress. "It's terrible—terrible! Why will you do such things—you and them?" she finished, forgetting the careful grammar that becomes a schoolmarm.
Buck might have told her—but he did not—that he had carefully avoided hitting any of her people; that he had determined not to do so even if he should pay for his forbearance with his life. What he did say was an apologetic explanation, which explained nothing.
"We were settling a difference of opinion in the old Arizona way, Miss Phyl."
"In what way? By murdering my father?" she asked sharply.
"He's covering ground right lively for a dead one," Buck said dryly.
"I'm speaking of your intentions. You can't deny you would have done it."
"Anyhow, I haven't denied it."
Sanderson, almost breathless, reached them, caught the girl by the shoulders, and shook her angrily.
&n
bsp; "What do you mean by it? What are you doing here? Goddlemighty, girl! Are you stark mad?"
"No, but I think all you people are."
"You'll march home to your room, and stay there till I come."
"No, father."'
"Yes, I say!"
"I must see you—alone."
"You can see me afterward. We'll do no talking till this business is finished."
"Why do you talk so? It won't be finished—it can't," she moaned.
"We'll attend to this without your help, my girl."
"You don't understand." Her voice fell to the lowest murmur. "He came here for me."
"For you-all?"
"Oh, don't you see? He brought me back here because he—cared for me." A tide of shame flushed her cheeks. Surely no girl had ever been so cruelly circumstanced that she must tell such things before a lover, who had not declared himself explicitly.
"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.
* * *
CHAPTER XV
THE BRAND BLOTTER
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."
"And a lot of the boys thought you were a rustler yourself," she commented.
"So did one or two of the young ladies," he smiled. "But that is not the business before this meeting. Because I'm trained to it I notice things you wouldn't. For instance, I saw a man the other day with a horse whose hind hoof left a trail like that."
He pointed to one, and then another track in the soft sand. "Maybe that might be a coincidence, but the owner of that horse had a habit of squirting tobacco juice on clean rocks—like that—and that."
"That doesn't prove he has been rustling."
"No; but the signs here show he has been branding, and Buck Weaver ran across these same marks left by a waddy who surely was making free with a Twin Star calf."
"How long has he been gone?"
"There were two of them, and they've been gone about twenty minutes."
"How do you know?"
He pointed to a stain of tobacco juice still moist.
"Who is he?" she asked.
He knew her stanch loyalty to her friends, and Tom Dixon had been a friend till very lately. He hesitated; then, without answering, made a second thorough examination of the whole ground.
"Come—if we have any luck, I'll show him to you," he said, returning to her. "But you must do just as I say—must be under my orders."
"I will," she promised.
Forthwith, they started. After they had ridden in silence for some distance, covering ground fast, they drew to a walk.
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