Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

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CHAPTER III

CAUGHT RED-HANDED

From a cleft in the hills two riders emerged, following a little gulch
to the point where it widened into a draw. The alkali dust of Arizona
lay thick upon their broad-brimmed Stetsons and every inch of exposed
surface, but through the gray coating bloomed the freshness of youth. It
rang from their voices, was apparent in the modelling and carriage of
their figures. The young man was sinewy and hard as nails, the girl
supple and wiry, of a slender grace, straight-backed as an Indian in the
saddle.

Just where the draw dipped down into the grassy park they drew rein an
instant. Faint and far a sound drifted to them. Somebody down in the
park had fired a rifle.

"I don't agree with you, Phil," the girl said, picking up the thread of
their conversation where they had dropped it some minutes earlier. "The
nesters have as much right here as we have. They come here to settle,
and they take up government land. Why shouldn't they?"

"Because we got here first," he retorted impatiently. "Because our
cattle and sheep have been feeding on the land they are fencing.
Because they close the water holes and the creeks and claim they are
theirs. It means the end of the open range. That's what it means."

"Of course that's what it means. We'll have to adapt ourselves to it.
You talk foolishness when you make threats to drive out the nesters.
That is the sort of thing Buck Weaver has been trying to do. It's
absurd. The law is back of them. You would only come to trouble, and if
you did succeed others would take their places."

"And rustle our cattle," he added sullenly.

"It isn't proved they are the rustlers. You haven't a shred of evidence.
Perhaps they are, but you should prove it before you make the charge."

"If they aren't, who is?" he flared up.

"I don't know. But whoever it is will be caught and punished some day.
There is no doubt at all about that."

"You talk a heap of foolishness, Phyl," he answered resentfully. "My
notion is they never will be caught. What makes you so sure they will?"

They had been riding down the draw, and at this moment Phyllis looked
up, to see a rider silhouetted against the sky line on the ridge above.

"Oh, you Brill!" she cried, with a wave of her quirt.

The man turned, saw them, and rode slowly down. He nodded, after the
fashion of the range, first to the girl, and then to her brother.

"Morning," he nodded. "Headed for Mesa? Here, too."

He fell in with them and rode beside the girl. Presently they topped a
little hillock, and looked down into the park. It had about the area of
a mile, and was perhaps twice as long as broad. Wooded spurs ran down
from the hills into it here and there, and through the meadow leaped a
silvery stream.

"Hello! Wonder where that smoke comes from?"

It was Healy that spoke. He pointed to a faint cloud rising from a
distance. Even before he began to speak, however, Phyllis had her field
glasses out, and was adjusting them to her eyes.

"There's a fire there and a man standing over it," she presently
announced. "There's something else there, too. I can't make it
out--something lying down."

The men glanced at each other, and in the meeting of their eyes some
intelligence passed between them. It was as if the younger accused and
the older sullenly denied.

"Lemme have the glasses," Phil said to his sister almost roughly.

Healy glanced at Phil swiftly, covertly, as the latter adjusted the
glasses. "She's right about the fire and the man. I can see as much with
my naked eyes," he cut in.

The boy looked long, lowered the glasses, and met his friend's eye with
a kind of shamefaced hesitation. But apparently he gathered reassurance
from the quiet steadiness with which the other's gaze met him. He handed
the glasses to Healy. When the latter lowered them his face was grave.
"There's a man and a fire and a cow and a calf. When these four things
meet up together, what does it mean?"

"Branding!" cried the girl.

"That's right--branding. And when the cow is dead what does it mean?"
Brill asked, his eyes full on Phil.

"Rustling!" she breathed again.

"You've said it, Phyl. We've got one of them at last," he cried
jubilantly.

Phil, hanging between doubt and suspicion and shame, brightened at the
enthusiasm of the other.

"Right you are, Brill. We'll solve this mystery once for all."

Healy, unstrapping the case in which lay his rifle, shot a question at
the boy. "Armed, Phil?"

The lad nodded. "I brought my six-gun for rattlesnakes."

"Are you going to--to----" cried Phyllis, the color gone from her face.

"We're going to capture him alive if we can, Phyl. You're to wait right
here till we come back. You may hear shooting. Don't let that worry you.
We've got the drop on him, or will have. Nobody is going to get hurt if
he acts sensible," Healy reassured.

"Don't you move from here. You stay right where you are," her brother
ordered sharply.

"Yes," she said, and was aware that her throat was suddenly parched.
"You'll be careful, won't you, Phil?"

"Sure," he called back, as he put his horse at a canter to follow his
friend up the draw.

The sound of the hoofs died away, and she was alone. That they were
going to circle in and out among the tangle of hills until they were
opposite the miscreant, she knew, but in spite of Brill's promise she
had a heart of water. With trembling fingers she raised the glasses
again, and focused them on that point which was to be the centre of the
drama.

The man was moving about now, quite unconscious of the danger that
menaced him. What she looked at was the great crime of Cattleland. All
her life she had been taught to hold it in horror. But now something
human in her was deeper than her detestation of the cowardly and awful
thing this man had just done. She wanted to cry out to him a warning,
and did in a faint, ineffective voice that carried not a tenth of the
distance between them.

She had promised to remain where she was, but her tense interest in what
was doing drew her forward in spite of herself. She rode along the ridge
that bordered the park, at first slowly and then quicker as the impulse
grew in her to be in at the finish.

The climax came. She saw him look round quickly, and in an instant his
pony was at the gallop and he was lying low on its neck. A shot rang
out, and another, but without checking his flight. He turned in the
saddle and waved a derisive hand at the shooters, then plunged into a
wash and disappeared.

What inspired her she could never tell. Perhaps it was her indignation
at the thing he had done, perhaps her anger at that mocking wave of the
hand with which he had vanished. She wheeled her horse, and put it at a
canter down the nearest draw so as to try to intercept him at right
angles. Her heart beat fast with excitement, but she was conscious of no
fear.

Before she had covered half the distance, she knew she was going to be
too late to cut off his retreat. Faintly, she heard the rhythm of hoofs
striking the rocky bottom of the draw. Abruptly they ceased. Wondering
what that could mean, she found her answer presently. For the pounding
of the galloping broncho had renewed itself, and closer. The man was
riding up the gulch toward her. He had turned into its mesquite-laced
entrance for a hiding place. Phyllis drew rein, and waited quietly to
confront him, but with a pulse that hammered the moments for her.

A white-stockinged roan, plowing a way through heavy sand, labored into
view round the bend, its rider slewed in the saddle with his whole
attention upon the possible pursuit. Not until he was almost upon her
did the man turn. With a startled exclamation at sight of the motionless
figure, he pulled up sharply. It was the nester, Keller.

"You," she cried.

"Happy to meet you, Miss Sanderson," he told her jauntily.

His revolver slid into its holster, and his hat came off in a low bow.
White, even teeth gleamed in a sardonic smile.

"So you are a--rustler," she told him scornfully.

"I hate to contradict a lady," he came back, with a kind of bitter
irony.

She saw something else, a deepening stain that soaked slowly down his
shirt sleeve.

"You are wounded."

"Am I?"

"Aren't you?"

"Come to think of it, I believe I am," he laughed shortly.

"Badly?"

"I haven't got the doctor's report yet." There was a gleam of whimsical
gayety in his eyes as he added: "I was going to find him when I had the
good luck to meet up with you."

He was a hunted miscreant, wounded, riding for his life as a hurt wolf
dodges to shake off the pursuit, but strangely enough her gallant heart
thrilled to the indomitable pluck of him. Never had she seen a man who
looked more the vagabond enthroned. His crisp bronze curls and his
superb shoulders were bathed in the sunpour. Not once, since his eyes
had fallen on her, had he looked back to see if his hunters had picked
up the lost trail. He was as much at ease as if his whole thought at
meeting her were the pleasure of the encounter.

"Can you ride?" she demanded.

"I can stick on a hawss if it's plumb gentle. Leastways I've been trying
to for twenty years," he drawled.

Her impatient gesture waved his flippancy aside. "I mean, are you too
much hurt to ride? I'm not going to leave you here like a wounded
coyote. Can you follow me if I lead the way?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She turned. He followed her obediently, but with a ghost of a smile
still flickering on his face.

"Am I your prisoner, Miss Sanderson?" he presently wanted to know.

"I'm not thinking of prisoners just now," she answered shortly, with an
anxious backward glance.

Presently she pulled up and wheeled her horse, so that when he halted
they sat facing each other.

"Let me see your arm," she ordered.

Obediently he held out to her the one that happened to be nearest. It
was the unwounded one. An angry spark gleamed in her eye.

"This is no time to be fresh. Give me the other."

"Yes, ma'am." he answered, with deceptive meekness.

Without comment, she turned back the sleeve which came to the wrist
gauntlet, and discovered a furrow ridged by a rifle bullet. It was a
clean flesh wound, neither deep nor long enough to cause him trouble
except for the immediate loss of blood. To her inexperience it looked
pretty bad.

"A plumb scratch," he explained.

She took the kerchief from her neck, and tied it about the hurt, then
pulled down the sleeve and buttoned it over the brown forearm. All this
she did quite impersonally, her face free of the least sympathy.

"Thank you, ma'am. You're a right friendly enemy."

"It isn't a matter of friendship at all. One couldn't leave a wounded
jack rabbit in pain," she retorted coldly, taking up the trail again.

There was room for two abreast, and he chose to ride beside her. "So you
tied me up because it was your Christian duty," he soliloquized aloud.
"Just the same as if I had been a mangy coyote that was suffering."

"Exactly."

He let his cool eyes rest on her with a hint of amusement. "And what
were you thinking of doing with me now, ma'am?"

"I'm going to take you up to Jim Yeager's mine. He is doing his
assessment work now, and he'll look out for you for a day or two."

"Look out for me in a locked room?" he wanted to know casually.

"I didn't say so. It isn't my business to arrest criminals," she told
him icily.

His eyes gleamed mischief. "Is it your business to help them to escape?"

"I'm not helping you to escape. I'll not risk your dying in the hills
alone. That is all."

"Jim Yeager is your friend?"

"Yes."

"And you guarantee he'll keep his mouth padlocked and not betray me?"

"He'll do as he pleases about that," she said indifferently.

"Then I don't reckon I'll trouble his hospitality. Good-by, Miss
Sanderson. I've enjoyed meeting you very much."

He checked his pony and bowed.

"Where are you going?" the girl exclaimed.

"Up Bear Creek."

"It's twenty miles. You can't do it."

"Sure I can. Thanks for your kindness, Miss Sanderson. I'll return the
handkerchief some day," and with a touch swung round his pony.

"You're not going. I won't have it, and you wounded!"

He turned in the saddle, smiling at her with jaunty insouciance.

"I'll answer for Jim. He won't betray you," she promised, subduing her
pride.

"Thanks. I'll take your word for it, but I won't trouble your friend.
I've had all the Christian charity that's good for me this mo'ning," he
drawled.

At that she flamed out passionately: "Do you want me to tell you that I
_like_ you, knowing what you are? Do you want me to pretend that I feel
friendly when I hate you?"

"Do you want me to be under obligations to folks that hate me?" he came
back with his easy smile.

"You have lost a lot of blood. Your arm is still bleeding. You know I
can't let you go alone."

"You're ce'tainly aching for a chance to be a Good Samaritan, Miss
Sanderson."

With this he left her. But he had not gone a hundred yards before he
heard her pony cantering after his. One glance told him she was furious,
both at him and at herself.

"Did you come after your handkerchief, ma'am? I'm not through with it
yet," he said innocently.

"I'm going with you. I'm not going to leave you till we meet some one
that will take charge of you," she choked.

"It isn't necessary. I'm much obliged, ma'am, but you're overestimating
the effect of this pill your friend injected into me."

"Still, I'm going. I won't have your death on my hands," she told him
defiantly.

"Sho! I ain't aimin' to pass over the divide on account of a scratch
like this. There's no danger but what I can look out for myself."

She waited in silence for him to start, looking straight ahead of her.

He tried in vain to argue her out of it. She had nothing to say, and he
saw she was obstinately determined to carry her point.

Finally, with a little chuckle at her stubbornness, he gave in and
turned round.

"All right. Yeager's it is. We're acting like a pair of kids, seems to
me." This last with a propitiatory little smile toward her which she
disdained to answer.

Yeager saw them from afar, and recognized the girl.

"Hello, Phyllis!" he shouted down. "With you in a minute."

The girl slipped to the ground, and climbed the steep trail to meet him.
Her crisp "Wait here," flung over her shoulder with the slightest turn
of the head, kept Keller in the saddle.

Halfway up she and the man met. The one waiting below could not hear
what they said, but he could tell she was explaining the situation to
Yeager. The latter nodded from time to time, protested, was vehemently
overruled, and seemed to leave the matter with her. Together they
retraced their way. Young Yeager, in flannel shirt and half-leg miner's
boots, was a splendid specimen of bronzed Arizona. His level gaze judged
the man on horseback, approved him, and met him eye to eye.

"Better light, Mr. Keller. If you come in we'll have a look at your arm.
An accident like that is a mighty awkward thing to happen to a man on
the trail. It's right fortunate Miss Sanderson found you so soon after
it happened."

The nester knew a surge of triumph in his blood, but it did not show in
the impassive face which he turned upon his host.

"It was right fortunate for me," he said, swinging from the saddle.
Incidentally he was wondering what story had been narrated to Yeager,
but he took a chance without hesitation. "A fellow oughtn't to be so
careless when he's got a gun in his hand."

"You're right, seh. In this country of heavy underbrush a man's gun is
liable to go off and hit somebody any time if he ain't careful. You're
in big luck you didn't shoot yourself up a heap worse."

Yeager led the way to his cabin, and offered Phyllis the single chair he
boasted, and the nester a seat on the bed. Sitting beside him, he
examined the wound and washed it.

"Comes to being an invalid I'm a false alarm," Keller said
apologetically. "I didn't want to come, but Miss Sanderson would bring
me."

"She was dead right, too. Time you had ridden twenty miles through the
hot sun with that wound you would have been in a raging fever."

"One way and another I'm quite in her debt."

"That's so," agreed Yeager, intent on his work.

She refused to meet the nester's smile. "Fiddlesticks! You talk mighty
foolish, Jim. I wouldn't go away and leave a wounded dog if I could help
it."

"Suppose the dog were a sheep-killer?" Keller asked with his engaging,
impudent smile.

A dust cloud rose from her skirt under a stroke of the restless quirt.
"I'd do my best for it and let it settle with the law afterward."

"Even if it were a wolf caught in a trap?"

"I should put it out of its pain. No matter how much I detested it, I
wouldn't leave it there to suffer."

"I'm quite sure you wouldn't," the wounded man agreed.

Yeager looked from one to the other, not quite catching the drift of the
underlying meaning. Another thing puzzled him, too. But, like most men
of the unfenced Southwest, Yeager had a large capacity for silence. Now
he attended strictly to his business, without mentioning what he had
noticed.

The wound dressed, Phyllis rose to leave. "You'll be down for your mail
to-morrow, Jim," she suggested, as she sauntered toward the door.

"Sure. I'll let you know how our patient is getting along."

"Oh, he's yours. I don't want any of the credit," she returned
carelessly.

Then, the words scarce off her lips, she gave a little cry of alarm, and
stepped quickly back into the room. What she had seen had sapped the
color from her face. Yeager started forward, but she waved him back.

"It's Phil and Brill Healy. You've got to hide us, Jim," she told him
tensely.

The nester began to grin. He always did when he faced a difficulty
apparently insurmountable. Also his fingers slid toward the butt of his
revolver.

CHAPTER IV

"I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?"

Jim swept the cabin with a gesture. "Where can I hide you? Anyhow, there
are the horses in plain sight."

Phyllis took imperious control. "Get a coat on him, Jim," she ordered.

At the same time she caught up the basin of bloodstained water and flung
its contents through the open window. The torn linen and the stained
handkerchief she tossed into a corner and covered with a gunny sack.

"Not a word about the wound, Jim. Mr. Keller is here to help you do your
assessment work, remember. And whatever I say, don't give me away."

Yeager nodded. He had manoeuvred the wounded arm through the coat sleeve
and was straightening out the shoulders. The nester's eyes were shining
with excitement. Alone of the three, he was enjoying himself.

"Remember now. Don't talk too much. Let me run this," the girl
cautioned, and with that she stepped to the door, caught sight of her
brother with a glad little cry of apparent relief, and ran swiftly to
him.

"Oh, Phil!" she almost sobbed, and the stress of her emotion was genuine
enough, even if she dissembled as to the cause.

The boy patted her dark hair gently. They were twins, without other near
relatives except their father, and the tie between them was close.

"What is it, Phyllie? Why didn't you stay where we left you?"

"I was afraid for you. And I rode a little nearer. Then he came straight
toward me--and I rode away. I could hear him crashing through the
mesquite. When I reached the trail of Jim's mine, I followed it, for I
knew he would be here."

"Sure. Course she was scared. What woman wouldn't be? We oughtn't both
to have left her. But there wasn't one chance in a thousand of his
stumbling on the very spot where she was," said Healy.

Phil gentled her with a caressing hand. "It's all right now, sis. Did
you happen to see the fellow at all?"

"Yes. At a distance."

"I don't suppose you would know him," Healy said.

She gave a strained little laugh. "I didn't wait to get a description of
him. Didn't you boys recognize him?"

After Phil's answer she breathed freer. "We did not get near enough,
though Brill got two shots at him as he pulled out. He was going
hell-for-leather and Brill missed both times." He lowered his voice and
asked angrily: "What's _he_ doing here?"

For Keller had followed Yeager from the cabin and was standing in the
doorway with his hands in his pockets. He wore no hat, and had the
manner of one very much at home.

"He's helping Jim with his assessment work," she answered in the same
low tone. "It's too bad you lost the rustler. He must have broken for
the hills."

Healy's eyes had narrowed to slits. Now he murmured a question: "What
about this man Keller? Was he here when you came, Phyl?"

The girl turned to Yeager, who had sauntered up. "Didn't you say he came
this morning, Jim?"

Yeager's eyes were like a stone wall. "Yep. This mo'ning. I needed some
husky guy to help me, so I got him."

"Funny you had to get a fellow from Bear Creek to help you, Jim."

"Are you looking for a job, Brill?"

"No. Why?"

"Because I ain't noticed any stampede this way among the boys to preempt
this job. I take a man where I can find him, Brill, and I don't ask you
to O.K. him."

"I see you don't, Jim. The boys aren't going to like it very well,
though."

"Then they know what they can do about it," Yeager answered evenly,
level eyes steadily on those of his critic.

"What time did this nester get here, Jim?" broke in Phil.

Yeager's opaque eyes passed from Healy to Sanderson. "It might have been
about eight."

"Then he couldn't be the man," the boy said to Healy, almost in a
whisper.

"What man?" Jim asked.

"We ran on a rustler branding a C.O. calf. We got close enough to take a
shot at him. Then he slid into some arroyo, and we lost him," Phil
exclaimed.

"How long ago was this?" asked Yeager.

"About an hour since we first saw him. Beats all how he ever made his
getaway. We were right after him when he gave us the slip."

"Oh, he gave you the slip, did he?"

"Dropped into some hole and pulled it in after him. These hills are
built for hide and seek, looks like."

"Notice the color of his horse?"

"It was a roan, Jim. Something like that nester's." Phil nodded toward
the animal Keller had ridden.

All eyes focused hard on the horse with the white stockings.

"What brand was he putting on the calf? That'll tell you who the man
was."

Phil and Healy looked at each other, and the latter laughed. "That's one
on us. We didn't stay to look, but got right out for Mr. Rustler."

"Did he kill the cow?"

Phil nodded.

"Then you'll find the calf still hanging around there unless he had a
pal to drive it away."

"That's right. We'll go back now and look. Ready, Phyl?"

"Yes." She stepped to her horse, and swung to the saddle.

Meanwhile Healy rode forward to the cabin. Through narrowed lids he
looked down at the man standing in the doorway. "Give that message to
your friends?" he demanded insolently.

There are men who have to look at each other only once to know that
there is born between them a perpetual hostility. Each of these men had
felt it at the first shock of meeting eyes. They would feel it again as
often as they looked at each other.

"No," the nester answered.

"Why not?"

"I didn't care to. You may carry your own messages."

"When I do I'll carry them with a gun."

"Interesting if true." Keller's gaze passed derisively over him and
dismissed the man.

"And I hope when I come I'll meet Mr. Keller first."

The nester's attention was focused indolently upon the hills. He seemed
to have forgotten that the cattleman was in Arizona.

Healy ripped out a sudden oath, drove the spurs in, and went down the
trail with his broncho on the buck.

Keller looked at Yeager and laughed, but that young man met him with a
frosty eye.

"I've got some questions to ask you, Mr. Keller," he said.

"Unload 'em."

Yeager led the way inside, offered his guest the chair, and sat down on
the bed with his arms on the table which had been drawn close to it.

"In the first place, I'll announce myself. I don't hold with rustlers or
waddies. I'm a white man. That being understood, I want to know where
we're at."

"Meaning?"

"Miss Phyllis unloads a story on me about you shooting yourself up
accidental. Soon as I looked at you that looked fishy to me. You ain't
that kind of a durn fool. Would you mind handing me a dipper of water?
Thanks." Yeager tossed the water out of the window, and the dipper back
into the pail. "I noticed you handed me that water with your right hand.
Your gun is on your right side. Then how in Mexico, you being
right-handed, did you manage to shoot yourself _in the right arm below
the elbow?_"

Keller laughed dryly, and offered no information. "Quite a Sherlock
Holmes, ain't you?"

"Hell, no! I got eyes in my head, though. Moreover, that bullet went in
at right angles to your arm. How did you make out to do that?"

"Sleight of hand," suggested the other.

"No powder marks, either. And, lastly, it was, a rifle did it, not a
revolver."

"Anything more?"

"Some. That side talk between you and Miss Phyllis wasn't over and above
clear to me then. I _savez_ it now. She hates you like p'ison, but
she's too tender-hearted to give you up. Ain't that it?"

"That's it."

"She lied for you to me. She lied again to Phil. So did I. Oh, we didn't
lie in words, but it's the same thing. Now, I wouldn't lie to save my
own skin. Why then should I for yours, and you a rustler and a thief?"

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