Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

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"I've got a right to mention it because I've asked you a question since
that ain't been answered. That week's been up ten days."

"I'm not going to answer it now."

And with that she slipped past him and from the room.

He ran a hand through his curls and voiced his perplexity. "Now, if a
woman ain't the strangest ever. Just as a fellow is ready to tell her
things, she gets mad and hikes."

Nevertheless he smiled, not uncheerfully. What experience he had had
with young women told him the signs were not hopeless for his success.
He was not sure of her, not by a good deal. He had captured her
imagination. But to win a girl's fancy is not the same as to storm her
heart. He often caught himself wondering just where he stood with her.
For himself, he knew he was fathoms deep in love.

She was in his thoughts when he fell asleep.

He awoke in the darkness, and sat upright in the bed, a feeling of
calamity oppressing him. Something pungent tickled his nostrils.

A faint crackling sounded in the air.

Swiftly he slipped on such clothes as he needed and stepped into the
passage. A heavy smoke was pouring up the back stairway. He knocked
insistently upon the door where Phyllis and her guest were sleeping.

"What is it?" a voice demanded.

"Get up and dress, Miss Sanderson! The house is on fire! You have plenty
of time, I think. If there's any hurry I'll let you know after I've
looked."

He went down the front stairs and found that the fire was in the back
part of the house. Already volumes of smoke with spitting tongues of
flame were reaching toward the foot of the stairs. He ran up to the room
where the girls were dressing, and called to them:

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

The door opened, to show him two very pale girls, each carrying a bundle
of clothes. They were only partially dressed, but wrappers covered their
disarray. Keller went to the clothes closet, emptied it with a sweep and
lift of his arm, and returned, to lead the way downstairs.

"Take a breath before you start. The smoke's bad, but there is no real
danger," he told them as he plunged forward.

At the foot of the stairs he stopped to see that they were following him
closely, then flung open the outer door and let in a rush of cool, sweet
air. In another moment they were outside, safe and unhurt.

Phyllis drew a long breath before she said:

"The house is gone!"

"If there is anything you want particularly from the living room I can
get in through the window," Keller told her.

She shuddered. Flame jets were already shooting out here and there. "I
wouldn't let you go back for the world. We didn't get out too soon."

"No," he agreed.

A sniveling voice behind them broke in: "Where is Mr. Phil? I yain't
seen him yet."

Larrabie swung round on 'Rastus like a flash. "What do you mean? He's at
the round-up, of course."

The little fellow began to bawl: "No, sah. He done come home late last
night. Aftah you-all had gone to bed. He's in his room, tha's where he
is."

Phyllis caught at the arm of Keller to steady her. She was colorless to
the lips.

"Oh, God! Oh, God!" she cried faintly.

The nester pushed her gently into the arms of her guest.

"Take care of her, Bess. I'll get Phil."

He ran round the house to the back. The bedroom occupied by young
Sanderson was on the first floor. The ranger caught up a stick, smashed
the window, and tore out the frame by main strength. Presently he was
inside, groping through the dense smoke toward the bed.

Flames leaped at him from out of it like darting serpents. His hair, his
face, his clothes, caught fire before he had discovered that the bed had
been used, but was now empty. The door into the hall was open, and
through it were pouring billows of smoke. Evidently Phil must have tried
to escape that way and been overpowered.

The young man caught up a towel and wrapped it around his throat and
mouth, then plunged forward into the caldron of the passage. The smoke
choked him and the intense heat peeled his face and made the endurance
of it an agony.

He stumbled over something soft, and discovered with his hands that it
was a body. Smothered and choked, half frantic with the heat, he
struggled back into the bedroom with his burden.

Somehow he reached the window, stumbled through it, and dragged the
inanimate body after him. Then, with Phil in his arms, he reeled forward
into the fresh air beyond.

With a cry Phyllis broke from Bess and ran toward him. But before she
had reached the rescuer and the rescued, Keller went down in total
collapse. He, too, was unconscious when she knelt beside him and began
with her hands to crush out the smoldering fire in his clothes.

He opened his eyes and smiled faintly when he saw who it was.

"How's the boy?" he asked.

"He is breathing," cried Bess joyfully, from where she was bending over
Sanderson.

"You go attend to him. I'm all right now."

"Are you truly?"

"Truly."

He proved it by sitting up, and presently by rising and joining with her
the group gathered around Phil. For Aunt Becky had now emerged from her
cabin and taken charge of affairs.

Phil was supported to the bunk house and put to bed by Keller and
'Rastus. It was already plain that he would be none the worse for his
adventure after a night's good sleep. Aunt Becky applied to his case the
homely remedies she had used before, while the others stood around the
bed and helped as best they could. Strangely enough, he was not burned
at all. In this he had escaped better than Keller, whose hair and
eyebrows and skin were all the worse for singeing.

The nester noticed that Phyllis, in handing a bowl of water to Bess,
used awkwardly her left hand. The right one, he observed, was held with
the palm concealed against the folds of her skirt.

Presently Phyllis, her anxiety as to Phil relieved, left Aunt Becky and
Bess to care for him, while she went out to make arrangements for
disposing of the party until morning. The nester followed her into the
night and walked beside her toward the house of the foreman. The
darkness was lit up luridly by the shooting flames of the burning house.

"The store isn't going to catch fire. That's one good thing," Keller
observed, by way of comfort.

"Yes." There was a catch in her voice, for all the little treasures of
her girlhood, gathered from time to time, were going up in smoke.

"You're insured, I reckon?"

"Yes."

"Well, it might be worse."

She thought of the narrow escape Phil had had, and nodded.

"You'll have to sleep in the bunk house. Take any of the beds you like.
Bess and I will put up at the foreman's," she explained.

As is the custom among bachelors who attend to their own domestic
affairs, they found the bed just as the foreman had stepped out of it
two weeks before. While Keller held the lantern, Phyllis made it up, and
again he saw that she was using her right hand very carefully and
flinching when it touched the blankets. Putting the lantern down on the
table, he walked up to her.

"I'll make the bed."

She stepped back, with a little laugh. "All right."

He made it, then turned to her at once.

"I want to see your hand."

She gave him the left one, even as he had done on the occasion of their
second meeting. He took it, and kept it.

"Now the other."

"What do you want with it?"

"Never mind." He reached down and drew it from the folds of her skirt,
where it had again fallen. Very gently he turned it so that the palm was
up. Ugly blisters and a red seam showed where she had burned herself. He
looked at her without speaking.

"It's nothing," she told him, a little hysterically.

For an instant her mind flashed back to the time when Buck Weaver had
drawn the cactus spines out of that same hand.

His voice was rough with feeling. "I can see it isn't. And you got it
for me--putting out the fire in my clothes. I reckon I cayn't thank you,
you poor little tortured hand." He lifted the fingers to his lips and
kissed them.

"Don't," she cried brokenly.

"Has it got to be this way always, Phyllie--you giving and me taking?"
His hand tightened on hers ever so slightly, and a spasm of pain shot
across her face. He looked at the burned fingers again tenderly. "Does
it hurt pretty bad, girl?"

"I wish it was ten times as bad!" she broke out, with a sob. "You saved
Phil's life--at the risk of your own. I wish I could tell you how I
feel, what I think of you, how splendid you are." In default of which
ability, she began to cry softly.

He wasted no more time. He did not ask her whether he might. With a
gesture, his arm went around her and drew her to him.

"Let me tell what I think of you, instead, girl o' mine. I cayn't tell
it, either, for that matter, but I reckon I can make out to show you,
honey."

"I didn't mean--that way," she protested, between laughter and tears.

"Well, that's the way I mean."

Neither spoke again for a minute. Than: "Do you really--love me?" she
murmured.

"What do you think?" He laughed with the sheer unconquerable boyish
delight in her.

"I think you're pretending right well," she smiled.

"If I am making believe."

"If you are." Her arms slipped round his neck with a swift impulse of
love. "But you're not. Tell me you're not, Larry."

He told her, in the wordless way lovers have at command, the way that is
more convincing than speech.

So Phyllis, from the troubled waters of doubt, came at last to safe
harborage.

CHAPTER XXIII

AT THE RODEO

There was an exodus from Seven Mile the second day after the fire.
Keller went up Bear Creek, Phyllis accepted the invitation of Bess to
stay with her at the Fiddleback, and her brother returned to the
round-up.

The riders were now combing the Lost Creek watershed. Phil knew the camp
would be either at Peaceful Valley or higher up, near the headwaters of
the creek. Before he reached the valley the steady bawl of cattle told
him that the outfit was camped there. He topped the ridge and looked
down upon Cattleland at its busiest. Just below him was the remuda, the
ponies grazing slowly toward the hills under the care of three
half-grown boys.

Beyond were the herded cattle. Here all was activity. Within the fence
of riders surrounding the wild creatures the cutting out and the
branding were being pushed rapidly forward. Occasionally some leggy
steer, tail up and feet pounding, would make a dash to break the cordon.
Instantly one of the riders would wheel in chase, head off the animal,
and drive it back.

Brill Healy, boss of the rodeo by election, was in charge. He was an
expert handler of cattle, one of the best in the country. It was his
nature to seek the limelight, though it must be said for him that he
rose to his responsibilities. The owners knew that when he was running
the round-up few cattle would slip through the net he wound around them.

"Hello, Brill!" shouted the young man as he rode up.

"Hello, son! Too bad about the fire. I'll want to hear about it later.
Looking for a job?" he flung hurriedly over his shoulder. For he had not
even a minute to spare.

"I reckon."

Phil did not wait to be assigned work, but joined the calf branders.

Not until night had fallen and they were gathered round in a semicircle
leaning against their saddles did Phil find time to tell the story of
the fire. There was some haphazard comment when he had finished, after
which Slim spoke.

"So the nester hauled you out. Ce'tainly looks like he's plumb game. You
said he was afire when he got you into the open, didn't you, Phil?"

The boy nodded. "And all in. He fainted right away."

"With him still burning away like the doctor's fire there," murmured
Healy ironically, with a slight gesture toward the cook.

Phil looked at him angrily. "I didn't say that. Some one put the fire
out."

"Oh, some one! Might a man ask who?"

Phil had not had any intention of telling, but he found himself letting
Healy have it straight.

"Phyllis."

"About what I thought!" Healy said it significantly, and with a malice
that overrode his discretion.

"What do you mean?" demanded the boy fiercely.

"I ain't said anything, have I?" Healy came back smoothly.

Yeager's quiet voice broke the silence that followed, while Phil was
trying to voice the resentment in him.

"You mean what we're all thinking, Brill, I reckon--that she is the sort
to forget herself when somebody needs her help. Ain't that it?"

The eyes of the two met steadily in a clash of wills. Healy's gave way
for the time, not because he was mastered, but because he did not wish
to alienate the rough, but fair-minded, men sitting around.

"You're mighty good at explaining me to the boys, Jim. I expect that is
what I mean," he answered sullenly.

"Sure," put in Purdy, with amiable intent.

"But when it comes to Mr. Keller I can explain myself tol'able well. I
don't need any help there, Jim, not even if he is yore best friend."

"If you've got anything to say against him, I'll ask you to say it when
I'm not around," broke in Phil. "You'll recollect, please, that he's
_my_ friend, too."

"That so? Since, when, Phil?" the rodeo boss retorted sarcastically.

"Since he went into the fire after me and saved my life. Think I'm a
coyote to round on him? I tell you he's a white man clear through. In my
opinion, he's neither a rustler nor a bank robber." He was flushed and
excited, but his gaze met that of his former friend and challenged him
defiantly.

Healy's eyes narrowed. He gazed at the boy darkly, as if he meant to
read him through and through. For years he had dominated Phil, had
shaped him to his ends, had led him into wild, lawless courses after
him. Now the anchors were dragging. He was losing control of him. He
resolved to turn the screws on him, but not at this time and place.

"I've always been considered a full-grown man, Phil. What I think I aim
to say out loud when the notion hits me. That being so, I go on record
as having an opinion about Keller. You think he's on the square, and you
give him a whitewashed certificate as a bony-fidy Sunday-school scholar.

"Different here. I think him a coyote and a crook, and so I say it right
out in meeting. Any objections?" The gaze of the boss shifted from
Sanderson to Yeager, and fastened.

"None in the world. You think what you like, Brill, and we'll stick to
our opinions," Yeager replied cheerfully.

"And when I get good and ready I'll act on mine," Healy replied with an
evil grin.

"If you find it right convenient. I expect Keller ain't exactly a wooden
cigar Indian. Maybe he'll have a say-so in what's doing," suggested
Yeager.

"About as much as he had last time," sneered the round-up boss. With
which he rose, stretched himself, and gave orders. "Time to turn in,
boys. We're combing Old Baldy to-morrow, remember."

"And Old Baldy's sure a holy terror," admitted Slim.

"Come three more days and we'd ought to be through. I'm not going to
grieve any when we are. This high life don't suit me too durned well,"
put in Benwell.

"Yet when you come here first you was a right sick man, Tom. Now, you're
some healthy. Don't that prove the outside of a hawss is good for the
inside of a man, like the docs say?" grinned Purdy.

"Tom's notion of real living is sassiety with a capital S," explained
Cuffs. "You watch him cut ice at the Frying Pan dance next week. He'll
be the real-thing lady-killer. All you lads going, I reckon. How about
you, Jim?"

Yeager said he expected to be there.

"With yore friend the rustler?" asked Healy insolently over his
shoulder.

"I haven't got any friend that's a rustler."

"I'm speaking of Mr. Larrabie Keller." There was a slurring inflection
on the prefix.

"He'll be there, I shouldn't wonder."

"I'd wonder a heap," retorted Healy. "You'll see he won't show his face
there."

"That's where you're wrong, Brill. He told me he was going," spoke up
Phil triumphantly.

"We'll see. He's wise to the fact that this country knows him for an
out-and-out crook. He'll stay in his hole."

"You going, Slim?" asked Purdy amiably, to turn the conversation into a
more pacific channel.

"Sure," answered that young giant, getting lazily to his feet. "Well,
sons, the boss is right. Time to pound our ears."

They rolled themselves in their blankets, the starry sky roofing their
bedroom. Within five minutes every man of them was asleep except the
night herders--and one other.

Healy lay a little apart from the rest, partially screened by some boxes
of provisions and a couple of sacks of flour. His jaw was clamped tight.
He looked into the deep velvet sky without seeing. For a long time he
did not move. Then, noiselessly, he sat up, glanced around carefully to
make sure he was not observed, rose, and stole into the darkness,
carrying with him his saddle and bridle.

One of his ponies was hobbled in the mesquite. Swiftly he saddled.
Leading the animal very carefully so as to avoid rustling the brush, he
zigzagged from the camp until he had reached a safe distance. Here he
swung himself on and rode into the blur of night, at first cautiously,
but later with swift-pounding hoofs. He went toward the northwest in a
bee line without hesitation or doubt. Only when the lie of the ground
forced a detour did he vary his direction.

So for hours he travelled until he reached a canon in which squatted a
little log cabin. He let his voice out in the howl of a coyote before he
dismounted. No answer came, save the echo from the cliff opposite. Again
that mournful call sounded, and this time from the cabin found an
answer.

A man came sleepily to the door and peered out. "Hello! That you,
Brill?"

Healy swung off, trailed his rein, and followed the man into the cabin.
"Don't light up, Tom. No need."

For ten minutes they talked in low tones. Healy emerged from the cabin,
remounted, and rode back to the cow camp. He reached it just as the
first, faint streaks of gray tinged the eastern sky.

Silently he unsaddled, hobbled his pony, and carried his saddle back to
the place where he had been lying. Once more he lay down, glanced
cautiously round to see all was quiet, and fell asleep as soon as his
head touched the saddle.

CHAPTER XXIV

MISSING

From all over the Malpais country, from the water-sheds where Bear and
Elk and Cow creeks head, from the halfway house far out in the desert
where the stage changes horses, men and women dribbled to the Frying Pan
for the big dance after the round-up. Great were the preparations. Many
cakes and pies and piles of sandwiches had been made ready. Also there
was a wash boiler full of coffee and a galvanized tub brimming with
lemonade. For the Frying Pan was doing itself proud.

Phil and his sister drove over together. The boy had asked Bess to go
with him, but Cuffs had beaten him to it. The distance was only
twenty-five miles, a neighborly stroll in that country of wide spaces
and desert stretches filled with absentees.

When Phyllis came into the big room where the dancing was in progress,
her dark eye swept the room without finding him for whom she looked.
There were many there she knew, not more than two or three whom she had
never met, but among them all she looked at none who was a magnet for
her eyes. Keller had not yet arrived.

Before she had taken her seat she had three engagements to dance. Jim
Yeager had waylaid her; so, too, had Slim and Curly. She waltzed first
with Phil, and after he had done his duty he left her to the besiegings
of half a score of riders for various ranches who came and went and came
again. She joked with them, joined the merry banter that went on,
laughed at them when they grew sentimental, always with a sprightly
devotion to the matter in hand.

Nevertheless, though they did not know it, her mind was full of him who
had not yet appeared. Why was he late? Could he have missed the way by
any chance? And later--as the hours passed without bringing him--could
anything have happened to him? More than once her troubled gaze fell
upon Brill Healy with a brooding question in it. The man had received
only the day before his party's nomination for sheriff, and he was doing
the gracious to all the women and children.

He had many of the qualities that make for popularity, even though he
was often overbearing, revengeful, and sullen. When he chose he could be
hail fellow well met in a way Malpais found flattering to its vanity.
Now he was apparently having the time of his life. Wherever he moved an
eddy of laughter and gayety went with him. The eyes of men as well as
women admiringly followed his dark, lithe, picturesque figure.

Phyllis had declined to dance with him, giving as an excuse a full
programme, and for an instant his face had blazed with the suppressed
rage in him. He had bowed and swaggered away with a malicious sneer. Her
judgment told her it was folly to connect this man with the absence of
her lover, but that look of malevolent triumph had none the less shaken
her heart. What had he meant? It seemed less a threat for the future
than a gloating over some evil already done.

When she could endure them no longer she carried her fears to Jim
Yeager. They were dancing, but she made an excuse of fatigue to drop
out.

"First time I ever knew you to play out at a dance, Phyl," he rallied
her.

"It isn't that. I want to say something to you," she whispered.

He had a guess what it was, for his own mind was not quite easy.

"Do you think anything could have happened, Jim?" she besought pitifully
when for a moment they were alone in a corner.

"What _could_ have happened, Phyllie? Do you reckon he fell off his
hawss, and him a full-size man?" he scoffed.

"Yes, but--you don't know how Brill looked at me. I'm afraid."

"Oh, Brill!" His voice held an edge of scorn, but none the less it
concealed a real fear. He was making as much concession to it as to her
when he added lightly: "Tell you what I'll do, Phyl. I'll saddle up and
take a look back over the Bear Creek trail. Likely I'll meet him, and
we'll come in together."

Her eyes met his, and he needed no other thanks. "You'll lose the
dance," was her only comment.

Jim followed the road until it branched off to join the Bear Creek
trail. Here he deflected toward the mountains, taking the zigzag path
that ran like a winding thread among the rocks as it mounted. Now for
the first time there came to him the faint rhythmic sound of a galloping
horse's hoofs. He did not stop, and as he picked his way among the rocks
he heard for some time no more of it.

"Mr. Hurry-up-like-hell kept the road, I reckon," Jim ruminated aloud,
and even as he spoke he caught again the echo of an iron shoe striking a
rock.

He stopped and listened. Some one was climbing the trail behind him.

"Mebbe he's a friend, and then mebbe he isn't. We'll let him have the
whole road to himself, eh, Keno?"

Yeager guided his pony to the left, and took up a position behind some
huge bowlders from whence he could see without being seen. The pursuer
toiled into sight, a slim, wiry youth on a buckskin. He came forward out
of the shadows into the fretted moonlight.

Yeager gave a glad whoop of recognition. "Hi-yi, Phil!"

"You're there, are you? Did I scare you off the trail, Jim?"

"That's whatever, boy. What are you doing here?"

"Sis sent me. She got worried again, and we figured I'd better join
you."

"I reckon there's nothing serious the matter. Still, it ain't like Larry
to say he would come and then not show up."

"Brill is back there bragging about it." Phil nodded his head toward the
lights of the Frying Pan glimmering far below. "Says he knew the waddy
wouldn't show his head. You don't reckon, Jim, he's turned a trick on
Keller, do you?"

"That's what we have got to find out, Phil."

"Looks funny he'd be so durned sure when we all know how game Keller
is," the boy reflected aloud.

"I don't expect you're armed, Phil?" Jim put the statement as a
question.

"Nope. Are you?"

"No, I ain't. Didn't think of it when I started. Oh, well, we'll make
out. Like enough there will be no need of guns."

A gray light was sifting into the sky, and still they rode, winding up
toward the peaks of the divide. Jim, leading the way, drew rein and
pointed to a cactus bush beside the trail. Among its spines lay a gray
felt hat. From it his eye wandered to the very evident signs of a
struggle that had taken place. Moss and cactus had been trampled down by
boot heels. To the cholla hung here and there scraps of cloth. A blood
splash stared at them from an outcropping slope of rock.

Jim swung from the saddle and rescued the hat from the spines. Inside
the sweat band were the initials L.K. Silently he handed the hat to
Phil.

"It's his hat," the boy cried.

"It's his hat," Jim agreed. "They must have laid for him here. He put up
a good scrap. Notice how that cholla is cut to ribbons. Point is, what
did they do to him?"

They searched the ground thoroughly, and discovered no body hidden in
the brush.

"They've taken him away. Likely he's alive," Yeager decided aloud at
last.

"Brill couldn't have been in this. He was at the Frying Pan before I
was."

"I reckon he ordered it done. If that's correct they will be holding
Larry till Brill gets there to give further orders."

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