Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

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"Two hours ago," the girl repeated. "You got it over the phone, of
course."

"Yep. Slim called me up just now. He got back right this minute from
following their trail. They lost the fellows in the hills. Four of 'em,
Slim says, and he thinks they're headed this way."

"What makes him think so?" asked Healy.

"He figures they are Bear Creek men. One of them was recognized. It was
that fellow Keller."

"Keller!" Phyllis and Healy cried the word together.

Cuffs nodded. "Slim says he can swear to his hawss, and he's plumb sure
about the man, too. He wants we should organize a posse and nail them as
they go into the Pass for Bear Creek. He figures we'll have time to do
it if we jump. Noches is fifty-five miles from here, and about forty
from the Pass.

"With their bronchs loaded they can't make it in much less than five
hours. That gives us most three hours to reach the Pass and stop them.
What think, Brill? Can we make it?"

"We'll try damned hard. I'm not going to let Mr. Rustler Keller slip
through my fingers again!" Healy cried triumphantly.

"I don't believe it was Bear Creek men at all. I'm sure it wasn't Mr.
Keller," Phyllis cried, with a face like parchment.

There was an unholy light of vindictive triumph in Healy's face. "We'll
show you about that, Miss Missouri. Get the boys together, Cuffs. Call
up Purdy and Jim Budd and Tom Dixon on the phone. Rustle up as many of
the boys as you can. Start 'em for the Pass just as soon as they get
here. I'm going right up there now. Probably I can't stop them, but I
may make out who they are. Notify Buck Weaver, so he can head them off
if they try to cross the Malpais. And get a move on you. Hustle the boys
right along."

And with that he put spurs to his horse and galloped off.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROAN WITH THE WHITE STOCKINGS

Unerringly rode Healy through the tangled hills toward a saddle in the
peaks that flared vivid with crimson and mauve and topaz. A man of
moods, he knew more than one before he reached the Pass for which he was
headed. Now he rode with his eyes straight ahead, his face creased to a
hard smile that brought out its evil lines. Now he shook his clenched
fist into the air and cursed.

Or again he laughed exultingly. This was when he remembered that his
rival was trapped beyond hope of extrication.

While the sky tints round the peaks deepened to purple with the coming
night he climbed canons, traversed rock ridges, and went down and up
rough slopes of shale. Always the trail grew more difficult, for he was
getting closer to the divide where Bear Creek heads. He reached the
upper regions of the pine gulches that seamed the hills with wooded
crevasses, and so came at last to Gregory's Pass.

Here, close to the yellow stars that shed a cold wintry light, he
dismounted and hobbled his horse. After which he found a soft spot in
the mossy rocks and fell asleep. He was a light sleeper, and two hours
later he awakened. Horses were laboring up the Pass.

He waited tensely, rifle in both hands, till the heads of the riders
showed in the moonlight. Three--four--five of them he counted. The men
he saw were those he expected, and he lowered his rifle at once.

"Hello, Cuffs! Purdy! That you, Tom? Well, you're too late."

"Too late," echoed little Purdy.

"Yep. Didn't get here in time myself to see who any of them were except
the last. It was right dark, and they were most through before I reached
here."

"But you knew one," Purdy suggested.

Healy looked at him and nodded. "There were four of them. I crept
forward on top of that flat rock just as the last showed up. He was
ridin' a hawss with four white stockings."

"A roan, mebbe," Tom put in quickly.

"You've said it, Tom--a roan, and it looked to me like it was wounded.
There was blood all over the left flank."

"O' course Keller was riding it," Purdy ventured.

"Rung the bell at the first shot," Healy answered grimly.

"The son of a gun!"

"How long ago was it, Brill?" asked another.

"Must a-been two hours, anyhow."

"No use us following them now, then."

"No use. They've gone to cover."

They turned their horses and took the back trail. The cow ponies
scrambled down rocky slopes like cats, and up steep inclines with the
agility of mountain goats. The men rode in single file, and conversation
was limited to disjointed fragments jerked out now and again. After an
hour's rough going they reached the foothills, where they could ride two
abreast. As they drew nearer to the ranch country, now one and now
another turned off with a shout of farewell.

Healy accepted Purdy's invitation, and dismounted with him at the
Fiddleback. Already the first glimmering of dawn flickered faintly from
the serrated range. The men unsaddled, watered, fed, and then walked
stiffly to the house. Within five minutes both of them lay like logs,
dead to the world, until Bess Purdy called them for breakfast, long
after the rest of the family had eaten.

"What devilment you been leading paw into, Brill?" demanded Bess
promptly when he appeared in the doorway. "Dan says it was close to
three when you got home."

She flung her challenge at the young man with a flash of smiling teeth.
Bess was seventeen, a romp, very pretty, and hail-fellow-well-met with
every range rider in a radius of thirty miles.

"We been looking for a beau for you, Bess," Healy immediately explained.

Miss Purdy tossed her head. "I can find one for myself, Brill Healy,
and I don't have to stay out till three to get him, either."

"Come right to your door, do they?" he asked, as she helped him to the
ham and eggs.

"Maybe they do, and maybe they don't."

"Well, here's one come right in the middle of the night. Somehow, I jest
couldn't make out to wait till morning, Bess."

"Oh, you," she laughed, with a demand for more of this sort of chaffing
in her hazel eyes.

At this kind of rough give and take he was an adept. After breakfast he
stayed and helped her wash the dishes, romping with her the whole time
in the midst of gay bursts of laughter and such repartee as occurred to
them.

He found his young hostess so entertaining that he did not get away
until the morning was half gone. By the time he reached Seven Mile the
sun was past the meridian, and the stage a lessening patch of dust in
the distance.

Before he was well out of the saddle, Phyllis Sanderson was standing in
the doorway of the store, with a question in her eyes.

"Well?" he forced her to say at last.

Leisurely he turned, as if just aware of her presence.

"Oh, it's you. Mornin', Phyl."

"What did you find out?"

"I met your friend."

"What friend?"

"Mr. Keller, the rustler and bank robber," he drawled insolently,
looking full in her face.

"Tell me at once what you found out."

"I found Mr. Keller riding a roan with four white stockings and a wound
on its flank."

She caught at the jamb. "You didn't, Brill!"

"I ce'tainly did," he jeered.

"What--what did you do?" Her lips were white as her cheeks.

"I haven't done, anything--yet. You see, I was alone. The other boys
hadn't arrived then."

"And he wasn't alone?"

"No; he had three friends with him. I couldn't make out whether any more
of them were college chums of yours."

Without another word, she turned her back on him and went into the
store. All night she had lain sleepless and longed for and dreaded the
coming of the day. Over the wire from Noches had come at dawn fuller
details of the robbery, from her brother Phil, who was spending two or
three days in town.

It appeared that none of the wounded men would die, though the president
had had a narrow escape. Posses had been out all night, and a fresh one
was just starting from Noches. It was generally believed, however, that
the bandits would be able to make good their escape with the loot.

Her father was absent, making a round of his sheep camps, and would not
be back for a week. Hence her hands were very full with the store and
the ranch.

She busied herself with the details of her work, nodded now and again to
one of the riders as they drifted in, smiled and chatted as occasion
demanded, but always with that weight upon her heart she could not shake
off. Now, and then again, came to her through the window the voices of
Public Opinion on the porch. She made out snatches of the talk, and knew
the tide was running strongly against the nester. The sound of Healy's
low, masterful voice came insistently. Once, as she looked through the
window, she saw a tilted flask at his lips.

Suddenly she became aware, without knowing why, that something was
happening, something that stopped her heart and drew her feet swiftly to
the door.

Conversation had ceased. All eyes were deflected to a pair of riders
coming down the Bear Creek trail with that peculiar jog that is neither
a run nor a walk. They seemed quite at ease with the world. Speech and
laughter rang languid and carefree. But as they swung from the saddles
their eyes swept the group before them with the vigilance of
searchlights in time of war.

Brill Healy leaned forward, his right hand resting lightly on his thigh.

"So you've come back, Mr. Keller," he said.

"As you see."

"But not on that roan of yours, I notice."

"You notice correctly, seh."

"Now I wonder why." Healy spoke with a drawl, but his eyes glittered
menacingly.

"I expect you know why, Mr. Healy," came the quiet retort.

"Meaning?"

"That the roan was stolen from the pasture two nights ago. Do you happen
to know the name of the thief?"

The cattleman laughed harshly, but behind his laughter lay rising anger.
"So that's the story you're telling, eh? Sounds most as convincing as
that yarn about the pocketknife you picked up."

"I'm not quite next to your point. Have I got to explain to you why I do
or don't ride a certain horse, seh?"

"It ain't necessary. We all know why. You ain't riding it because there
is a bullet wound in the roan's flank that might be some hard to
explain."

"I don't know what you mean. I haven't seen the horse for two days. It
was stolen, as I say. Apparently you know a good deal about that roan.
I'd be right pleased to hear what you know, Mr. Healy."

"Glad to death to wise you, Mr. Keller. That roan was in Noches
yesterday, and you were on its back."

The nester shook his head. "No, I reckon not."

Yeager broke in abruptly: "What have you got up your sleeve, Brill? Spit
it out."

"Glad to oblige you, too, Jim. The First National at Noches was held up
yesterday, about half-past three or four, by some masked men. Slim and
Jim Budd were around and recognized that roan and its rider."

"You mean----"

"You've guessed it, Jim. I mean that your friend, the rustler, is a bank
robber, too."

"Yesterday, you say, at four o'clock?"

"About four, yes."

Yeager's face cleared. "Then that lets him out. I was with him yesterday
all day."

"Any one else with him?"

"No. We were alone."

"Where?"

"Out in the hills."

"Didn't happen to meet a soul all day maybe?"

"No; what of it?"

Healy barked out again his hard laugh of incredulity. "Go slow, Jim.
That ain't going to let him out. It's going to let you in."

Yeager took a step toward him, fists clenched, and eyes flashing. "I'll
not stand for that, Brill."

Healy waved him aside. "I've got no quarrel with you, Jim. I ain't
making any charges against you to-day. But when it comes to Mr. Keller,
that's different." His gaze shifted to the nester and carried with it
implacable hostility. "I back my play. He's not only a rustler, he's a
bank robber, too. What's more, he'll never leave here alive, except
with irons on his wrists!"

"Have you a warrant for my arrest, Mr. Healy?" inquired Keller evenly.

"Don't need one. Furthermore, I'd as lief take you in dead as alive. You
cayn't hide behind a girl's skirts this time," continued Healy. "You've
got to stand on your own legs and take what's coming. You're a bad
outfit. We know you for a rustler, and that's enough. But it ain't all.
Yesterday you gave us surplusage when you shot up three men in Noches.
Right now I serve notice that you've reached the limit."

"_You_ serve notice, do you?"

"You're right, I do."

"But not legal notice, Mr. Healy."

At sight of his enemy standing there so easy and undisturbed, facing
death so steadily and so alertly, Brill's passion seethed up and
overflowed. Fury filmed his eyes. He saw red. With a jerk, his revolver
was out and smoking. A stop watch could scarce have registered the time
before Keller's weapon was answering.

But that tenth part of a second made all the difference. For the first
heavy bullet from Healy's .44 had crashed into the shoulder of his foe.
The shock of it unsteadied the nester's aim. When the smoke cleared it
showed the Bear Creek man sinking to the ground, and the right arm of
the other hanging limply at his side.

At the first sound of exploding revolvers, Phyllis had grown rigid, but
the fusillade had not died away before she was flying along the hall to
the porch.

Brill Healy's voice, cold and cruel, came to her in even tones:

"I reckon I've done this job right, boys. If he hadn't winged me, and if
Jim hadn't butted in, I'd a-done it more thorough, though."

Yeager was bending over the man lying on the ground. He looked up now
and spoke bitterly: "You've murdered an innocent man. Ain't that
thorough enough for you?"

Then, catching sight of Cuffs on the porch of the house, Yeager issued
orders sharply: "Get on my horse and ride like hell for Doc Brown! Bob,
you and Luke help me carry him into the house. What room, Phyl?"

"My room, Jim. Oh, Cuffs, hurry, please!" With that she was gone into
the house to make ready the bed for the wounded man.

Healy picked up the revolver that had fallen from his hand, and slid it
back into the holster.

"That's right, boys. Take him in and let Phyl patch up the coyote if she
can. I reckon this time, she'll have her hands plumb full. Beats all how
a decent girl can take up with a ruffian and a scoundrel."

"That will be enough from you, seh," Yeager told him sharply.

Purdy nodded. "Jim's right, Brill. This man has got what was coming to
him. It ain't proper to jump him right now, when he's down and out."

"Awful tender-hearted you boys are. Come to that, I've got a pill in me,
too, but of course that don't matter," Healy retorted.

"If he dies you'll have another in you, seh," Yeager told him quietly,
meeting his eyes steadily for an instant. "Steady, Bob. You take his
feet. That's right."

They carried the nester to the bedroom of Phyllis and laid him down
gently on the bed. His eyes opened and he looked about him as if to ask
where he was. He seemed to understand what had happened, for presently
he smiled faintly at his friend and said:

"Beat me to it, Jim. I'm bust up proper this time."

"He shot without giving warning."

Keller moved his head weakly in dissent. "No, I knew just when he was
going to draw, but I had to wait for him."

The big, husky plainsmen undressed him with the tenderness of women, and
did their best with the help of Aunt Becky, to take care of his wounds
temporarily. After these had been dressed Phyllis and the old colored
woman took charge of the nursing and dismissed all the men but Yeager.

It would be many hours before Doctor Brown arrived, and it took no
critical eyes to see that this man was stricken low. All the supple
strength and gay virility were out of him. Three of the bullets had
torn through him. In her heavy heart the girl believed he was going to
die. While Yeager was out of the room she knelt down by the bedside,
unashamed, and asked for his life as she had never prayed for anything
before.

By this time his fever was high and he was wandering in his head. The
wild look of delirium was in his eyes, and faint weak snatches of
irrelevant speech on his lips. His moans stabbed her heart. There was
nothing she could do for him but watch and wait and pray. But what
little was to be done in the way of keeping his hot head cool with wet
towels her own hands did jealously. Jim and Aunt Becky waited on her
while she waited on the sick man.

About midnight the doctor rode up. All day and most of the night before
he had been in the saddle. Cuffs had found him across the divide, nearly
forty miles away, working over a boy who had been bitten by a
rattlesnake. But he brought into the sick room with him that manner of
cheerful confidence which radiates hope. You could never have guessed
that he was very tired, nor, after the first few minutes, did he know it
himself. He lost himself in his case, flinging himself into the breach
to turn the tide of what had been a losing battle.

CHAPTER XX

YEAGER RIDES TO NOCHES

Jim Yeager had not watched through the long day and night with Phyllis
without discovering how deeply her feelings were engaged. His
unobtrusive readiness and his constant hopefulness had been to her a
tower of strength during the quiet, dreadful hours before the doctor
came.

Once, during the night, she had followed him into the dark hall when he
went out to get some fresh cold water, and had broken down completely.

"Is he--is he going to die?" she besought of him, bursting into tears
for the first time.

Jim patted her shoulder awkwardly. "Now, don't you, Phyl. You got to
buck up and help pull him through. Course he's shot up a heap, but then
a man like him can stand a lot of lead in his body. There aren't any of
these wounds in a vital place. Chief trouble is he's lost so much blood.
That's where his clean outdoor life comes in to help build him up. I'll
bet Doc Brown pulls him through."

"Are you just _saying_ that, Jim, or do you really think so?"

"I'm saying it, and I think it. There's a whole lot in gaming a thing
out. What we've got to do is to _think_ he's going to make it. Once we
give up, it will be all off."

"You are such a help, Jim," she sighed, dabbing at her eyes with her
little handkerchief. "And you're the _best_ man."

"That's right. I'll be the best man when we pull off that big wedding of
yours and his."

Her heart went out to him with a rush. "You're the only friend both of
us have," she cried impulsively.

With the coming of Doctor Brown, Jim resigned his post of comforter in
chief, but he stayed at Seven Mile until the crisis was past and the
patient on the mend. Next day Slim, Budd, and Phil Sanderson rode in
from Noches. They were caked with the dust of their fifty-mile ride, but
after they had washed and eaten, Yeager had a long talk with them. He
learned, among other things, that Healy had telephoned Sheriff Gill that
Keller was lying wounded at Seven Mile, and that the sheriff was
expecting to follow them in a few hours.

"Coming to arrest Brill for assault with intent to kill, I reckon,"
Yeager suggested dryly.

Phil turned on him petulantly. "What's the use of you trying to get away
with that kind of talk, Jim? This fellow Keller was recognized as one of
the robbers."

"That ain't what Slim has just been telling, Phil. He says he recognized
the hawss, and thinks it was Keller in the saddle. Now, I don't think
anything about it. I _know_ Keller was with me in the hills when this
hold-up took place."

"You're his friend, Jim," the boy told him significantly.

"You bet I am. But I ain't a bank robber, if that's what you mean,
Phil."

His clear eyes chiselled into those of the boy and dominated him.

"I didn't say you were," Phil returned sulkily. "But I reckon we all
recall that you lied for him once. Whyfor would it be a miracle if you
did again?"

Jim might have explained, but did not, that it was not for Keller he had
lied. He contented himself with saying that the roan with the white
stockings had been stolen from the pasture before the holdup. He
happened to know, because he was spending the night in Keller's shack
with him at the time.

Slim cut in, with drawling sarcasm: "You've got a plumb perfect alibi
figured out for him, Jim. I reckon you've forgot that Brill saw him
riding through the Pass with the rest of his outfit."

"Brill says so. I say he didn't," returned Yeager calmly.

Toward evening Gill arrived and formally put Keller under arrest.
Practically, it amounted only to the precaution of leaving a deputy at
the ranch as a watch, for one glance had told the sheriff that the
wounded man would not be in condition to travel for some time.

It was the following day that Yeager saddled and said good-by to
Phyllis.

"I'm going to Noches to see if I cayn't find out something. It don't
look reasonable to me that those fellows could disappear, bag and
baggage, into a hole and draw it in after them."

"What about Brill's story that he saw them at the Pass?" the girl asked.

"He may have seen four men, but he ce'tainly didn't see Larrabie Keller.
My notion is, Brill lied out of whole cloth, but of course I'm not in a
position to prove it. Point is, why did he lie at all?"

Phyllis blushed. "I think I know, Jim."

Yeager smiled. "Oh, I know that. But that ain't, to my way of thinking,
motive enough. I mean that a white man doesn't try to hang another just
because he--well, because he cut him out of his girl."

"I never was his girl," Phyllis protested.

"I know that, but Brill couldn't get it through his thick head till a
stone wall fell on him and give him a hint."

"What other motive are you thinking of, Jim?"

He hesitated. "I've just been kinder milling things around. Do you
happen to know right when you met Brill the day of the robbery?"

"Yes. I looked at my watch to see if we would be in time for supper. It
was five-thirty."

"And the robbery was at three. The fellows didn't get out of town till
close to three-thirty, I reckon," he mused aloud.

"What has that got to do with it? You don't mean that----" She stopped
with parted lips and eyes dilating.

He shook his head. "I've got no right to mean that, Phyllie. Even if I
did have a kind of notion that way I'd have to give it up. Brill's got a
steel-bound, copper-riveted alibi. He couldn't have been at Noches at
three o'clock and with you two hours later, fifty-five miles from there.
No hawss alive could do it."

"But, Jim--why, it's absurd, anyway. We've known Brill always. He
couldn't be that kind of a man. How could he?"

"I didn't say he could," returned her friend noncommittally. "But when
it comes to knowing him, what do you know about him--or about me, say? I
might be a low-lived coyote without you knowing it. I might be all kinds
of a devil. A good girl like you wouldn't know it if I set out to keep
it still."

"I could tell by looking at you," she answered promptly.

"Yes, you could," he derided good-naturedly. "How would you know it? Men
don't squeal on each other."

"Do you mean that Brill isn't--what we've always thought him?"

"I'm not talking about Brill, but about Jim Yeager," he evaded. "He'd
hate to have you know everything that's mean and off color he ever did."

"I believe you must have robbed the bank yourself, Jim," she laughed.
"Are you a rustler, too?"

He echoed her laugh as he swung to the saddle. "I'm not giving myself
away any more to-day."

Brill Healy rode up, his arm in a sling. Deep rings of dissipation or of
sleeplessness were under his eyes. He looked first at Yeager and then at
the young woman, with an ugly sneer. "How's your dear patient, Phyl?"

"He is better, Brill," she answered quietly, with her eyes full on him.
"That is, we hope he is better. The doctor isn't quite sure yet."

"Some of us don't hope it as much as the rest of us, I reckon."

She said nothing, but he read in her look a contempt that stung like the
lash of a whip.

"He'll be worse again before I'm through with him," the man cried, with
a furious oath.

Phyllis measured him with her disdainful eye, and dismissed him. She
stepped forward and shook hands with Yeager.

"Take care of yourself, Jim, and don't spare any expense that is
necessary," she said.

For a moment she watched her friend canter off, then turned on her heel,
and passed into the house, utterly regardless of Healy.

Yeager reached Noches late, for he had unsaddled and let his horse rest
at Willow Springs during the heat of the broiling day.

After he had washed and had eaten, Yeager drifted to the Log Cabin
Saloon and gambling house. Here was gathered the varied and turbulent
life of the border country. Dark-skinned Mexicans rubbed shoulders with
range riders baked almost as brown by the relentless sun. Pima Indians
and Chinamen and negroes crowded round the faro and dice tables. Games
of monte and chuckaluck had their devotees, as had also roulette and
poker.

It was a picturesque scene of strong, untamed, self-reliant
frontiersmen. Some of them were outlaws and criminals, and some were as
simple and tender-hearted as children. But all had become accustomed to
a life where it is possible at any moment to be confronted with sudden
death.

A man playing the wheel dropped a friendly nod at Jim. He waited till
the wheel had stopped and saw the man behind it rake in his chips before
he spoke. Then, as he scattered more chips here and there over the
board, he welcomed Yeager with a whoop.

"Hi there, Malpais! What's doing in the hills these yere pleasant days?"

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