Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

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[Illustration: THE RIDER SLEWED IN THE SADDLE WITH HIS WHOLE ATTENTION
UPON POSSIBLE PURSUIT. _Frontispiece. Page 33_]

MAVERICKS

BY

WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

AUTHOR OF

WYOMING, RIDGWAY OF MONTANA, BUCKY O'CONNOR, A TEXAS RANGER, ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

CLARENCE ROWE

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

1911 STREET & SMITH

1912 G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

TO MY MOTHER

"In vain men tell us time can alter
Old loves, or make old memories falter."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. PHYLLIS 9

II. THE NESTER 18

III. CAUGHT RED-HANDED 28

IV. "I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?" 43

V. AN AIDER AND ABETTOR 53

VI. A GOOD FRIEND 76

VII. A SHOT FROM AMBUSH 84

VIII. MISS GOING-ON-EIGHTEEN 103

IX. PUNISHMENT 117

X. INTO THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY 126

XI. TOM DIXON 144

XII. THE ESCAPE 157

XIII. A MISTAKE 168

XIV. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION 183

XV. THE BRAND BLOTTER 200

XVI. A WATERSPOUT 214

XVII. THE HOLD-UP 226

XVIII. BRILL HEALY AIRS HIS SENTIMENTS 233

XIX. THE ROAN WITH THE WHITE STOCKINGS 241

XX. YEAGER RIDES TO NOCHES 253

XXI. BREAKING DOWN AN ALIBI 263

XXII. SURRENDER 276

XXIII. AT THE RODEO 289

XXIV. MISSING 296

XXV. LARRY TELLS A BEAR STORY 304

XXVI. THE MAN HUNT 323

XXVII. THE ROUND-UP 329

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE

The rider slewed in the saddle with his whole
attention upon possible pursuit. _Frontispiece_ 33

She drew back as if he had struck her, all the
sparkling eagerness driven from her face. 110

"Drop that gun!" 205

They grappled in silence save for the heavy panting
that evidenced the tension of their efforts. 340

MAVERICKS

CHAPTER I

PHYLLIS

Phyllis leaned against the door-jamb and looked down the long road which
wound up from the valley and lost itself now and again in the land
waves. Miles away she could see a little cloud of dust travelling behind
the microscopic stage, which moved toward her almost as imperceptibly as
the minute-hand of a clock. A bronco was descending the hill trail from
the Flagstaff mine, and its rider announced his coming with song in a
voice young and glad.

"My love has breath o' roses,
O' roses, o' roses,
And cheeks like summer posies
All fresh with morning dew,"

floated the words to her across the sunlit open.

If the girl heard, she heeded not. One might have guessed her a sullen,
silent lass, and would have done her less than justice. For the storm in
her eyes and the curl of the lip were born of a mood and not of habit.
They had to do with the gay vocalist who drew his horse up in front of
her and relaxed into the easy droop of the experienced rider at rest.

"Don't see me, do you?" he asked, smiling.

Her dark, level gaze came round and met his sunniness without response.

"Yes, I see you, Tom Dixon."

"And you don't think you see much then?" he suggested lightly.

She gave him no other answer than the one he found in the rigor of her
straight figure and the flash of her dark eyes.

"Mad at me, Phyl?" Crossing his arms on the pommel of the saddle he
leaned toward her, half coaxing, half teasing.

The girl chose to ignore him and withdrew her gaze to the stage, still
creeping antlike toward the hills.

"My love has breath o' roses,
O' roses, o' roses,"

he hummed audaciously, ready to catch her smile when it came.

It did not come. He thought he had never seen her carry her dusky good
looks more scornfully. With a movement of impatience she brushed back a
rebellious lock of blue-black hair from her temple.

"Somebody's acting right foolish," he continued jauntily. "It was all in
fun, and in a game at that."

"I wasn't playing," he heard, though the profile did not turn in the
least toward him.

"Well, I hated to let you stay a wall-flower."

"I don't play kissing games any more," she informed him with dignity.

"Sho, Phyl! I told you 'twas only in fun," he justified himself. "A kiss
ain't anything to make so much fuss over. You ain't the first girl that
ever was kissed."

She glanced quickly at him, recalling stories she had heard of his
boldness with girls. He had taken off his hat and the golden locks of
the boy gleamed in the sunlight. Handsome he surely was, though a critic
might have found weakness in the lower part of the face. Chin and mouth
lacked firmness.

"So I've been told," she answered tartly.

"Jealous?"

"No," she exploded.

Slipping to the ground, he trailed his rein.

"You don't need to depend on hearing," he said, moving toward her.

"What do you mean?" she flared.

"You remember well enough--at the social down to Peterson's."

"We were children then--or I was."

"And you're not a kid now?"

"No, I'm not."

"Here's congratulations, Miss Sanderson. You've put away childish things
and now you have become a woman."

Angrily the girl struck down his outstretched hand.

"After this, if a fellow should kiss you, it would be a crime, wouldn't
it?" he bantered.

"Don't you dare try it, Tom Dixon," she flashed fiercely.

Hitherto he had usually thought of her as a school girl, even though she
was teaching in the Willow's district. Now it came to him with what
dignity and unconscious pride her head was poised, how little the
home-made print could conceal the long, free lines of her figure, still
slender with the immaturity of youth. Soon now the woman in her would
awaken and would blossom abundantly as the spring poppies were doing on
the mountain side. Her sullen sweetness was very close to him. The rapid
rise and fall of her bosom, the underlying flush in her dusky cheeks,
the childish pout of the full lips, all joined in the challenge of her
words. Mostly it was pure boyishness, the impish desire to tease, that
struck the audacious sparkle to his eyes, but there was, too, a
masculine impulse he did not analyse.

"So you won't be friends?"

If he had gone about it the right way he might have found forgiveness
easily enough. But this did not happen to be the right way.

"No, I won't." And she gave him her profile again.

"Then we might as well have something worth while to quarrel about," he
said, and slipping his arm round her neck, he tilted her face toward
him.

With a low cry she twisted free, pushing him from her.

Beneath the fierce glow of her eyes his laughter was dashed. He forgot
his expected trivial triumph, for they flashed at him now no childish
petulance, but the scorn of a woman, a scorn in the heat of which his
vanity withered and the thing he had tried to do stood forth a bare
insult.

"How dare you!" she gasped.

Straight up the stairs to her room she ran, turned the lock, and threw
herself passionately on the bed. She hated him...hated him...hated him.
Over and over again she told herself this, crying it into the pillows
where she had hidden her hot cheeks. She would make him pay for this
insult some day. She would find a way to trample on him, to make him eat
dirt for this. Of course she would never speak to him again--never so
long as she lived. He had insulted her grossly. Her turbulent Southern
blood boiled with wrath. It was characteristic of the girl that she did
not once think of taking her grievance to her hot-headed father or to
her brother. She could pay her own debts without involving them. And it
was in character, too, that she did not let the inner tumult interfere
with her external duties.

As soon as she heard the stage breasting the hill, she was up from the
bed as swift as a panther and at her dressing-table dabbing with a
kerchief at the telltale eyes and cheeks. Before the passengers began
streaming into the house for dinner she was her competent self, had
already cast a supervising eye over Becky the cook and Manuel the
waiter, to see that everything was in readiness, and behind the official
cage had fallen to arranging the mail that had just come up from Noches
on the stage.

From this point of vantage she could cast an occasional look into the
dining-room to see that all was going well there. Once, glancing through
the window, she saw Tom Dixon in conversation with a half-grown
youngster in leathers, gauntlets, and spurs. A coin was changing hands
from the older boy to the younger, and as soon as the delivery window
was raised little Bud Tryon shuffled in to get the family mail and that
of Tom. Also he pushed through the opening a folded paper evidently torn
from a notebook.

"This here is for you, Phyl," he explained.

She pushed it back. "I'm too busy to read it."

"It's from Tom," he further volunteered.

"Is it?"

She took the paper quietly but with a swift, repressed passion, tore it
across, folded the pieces together, rent them again, and tossed the
fragments through the window to the floor.

"Do you want the mail for the Gordons, too, Mr. Purdy?" she coolly asked
the next in line over the tow head of Bud.

The boy grinned and ducked from his place through the door. Through the
open window there drifted to her presently the sound of a smothered
curse, followed by the rapid thud of a horse's hoofs. Phyllis did not
look, but a wicked gleam came into her black eyes. As well as if she had
seen him she beheld a picture of a sulky youth spurring home in dudgeon,
a scowl of discontent on his handsome, boyish face. He had come down the
mountain trail singing, but no music travelled with him on his return
journey. Nor had she alone known this. Without deigning to notice it,
she caught a wink and a nod from one vaquero to another. It was certain
they would not forget to "rub it in" when next they met Master Tom. She
promised herself, as she handed out newspapers and letters to the
cowmen, sheep-herders, and miners who had ridden in to the stage station
for their mail, to teach that young man his place.

"I'll take a dollar's worth of two's."

Phyllis turned her head in the slow, disdainful fashion she had
inherited from her Southern ancestors and without a word pushed the
sheet of stamps through the window. That voice, with its hint of
sardonic amusement, was like a trumpet call to battle.

"Any mail for Buck Weaver?"

"No," she answered promptly without looking.

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't be overlooking any, could you?"

Her eyes met his with the rapier steel of hostility. He was mocking her,
for his mail all came to Saguaro. The man was her father's enemy. He had
no business here. His coming was of a piece with all the rest of his
insolence. Phyllis hated him with the lusty healthy hatred of youth. She
had her father's generosity and courage, his quick indignation against
wrong and injustice, and banked within her much of his passionate
lawlessness.

"I know my business, sir."

Weaver turned from the window and came front to front with old Jim
Sanderson. The burning black eyes of the Southerner, set in sockets of
extraordinary depths, blazed from a grim, hostile face. Always when he
felt ugliest Sanderson's drawl became more pronounced. His daughter,
hearing now the slow, gentle voice, ran quickly round the counter and
slipped an arm into that of her father.

"This hyer is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Weaver," he was saying. "It's
been quite some time since I've seen you all in my house before, makin'
you'self at home so pleasantly. It's ce'tainly an honor, seh."

"Don't get buck ague, Sanderson. I'm here because I'm here. That's
reason a-plenty for me," Weaver told him contemptuously.

"But not for me, seh. When you come into my house----"

"I didn't come into your house."

"Why--why----"

"Father!" implored the girl. "It's a government post-office. He has a
right here as long as he behaves."

"H'm!" the old fire-eater snorted. "I'd be obliged just the same, Mr.
Weaver, if you'd transact your business and then light a shuck."

"Dad!" the girl begged.

He patted her head awkwardly as it lay on his arm. "Now don't you worry,
honey. There ain't going to be any trouble--leastways none of my making.
I ain't a-forgettin' my promise to you-all. But I ain't sittin' down
whilst anybody tromples on me neither."

"He wouldn't try to do that here," Phyllis reminded him.

Weaver laughed in grim irony. "I'm surely much obliged to you for
protecting me." And to the father he added carelessly: "Keep your shirt
on, Sanderson. I'm not trying to break into society. And when I do I
reckon it won't be with a sheep outfit I'll trail."

With which parting shot he turned on his heel, arrogant and imperious to
the last virile inch of him.

CHAPTER II

THE NESTER

With the jingle of trailing spur Buck Weaver passed from the post-office
to the porch, where public opinion was wont to formulate itself while
waiting for the mail to be distributed. Here twice a week it had sat for
many years, had heard evidence, passed judgment, condemned or acquitted.
For at this store the Malpais country bought its ammunition, its
tobacco, and its canned goods; and on this porch its opinions had sifted
down to convictions. From this common meeting ground the gossip of
Cattleland was scattered far and wide.

Weaver filled the doorway while he drew on his gauntlets. He was the
owner of the Twin Star outfit, the biggest cattle company in that
country. Nearly twenty years ago, while still a boy of eighteen, he had
begun in a small way. The Malpais had been a wild and lawless place
then, but in all the turbid days that followed Buck Weaver had held his
own ruthlessly by adroit manipulation, shrewd sense, and implacable
daring. Some outfits he had bought out; others he had driven away. Those
that survived were at a respectable distance from him. Only the
settlers in the hills remained to trouble him. He had come to be the big
man of the district, dominating its social, business, and political
activities.

"What's this I hear about another settler up on Bear Creek?" he asked
curtly after he had gathered up his bridle and swung to the saddle.

"That's the way Jim Budd's telling it, Mr. Weaver. Another nester
homesteaded there," old Joe Yeager answered casually, chewing tobacco
with a noncommittal air.

"Fine! There'll soon be a right smart settlement up near the headwaters
of the creeks, I shouldn't wonder. The cow business is getting to be a
mighty profitable one when you don't own any," Buck said dryly.

The others laughed, but with small merriment. They were either small
cattle owners themselves or range riders whose living depended on the
business, and during the past two years a band of rustlers had operated
so boldly as to have wiped out the profits of some of the ranchers. Most
of them disliked Buck extremely for his overbearing ways. But they did
not usually tell him so. On this particular subject, too, they joined
hand with him.

"You're dead right, Mr. Weaver. It ce'tainly must be stopped."

The man who spoke rolled a cigarette and lit it. Like the rest he was in
the common garb of the plains. The broad-brimmed felt hat, the shiny
leather chaps, the loosely knotted bandanna, were as much a matter of
course as the hard-eyed, weather-beaten look that comes of life under an
untempered sun. But Brill Healy claimed a distinction above his fellows.
He was a black-haired, picturesque fellow, as supple as a panther,
reckless and yet wary.

"We'll have rustling as long as we have nesters, Brill," Buck told him.

"If that's the case we'll serve notice on the nesters to get out," Healy
replied.

Buck grinned. Indomitable fighter though he was, he had been unable to
roll back the advancing tide of settlement. Here and there homesteaders
had taken up land and had brought in small bunches of cattle. Most of
these were honest men, others suspected rustlers. But Buck's fiat had
not sufficed to keep them out. They had held stoutly to their own
and--he suspected--a good deal more than their own. Calves had been
branded secretly and cows killed or driven away.

"Go to it, Brill," Weaver jeered. "I'm wishing you all the luck in the
world."

He touched his pony with the spur and swept up the road in a cloud of
white dust.

Not till he had disappeared did conversation renew itself languidly, for
Seven Mile Ranch was lying under the lethargy of a summery sun.

"I expect Buck's got the right of it," volunteered a brawny youth known
as Slim. "All you got to do is to take up a claim near a couple of big
outfits with easy brands, then keep your iron hot and industrious.
There's sure money in being a nester."

Despite the soft drawl of his voice, he spoke with bitterness, as did
the others. Every day the feeling was growing stronger that the rustling
must be stopped if they were going to continue to run cattle. The
thieves had operated with a boldness and a shrewdness that fairly
outwitted the ranchers. Enough horses and cattle had been driven across
the line to stock a respectable ranch. Not one of the established
ranches had escaped heavy losses; so heavy, indeed, that the owners
faced the option of going broke or of exterminating the rustlers. Once
or twice the thieves had nearly been caught red-handed, but the leader
of the outlaws had saved the men by the most daring strategy.

Healy, until lately foreman of the Twin Star outfit, had organized the
ranchmen as a protective association. In this he had represented Weaver,
himself not popular enough to cooeperate with the other ranchmen. Once
Brill had led the pursuit of the rustlers and had come back furious from
a long futile chase. For among the cattle being driven across to Sonora
were five belonging to him.

Other charges also lay against the hill outlaws. A stage had been robbed
with a gold shipment from the Diamond Nugget mine. A cattleman had been
held up and relieved of two thousand dollars, just taken as part payment
for a sale of beef steers. The sheriff of Noches County, while trying
to arrest a rustler, had been shot dead in his tracks.

Brill Healy leaned forward, gathered the eyes of those present, and
lowered his voice to a whisper. "Boys, this thing has got to stop. I've
sent for Bucky O'Connor. If anybody can run the coyotes to earth he can.
Anyhow, that's the reputation he's got."

Yeager nodded. "Good for you, Brill. He's ce'tainly got an A-one rep. as
a cattle detective, and likewise as a man hunter. When is he coming?"

"He writes that he's got a job on hand that will keep him busy a couple
of weeks, anyhow. After that we'll hear from him. I'm going to drop
everything else, if necessary, and stay right with him on this job till
he finishes it right," Healy promised.

"Now you're shoutin', Brill. Here, too. It's money in our pocket to stop
this thing right now, even if we pay big for it. No use jest sittin'
around till we're stole blind," assented Slim.

"It won't cost us anything. Buck, he pays the freight. The waddies have
been hitting him right hard lately and he figures it will be up to him
to clean them out. Course we expect help from you boys when we call on
you."

"Sure. We'll all be with you till the cows come home, Brill," nodded one
little fellow called Purdy. He was looking at a dust patch rising from
the Bear Creek trail, and slowly moving toward them. "What's the name of
this new nester, Jim?"

Budd, by way of being a curiosity on the range, was a fat man with a
big double chin. He was large as well as fat, and, by queer contrast,
the voice that came from that mountain of flesh was a small falsetto
scarce above a whisper.

"Didn't hear his name. Had no talk with him. Hear he is called Keller,"
he said.

"What's he look like?"

"You-all can see for yourself. This here's the gent rolling a tail this
way."

The little cloud of dust had come nearer and disclosed as its source a
rider on a rangy roan with four white-stockinged feet. Drawing up in
front of the porch, the man swung himself easily from the saddle and
glanced around.

"Evening, gentlemen," he said pleasantly.

Some nodded grimly, some growled an acknowledgment of his greeting. But
the lack of cordiality, the presence of hostility, could not be doubted.
The young man stood at supple ease before them, one hand resting on his
hip and the other on the saddle. He let his unabashed gaze travel from
one to another, understood perfectly what those expressionless eyes of
stone were telling him, and, with a little laugh of light derision,
trailed debonairly into the store.

"Any mail for Larrabie Keller?" he inquired of the postmistress.

The girl at the window glanced incuriously at him and turned to look.
When she pushed his letter through the grating he met for an instant a
flash of dark eyes from a mobile face which the sun and superb health
had painted to a harmony of gold and russet, with the soft glow of pink
pushing through the tan. The unexpectedness of the picture magnetized
his gaze. Admiration, frank and human, shone from the steel-gray eyes
that had till now been only a mask. Beneath his steady look she flushed
indignantly and withdrew from the window.

Convicted of rudeness, the last thing he had meant, Keller returned to
the porch and leaned against the door jamb while he opened his letter.
His appearance immediately sandbagged conversation. Stony eyes were
focused upon him incuriously, with expressionless hostility.

He noted, however, an exception. Another had been added to the group, a
lad of about eighteen, slim and swarthy, with the same dark look of
pride he had seen on the face at the stamp window. It was easy to guess
that they were brother and sister, very likely twins, though he found in
the boy's expression a sulky impatience lacking in hers. Perhaps the lad
needed the discipline that life hammers into those who want to be a law
unto themselves.

With an insolence extremely boyish, the lad turned to Healy. "I'm for
running out a few of these nesters. We've got more than we can use, I
reckon. The range is overstocked now--both with them and cows. Come a
bad year and half of our cattle will starve."

There was a moment of surcharged silence. Phil Sanderson had voiced the
growing feeling of them all, but he had flung it out as a stark
challenge before the time was ripe. It was one thing to resent the
coming of settlers; it was quite another to set themselves openly
against the law that allowed these men to homestead the natural parks in
the hills.

Brill Healy laughed. "The fat's in the fire now, sure enough. Just the
same, I back your play, Phil."

He turned recklessly to the man in the doorway. "You may tell your
friends up on Bear Creek that we own this range and mean to hold it. We
don't aim to let our cattle be starved, and we don't aim to lie down
before rustlers. Understand?"

The nester smiled, but there was no gayety in his eyes. They met those
of the cattleman with a grip of steel, and measured strength with him.
Each knew the other would go the limit before Keller made quiet answer:

"I think so."

And with that he dismissed the subject and his unfriendly audience. With
perfect ease, he read his letter, pocketed it, and whistled softly as he
impassively took stock of the scenery. Apparently he had wiped Public
Opinion from his map, and was interested only in the panorama before
him.

Seven Mile Ranch lay rooted at the desert terminus among the foothills,
a gateway between the mountains and the Malpais Plain. Below was a
shimmering stretch of sand and cactus tortured beneath a blazing sun.
Into that caldron with its furnace-cracked floor the sun had poured
itself torridly for countless eons. It was a Sahara of mirage and
desolation and death.

To the left was a flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some
bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty
miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed
range now painted with orange and mauve and a hint of deepening purple.
For dusk was already slipping down over the peaks.

"Mail's been open half an hour, boys," Phyllis announced through the
open window.

They dropped in to the store, as noisy as schoolboys, but withal
deferential. It was clear the young postmistress reigned a queen among
the younger ones, but a queen that deigned to friendship with her
subjects. Some of them called her Miss Sanderson, one or two of them
Phyllie.

Among these last was Healy, who appeared on very good terms with her
indeed. He appointed himself a sort of master of ceremonies, and handed
to each man his mail with appropriate jocular comments designed to
embarrass the recipient. He knew them all, and his hits were greeted
with gay laughter. To the man standing in the doorway with his back to
them, they seemed all one happy family--and himself a rank outsider. He
trailed down the steps and swung himself to the saddle. As he loped away
the sound of her warm, clear laughter floated after him.

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