Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

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Catching hold of outcropping ledges, mesquit, and even cactus bushes,
she went up like a mountain goat But the water swept upon her, waist
high, and dragged at her. She clung to a quartz knob her fingers had
found, but her feet were swept from her by the suction of the torrent.
Her hold relaxed, and she slid back into the river.

Like a flash of light a rope descended over her outstretched arms,
tightened at her waist, and held her taut. She felt the pain of a
tremendous tug that seemed to tear her in two. Dimly her brain reported
that somebody was shouting. A long time afterward, as it seemed to her
then, a strong arm went round her. Inch by inch she was dragged from the
water that fought and wrestled for her. Phyllis knew that her rescuer
was working up the cliff wall with her. Then her perceptions blurred.

"I'll never make it this way," he told himself aloud, half way up.

In fact, he had come to an _impasse_. Even without the burden of her
weight, the sheer smooth wall rose insurmountable above him. He did the
one thing left for him to do. Leaving her unconscious body in a sort of
trough formed by the juncture of two strata, he lowered himself into the
rushing stream, searched with his foot for a grip, and swung to the left
into the niche formed by a mesquit bush growing from the rock. From
here, after stiff climbing, he reached the top.

He found, as he had expected, his cow pony with feet braced to keep the
rope taut. Old Baldy was practising the lesson learned from scores of
roped steers. No man in the Malpais country was stronger than this one.
In another minute he had drawn up the girl and laid her on the grass.

Soon she opened her eyes and looked into his troubled face.

"Mr. Weaver," she breathed in faint surprise. "Where am I?"

But her glances were already answering the question. They took in the
rope under her arms, followed it to the horn of the saddle, around which
the other end was tied, and came back to the leathery weather-beaten
face that looked down into hers.

"You have saved my life."

"Not me. Old Baldy did it. I never could have got you out alone. When I
roped you, he backed off same as if you had been a steer, and pulled for
all there was in him. Between us we got you up."

"Good old Baldy!" She let it go at that for the moment, while she
thought it out. "If you hadn't been right here----" She finished her
sentence with a shudder.

She could not guess how that thought stabbed him, for he replied
cheerfully: "I heard you call, and Baldy brought me on the jump."

Phyllis covered her face with her hands. She was badly shaken and could
not quite control herself. "It was awful--awful." And short staccato
sobs shook her.

Buck put his arm around her shoulders, and soothed her gently. "Don't
you care, Phyllis. It's all past now. Forget it, little girl."

"It was like some tremendous wild beast--a thousand times stronger and
crueller than a grizzly. It leaped at me, and----Oh, if you hadn't been
here!"

She caught at his sleeve and clung to it with both hands.

"If a fellow sticks around long enough he is sure to come in handy,"
Buck told her lightly.

She did not answer, but presently she walked across a little unsteadily
and put her arms around the neck of the white-faced broncho. Her face
she buried in its mane. Weaver knew she was crying softly, and he wisely
left her alone while he recoiled the rope.

Presently she recovered her composure and began to pat the white silken
nose of the pony.

"You helped him to save my life, Baldy. Even he couldn't have done it
without you. How can I ever pay you for it?"

Weaver had an inspiration. "He's yours from this moment. You can pay him
by taking him for your saddle horse. Baldy will never ride the round-up
again. We'll give him a Carnegie medal and retire him on a good-service
pension so far as the rough work goes."

Without looking at him, the girl answered softly: "Thank you. I know I'm
taking from you the best cow-pony in Arizona, but I can't help it."

"A cow-pony is a cow-pony, but a horse that saves the life of Miss
Phyllis Sanderson is a gentleman and a hero."

"And what about the man who saves her life?" Her voice was very small
and weepy.

"Tickled to death to have the chance. We'll forget that."

Still she did not look at him. "Never! Never as long as I live," she
cried vehemently.

It came to him that if he was ever going to put his fortune to the test
now was the time. He strode across and swung her round till she faced
him.

"As long as you live, Phyllis. And you're only eighteen. Me, I'm
thirty-seven. I lack just a year of being twice as old. What about it?
Am I too old and too hard and tough for you, little girl?"

"I--don't--understand."

"Yes, you do. I'm asking you to marry me. Will you?"

"Oh, Mr. Weaver!" she gasped.

"I ought to wrap it up pretty, oughtn't I? But there's nothing pretty
about me. No woman should marry me if she can help it, not unless her
heart brings her to me in spite of herself. Is it that way with you?"

Never before had she met a man like him, so masterful and virile. He
took short cuts as if he did not notice the "No Trespassing" sign. She
read in him a passion clamped by a will of iron, and there thrilled
through her a fierce delight in her power over this splendid type of the
male lover. She lived in a world of men, lean, wide-shouldered fellows,
who moved and had their being in conditions that made hickory withes of
them physically, hard close-mouthed citizens mentally. But even by the
frontier tests of efficiency, of gameness, of going the limit, Weaver
stood head and shoulders above his neighbors. She had lifted her gaze to
meet his, quite sure that her answer was not in doubt, but now her heart
was beating like a triphammer. She felt herself drifting from her
moorings. It was as though she were drowning forty fathoms deep in those
calm, unwinking eyes of his.

"I don't think so," she cried desperately.

"You've got to be sure. I don't want you else."

"Yes--yes!" she cried eagerly. "Don't rush me."

"Take all the time you need. You can't be any too sure to suit me."

"I--I don't think it will be yes," she told him shyly.

"I'm betting it will," he said confidently. "And now, little girl, it's
time we started. You'll ride your Carnegie horse and I'll walk."

Her eyes dilated, for this brought to her mind something she had
forgotten. "My roan! What do you think has become of it?"

He shook his head, preferring not to guess aloud. As he helped her to
the saddle his eyes fell on a stain of red running from the wrist of her
gauntlet.

"You've hurt your hand," he cried.

"It must have been when I caught at the cactus."

Gently he slipped off the glove. Cruel thorns had torn the skin in a
dozen places. He drew the little spikes out one by one. Phyllis winced,
but did not cry out. After he had removed the last of them he tied her
handkerchief neatly round the wounds and drew on the gauntlet again. It
had been only a small service, nothing at all compared to the great one
he had just rendered, but somehow it had tightened his hold on her. She
wondered whether she would have to marry Buck Weaver no matter what she
really wanted to do.

With her left hand she guided Baldy, while Buck strode beside, never
wavering from the easy, powerful stride that was the expression of his
sinuous strength.

"Were you ever tired in your life?" she asked once, with a little sigh
of fatigue.

He stopped in his stride, full of self-reproach. "Now, ain't that like
me! Pluggin' ahead, and never thinking about how played out you are.
We'll rest here under these cottonwoods."

He lifted her down, for she was already very stiff and sore from her
adventure. An outdoor life had given her a supple strength and a wiry
endurance, of which her slender frame furnished no indication, but the
reaction from the strain was upon her. To Buck she looked pathetically
wan and exhausted. He put her down under a tree and arranged her saddle
for a pillow. Again the girl felt a net was being wound round her, that
she belonged to him and could not escape. Nor was she sure that she
wanted to get away from his possessive energy. In the pleasant sun glow
she fell asleep, without any intention of doing so. Two hours later she
opened her eyes.

Looking round, she saw Weaver lying flat on his back fifty yards away.

"I've been asleep," she called.

He leaped to his feet and walked across the sand to her.

"I suspected it," he said with a smile.

"I feel like a new woman now."

"Like one of them suffragettes?"

"That isn't quite what I meant," she smiled. "I'm ready to start."

Half an hour later they reached her home. It was close to supper time,
but Weaver would not stay.

"See you next week," he said quietly, and turned his horse toward the
Twin Star ranch.

CHAPTER XVII

THE HOLD-UP

From the wash where the sink of the Mimbres edges close to Noches two
riders emerged in mid-afternoon of a day that shimmered under the heat
of a blazing sun. They travelled in silence, the core of an alkali dust
cloud that moved with them and lay thick upon them. Well down over their
eyes were drawn the broad-rimmed hats. One of them wore sun goggles and
both of them had their lower faces covered by silk bandannas as if to
keep out the thick dust their ponies stirred. For the rest their
costumes were the undistinguished chaps, spurs, shirt, neckerchiefs, and
gauntlets of the range.

With one distinction, however: these were better armed than the average
cow-puncher jaunting to town for the quarterly spree. Revolver butts
peeped from the holsters of their loosely hung cartridge belts.
Moreover, their rifles were not strapped beneath the stirrup leathers,
but were carried across the pommels of the saddles.

The bell in the town hall announced three o'clock as they reached the
First National Bank at the corner of San Miguel and Main Streets. Here
one of the riders swung from the saddle, handed the reins and his rifle
to the other man, and jingled into the bank. His companion took the
horses round to the side entrance of the building, and waited there in
such shade as two live oaks offered.

He had scarce drawn rein when two other riders joined him, having come
from a direction at right angles to that followed by him. One of them
rode an iron-gray, the other a roan with white stockings. Both of these
dismounted, and one of them passed through the side door into the bank.
Almost instantly he reappeared and nodded to his comrade, who joined him
with his own rifle and that of the first man that had gone in.

There was an odd similarity in arms, manner, and dress between these and
the first arrivals. Once inside the building, each of them slipped a
black mask over his face. Then one stepped quickly to the front door and
closed and locked it, while the other simultaneously covered the teller
with a revolver.

The cashier, busy in conversation with the first horseman about a loan
the other had said he wanted, was sitting with his back to the cage of
the teller. The first warning he had of anything unusual was the closing
of the door by a masked man. One glance was enough to tell him the bank
was about to be robbed.

His hand moved swiftly toward the drawer in his desk which contained a
weapon, but stopped halfway to its destination. For he was looking
squarely into the rim of a six-shooter less than a foot from his
forehead. The gun was in the hands of the client with whom he had been
talking.

"Don't do that," the man advised him brusquely. Then, more sharply:
"Reach for the roof. No monkeying."

Benson, the cashier, was no coward, but neither was he a fool. He knew
when not to take a chance. Promptly his arms shot up. But even while he
obeyed, his eyes were carrying to his brain a classification of this man
for future identification. The bandit was a stranger to him, a
heavy-set, bandy-legged fellow of about forty-five, with a leathery face
and eyes as stony as those of a snake.

"What do you want?" the bank officer asked quietly.

"Your gold and notes. Is the safe open?"

Before the cashier could reply a shot rang out. The unmasked outlaw
slewed his head, to see the president of the bank firing from the door
of his private office. The other two robbers were already pumping lead
at him. He staggered, clutched at the door jamb, and slowly sank to the
floor after the revolver had dropped from his hand.

Benson seized the opportunity to duck behind his desk and drag open a
drawer, but before his fingers had closed on the weapon within, two
crashing blows descended with stunning force on his head. The outlaw
covering him had reversed his heavy revolver and clubbed him with the
butt.

"That'll hold him for a while," the bandit remarked, and dragged the
unconscious man across the floor to where the president lay huddled.

One of the masked men, a lithe, sinuous fellow with a polka-dot bandanna
round his neck, took command.

"Keep these men covered, Irwin, while we get the loot," he ordered the
unmasked man.

With that he and the boyish-looking fellow who had ridden into town with
him, the latter carrying three empty sacks, followed the trembling
teller to the vault.

No sound broke the dead silence except the loud ticking of the bank
clock and an occasional groan from the cashier, who was just beginning
to return to consciousness. Twice the man left on guard called down to
those in the vault to hurry.

There was need of haste. Somebody, attracted by the sound of firing, had
come running to the bank, peered in the big front window, and gone
flying to spread the alarm.

Outside a shot and then another shattered the sultry stillness of the
day. The man left on guard ran to the door and looked out. An upper
window down the street was open, and from it a man with a rifle was
firing at the outlaw left in charge of the horses.

The wrangler had taken refuge behind a bulwark of horseflesh, and was
returning the fire.

"Hurry the boys, Brad! Hell's broke loose!" he called to his companion.

The town was alarmed and buzzing like a hornet's nest. Soon they would
feel the sting of the swarm unless they beat an immediate retreat. One
sweep of his eyes told the bandy-legged fellow as much. He could hear
voices crying the alarm, could see men running to and fro farther down
the street. Even in the second he stood there a revolver began potting
at him.

"Back in a moment," he cried to the wrangler, and disappeared within to
shout an urgent warning to the looters.

Three men came up from the vault, each carrying a sack. The teller was
pushed into the street first, and the rest followed. A scattering fire
began to converge at once upon them. The roan with the white stockings
showed a red ridge across its flank where a bullet had furrowed a path.

The teller dropped, wounded by his friends. Two of the robbers loaded
the horses, while the others answered the townsmen. In the inevitable
delay of getting started, every moment seemed an hour to the harassed
outlaws.

But at last they were in the saddle and galloping down the street,
firing right and left as they went. At the next street crossing two men,
one fat and the other lean, came running, revolvers in hands, to
intercept them. They were too late. Before they reached the corner the
outlaws had galloped past in a cloud of white dust, still flinging
bullets at the invisible they were escaping.

The big lean cow-puncher stopped with an oath as the riders disappeared.
"Nothing doing, Budd," he called to the fat man. "The show's moved on to
a new stand."

Jim Budd, puffing heavily and glistening with perspiration, nodded the
answer he could not speak. Presently he got out what he wanted to say.

"Notice that leading hawss on the nigh side, Slim?" he asked.

"So you noticed it, too, Jim. I could swear to that roan with the four
stockings. It's the hawss Mr. Larrabie Keller mavericks around on, durn
his forsaken hide! And the man on it wore a polka-dot bandanna. So does
Keller. He'll have to go some to explain away that. I reckon the others
must be nesters from Bear Creek, too."

"We've got 'em where the wool's short this time," Budd agreed. "They
been shootin' around right promiscuous. If anybody's dead, then Keller
has put a rope round his own neck."

Men were already saddling and mounting for the first unorganized
pursuit. Slim and his friend joined these, and cantered down the dusty
street scarce ten minutes after the robbers.

The suburbs of the town fell to the rear, and left them in the fall and
rise of the foothills that merged to the left in the wide, flat,
shimmering plain of the Malpais, and on the other side in the
saw-toothed range that notched the horizon from north to south.
Somewhere in that waste of cow-backed hills, in that swell of endless
land waves, the trail of the robbers vanished.

Men rode far and wide, carrying the pursuit late into the night, but the
lost trail was not to be picked up again. So one by one, or in pairs,
under the yellow stars, they drifted back to Noches, leaving behind the
black depths of blue-canopied hills that had swallowed the fleeing
quartette.

CHAPTER XVIII

BRILL HEALY AIRS HIS SENTIMENTS

To Phyllis, riding from school near the close of a hot Friday afternoon
along the old Fort Lincoln Trail, came the voice of Brill Healy from the
ridge above. She waved to him the broad-brimmed hat she was carrying in
her hand, and he guided his pony deftly down the edge of the steep
slope.

"Been looking for some strays down at Three Pines," he explained. "Awful
glad I met you."

"Where were you going now?" she asked.

"Home, I reckon; but I'll ride with you to Seven Mile if you don't
mind."

She looked at her watch. "It's just five-thirty. We'll be in time for
supper, and you can ride home afterward."

"I guess you know that will suit me, Phyllis," he answered, with a
meaning look from his dark eyes.

"Supper suits most healthy men so far as I've noticed," she said
carelessly, her glance sweeping keenly over him before it passed to the
purple shadowings that already edged the mouth of a distant canon.

"I'll bet it does when they can sit opposite Phyl Sanderson to eat it."

She frowned a little, the while he took her in out of half-shut,
smoldering eyes, as one does a picture in a gallery. In truth, one might
have ridden far to find a living picture more vital and more suggestive
of the land that had cradled and reared her.

His gaze annoyed her, without her quite knowing why. "I wish you
wouldn't look at me all the time," she told him with the boyish
directness that still occasionally lent a tang to her speech.

"And if I can't help it?" he laughed.

"Fiddlesticks! You don't have to say pretty things to me, Brill Healy,"
she told him.

"I don't say them because I have to."

"Then I wish you wouldn't say them at all. There's no sense in it when
you've known a girl eighteen years."

"Known and loved her eighteen years. It's a long time, Phyl."

Her eyes rained light derision on him. "It would be if it were true. But
then one has to forget truth when one is sentimental, I reckon."

"I'm not sentimental. I tell you I'm in love," he answered.

"Yes, Brill. With yourself. I've known that a long time, but not quite
eighteen years," she mocked.

"With you," he made answer, and something of sullenness had by this time
crept into his voice. "I've got as much right to love you as any one
else, haven't I? As much right as that durned waddy, Keller?"

Fire flashed in her eyes. "If you want to know, I despise you when you
talk that way."

The anger grew in him. "What way? When I say anything against the
rustler, do you mean? Think I'm blind? Think I can't see how you're
running after him, and making a fool of yourself about him?"

"How dare you talk that way to me?" she flamed, and gave her surprised
pony a sharp stroke with the quirt.

Five minutes later the bronchos fell again to a walk, and Healy took up
the conversation where it had dropped.

"No use flying out like that, Phyl. I only say what any one can see.
Take a look at the facts. You meet up with him making his getaway after
he's all but caught rustling. Now, what do you do?"

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

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

"Jim doesn't believe it, either."

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

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

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

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

"What about?"

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

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

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

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

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

"In saving him from being lynched by you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who do you mean?"

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

"And if he won't?"

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

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

"You'll see."

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

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

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

He bowed ironically and turned to leave.

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

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

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

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