Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

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"I'm a rustler and a thief, am I?"

"Ain't you?"

"Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?"

Yeager debated an instant before he answered flatly, "No."

"Then I won't say it."

The wounded man tossed his answer off so flippantly that Yeager scowled
at him. "Mr. Keller, you're a newcomer here. I wonder if you know what
the Malpais country would be liable to do to a man caught rustling now."

"I can guess."

"Let me tell what I know and your life wouldn't be worth a plugged
quarter."

"Why didn't you tell?"

Yeager brought his big fist down heavily on the table. "Because of Phyl
Sanderson. That's why. She put it up to me, and I played her game. But I
ain't sure I'm going to keep on playing it. I'm a Malpais man. My father
has a ranch down there, and I've rode the range all my life. Why should
I throw down my friends to save a rustler caught in the act?"

"You've already tried and convicted me, I see."

"The facts convict you, seh."

"Your understanding of the facts, I reckon you mean."

"I haven't noticed that you're giving me any chance to understand them
different," Yeager cut back dryly.

The nester took from his pocket a little pearl-handled knife, picked up
a potato from a basket beside him, and began to whittle on it absently.
He looked across the table at the man sitting on the bed, and debated a
question in his mind. Was it best to confess the whole truth? Or should
he keep his own counsel?

"I see you've got Miss Sanderson's knife. Did you forget to return it?"
Yeager made comment.

For just an instant Keller's eye confessed amazement. "Miss Sanderson's
knife! Why--how did you know it was hers?" he asked, gathering himself
together lamely.

"I ought to know, seeing as I gave it to her for a Christmas present.
Sent to Denver for that knife, I did. Best lady's knife in the market,
I'm told. Made in Sheffield, England."

"Ye-es. It's sure a good knife. I'll ce'tainly return it next time I see
her."

"Funny she ever let you get away with it. She's some particular who she
lends that knife to," Jim said proudly.

Keller wiped the blade carefully, shut it, and put the knife back in his
pocket. Nevertheless, he was worried in his mind. For what Yeager had
told him changed wholly the problem before him. It suggested a
possibility, even a probability, very distasteful to him. He was in
trouble himself, and before he was through he expected to get others
into deep water, too. But not Phyllis Sanderson--surely not this
impulsive girl with the blue-black hair and dark, scornful eyes.
Wherefore he decided to keep silent now and let Yeager do what he would.

"I reckon, seh, you'll have to do your own guessing at the facts," he
said gently.

"Just as you say, Mr. Keller. I reckon if you had anything to say for
yourself you would say it. Now, I'll do what talking I've got to do. You
may stay here twenty-four hours. After that you may hit the trail for
Bear Creek. I'm going down to Seven Mile to tell what I know."

"That's all right. I'll go along and return the pocketknife."

Yeager viewed him with stern disgust. "Don't make any mistake, seh. If
you go down it's an even chance you'll never go back."

"Sure. Life's full of chances. There's even a chance I'm not a rustler."

"Then I'd advise you not to go down to Seven Mile with me. I'd hate to
find out too late I'd helped hang the wrong man," Yeager dryly answered.

CHAPTER V

AN AIDER AND ABETTOR

Having come to an understanding, Yeager and Keller wasted no time or
temper in acrimony. Both of them belonged to that big outdoors West
which plays the game to the limit without littleness. They were in
hostile camps, but that did not prevent them from holding amiable
conversation on the common topics of Cattleland. Only one of these they
avoided by mutual consent. Neither of them had anything to say about
rustling.

Together they ate and smoked and slept, and in the morning after
breakfast they saddled and set out for Seven Mile. A man might have
traveled far without seeing finer specimens of the frontier, any more
competent, self-restrained, or fitter for emergency. They rode with
straight back and loose seat, breaking long silences with occasional
drawling comment. For in the cow country strong men talk only when they
have something to say.

The stage had just left when they reached Seven Mile, and Public Opinion
was seated on the porch as per custom. It regarded Keller with a stony,
expressionless hostility. Yeager with frank disapprobation.

Just before swinging from the saddle, Jim turned to the nester. "I'm
giving you an hour, seh. After that, I'm going to speak my little piece
to the boys."

"Thank you. An hour will be plenty," Keller answered, and passed into
the store, apparently oblivious of the silent observation focused upon
him.

Phyllis, busy unwrapping a package of papers, glanced up to see his
curly head in the stamp window.

"Anything for L. Keller?" he wanted to know, after he had unburdened
himself of a friendly "Mornin', Miss Sanderson."

Her impulse was to ask him how his wound was, but she repressed it
sternly. She took the letters from the K pigeonhole and found two for
him.

"Thank you, I'm feeling fine," he laughed, gathering up his mail.

"I didn't ask you how you were feeling," she answered, turning coldly to
her newspapers.

"I thought mebbe you'd want to know about my punctured tire."

"It's very good of you to relieve my anxiety."

"Let me relieve it some more, Miss Sanderson. Here's the knife you
lost."

She glanced up carelessly at the pearl-handled knife he pushed through
the window. "I didn't know it was lost."

"Well, now you know it's found. When do you remember seeing it last,
ma'am?"

"I lent it to a friend two days ago."

"Oh, to a friend--two days ago."

His eyes were on her so steadily that the girl was aware of some
significance he gave to the fact, some hidden meaning that escaped her.

"What friend did you say, Miss Sanderson?"

He asked it casually, but his question irritated her.

"I didn't say, sir."

"That's so. You didn't."

"Where did you get it?" she demanded.

He grinned. "I'll tell you that if you'll tell me who you lent it to."

Her curt answer reminded him that he was in her eyes a convicted
criminal. "It's of no importance, sir."

"That's what you think, Miss Sanderson."

She sorted the newspapers in the bundle, and began to slip them into the
private boxes where they belonged. Presently, however, her curiosity
demanded satisfaction. Without looking at him, she volunteered
information.

"But there's no mystery about it. Phil borrowed the knife to fix a
stirrup leather, and forgot to give it back to me."

"Your brother?"

"Yes."

He was taken aback. There was nothing for it but a white lie. "I found
it near Yeager's mine yesterday. I reckon he must have dropped it on his
way there."

"I don't see anything very mysterious about that," she said frostily.

She looked so definitely unaware of him as she worked that he fell back
from the window and passed out to the porch. He had found out more than
he wanted to know.

Jim Yeager's drawling voice came to him, gentle and low as usual, but
with an edge to it. "I been discoverin' I'm some unpopular to-day,
Brill. Malpais has been expressin' its opinion right plain. You've
arrived in time to chirp in with a 'Me, too.'"

Healy had evidently just ridden up, for he was still in the saddle. He
relaxed into one of the easy attitudes used by men of the plains to rest
themselves without dismounting.

"You know my sentiments, Jim," he replied, not unamiably.

"Sure I know them. Plumb dissatisfied with me, ain't you? Makes me feel
awful bad." Jim was sailing into the full tide of his sarcasm when
Keller touched him on the shoulder.

"I'd like to see you for a moment, Mr. Yeager, if you can give me the
time," he said.

Healy took in the nester with an eye of jade. "Your twin brother wants
you, Jim. Run along with him. Don't mind us."

"I won't, Brill."

The young man rose, and sauntered off with the Bear Creek settler. At
the corral fence, some fifty yards from the house, he stopped under the
shade of a live oak, and put his arms on the top rail. He had allowed
himself to show no sign of it, but he resented this claim upon him that
seemed to ally him further with the enemy.

"Here I am, Mr. Keller. What can I do for you?"

"You're a friend of Miss Sanderson. You would stand between her and
trouble?" the other demanded abruptly.

"I expect."

"Then find out for me what Phil Sanderson did with the knife his sister
lent him two days ago. Find out whether he lent it to anybody, and, if
so, who."

"What for?"

It had come to a show-down, and the other tabled his cards.

"I found that knife yesterday mo'ning. It was lying beside the dead cow
in the park where your friends happened on me. I reckon the rustlers
must have heard me coming and drove the calf away just before I arrived.
In his hurry one of them forgot that knife. If you'll tell me the man
who had it in his pocket yesterday when he left-home, I'll tell you who
one of the Malpais rustlers is."

Jim considered this, his gaze upon the far-away range. When he brought
it back to Keller, he was smiling incredulously.

"I hear you say so, seh. But what a man with, a halter round his neck
says don't go far before a court."

"I expected you to say about that."

"Then I haven't disappointed you." He continued presently, with cold
hostility: "That story you cooked up is about the only one you could
spring. What surprises me is that a man with as good a head as yours
took twenty-four hours to figure out your explanation. I want to tell
you, too, that it don't make any hit with me that you're trying to throw
the blame on a boy I've known all my life."

"Who happens to be a brother of Miss Sanderson," Keller let himself
suggest.

Yeager flushed. "That ain't the point."

"The point is that I'm trying to clear this boy, and I want your help."

"Looks to me like you want to clear yourself."

"If I prove to you that I'm not a rustler, will you padlock your tongue
and help me clear young Sanderson?"

"I sure will--if you prove it to my satisfaction."

Keller drew from his pocket the two letters he had just received. "Read
these."

When he had read, Yeager handed them back, and offered his hand. "That
clears you, seh. Truth is, I never was satisfied you was a rustler. My
mind was satisfied; but, durn it, you didn't _look_ like a waddy. It's
lucky I hadn't spoke to the boys yet."

"I want to keep this quiet," the Bear Creek settler explained.

"Sure. I'm a clam, and at your service, seh."

"Then find out the truth about the knife."

Yeager's eye chiselled into that of Keller. "Mind, I ain't going to help
you bring trouble to Phyllie, and I ain't going to stand by and see it,
either."

The other smiled. "I don't ask it of you. What I want is to clear the
boy."

"Good enough," agreed Yeager, and led the way back.

Before they had yet reached the house, a figure dropped from the foliage
of the live oak under which they had been standing, and rolled like a
ball from the fence into the deep dust of the corral. It picked itself
up in a gray cloud, from which shone as a nucleus a black face with
beady eyes and flashing-white teeth. Swiftly it scampered across the
paddock, disappeared into the rear of the stable, and reappeared at the
front door.

"Here you, 'Rastus, where you been?" demanded the wrangler. "Didn't I
tell you to clean Miss Phyl's trap? I've wore my lungs out hollering for
you. Now, you git to work, or I'll wear you to a frazzle."

'Rastus, general alias for his baptismal name of George Washington
Abraham Lincoln Randolph, grinned and ducked, shot out of the stable
like a streak of light, and appeared ten seconds later in the kitchen
presided over by his rotund mother, Becky.

His abrupt entrance disturbed the maternal after-dinner nap. From the
rocking-chair where she sat Becky rolled affronted eyes at him.

"What you doin' here, Gawge Washington? Ain't I done tole you sebenty
times seben to keep outa my kitchen at dis time o' day?"

"I wanter see Miss Phyl."

"Then I low you kin take it out in wantin'. Think she got time to fool
away on a nigger sprout like you-all? Light a shuck back to the stable,
where you belong."

'Rastus grinned amiably, flung himself at a door, and vanished into that
part of the house which was forbidden territory to him, the while Becky
stared after him in amazement.

"What in tarnation got in dat nigger child?" she gasped.

Phyllis, having arranged the mail and delivered most of it, had left the
store in charge of the clerk and retired to her private den, a cool room
finished in restful tints at the northeast corner of the house. She was
sitting by a window reading a magazine, when there came a knock. Her
"Come in" disclosed 'Rastus and the whites of his rolling eyes.

She nodded and smiled. "What can I do for you, George Washington Abraham
Lincoln Randolph?"

"I done come to tell you somepin I heerd whilst I was asleep in de live
oak at the corral."

"Something you dreamed. It is very good of you, George Wash----"

"Now, don't you call me all dat again, Miss Phyl. And I didn't dream it
nerrer. I woke up and heerd it. Mr. Jim Yeager and dat nester they call
Keller wuz a-talkin', and Mr. Jim he allowed dat Keller wuz a rustler,
and den Keller he allowed dat Mr. Phil wuz de rustler."

"What!" The girl had sprung to her feet, amazed, her dark eyes blazing
indignation.

"Tha's what he said. He went on to tell how he done found a knife by the
dead cow, an' 'twuz yore knife, an' you done loan it to Mr. Phil."

"He said that!" She was a creature transformed by passion. The hot blood
of Southern ancestors raced through her veins clamorously. She wanted to
strike down this man, to annihilate him and the cowardly lie he had
given to shield himself. And pat to her need came the very person she
could best use for her instrument.

Healy stood surprised in the doorway, confronted by the slender young
amazon. The storm of passion in the eyes, the underlying flush in the
dusky cheeks, indicated a new mood in his experience of this young
woman of many moods.

"Come in and shut the door," she ordered. Then, "Tell him, 'Rastus."

The boy, all smiles gone now, repeated his story, and was excused.

"What do you think of that, Brill?" the girl demanded, after the door
had closed on him.

The stockman's eyes had grown hard. "I think Keller's covering his own
tracks. Of course we've got no direct proof, but----"

"We have," she broke in.

"I can't see it. According to Jim Yeager----"

"Jim lied. I asked him to."

"You--what?"

"I asked him to say that this man had come there to work for him. Jim
was not to blame."

"But--why?"

She threw out a gesture of self-contempt. "Why did I do it? I don't
know. Because he was wounded, I suppose."

"Wounded! Then I did hit him?"

"Yes. In the arm--a flesh wound. I met him riding through the mesquite.
After I had tied up his wound, I took him to Jim's."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "So you tied up his wound?"

"Yes," she answered defiantly, her head up.

"That tender heart of yours," he murmured, with almost a sneer.

"Yes. I'm a fool."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well."

"And he pays me back by trying to throw it on Phil. Hunt him down,
Brill. Bring him to me. I'll tell all I know against him," she cried
vindictively.

"I'll get him, Phyl," he promised, and the sound of his laughter was not
pleasant. "I'll get him for you, or find out why."

"Think of him trying to put it on Phil, and after I stood by him and
kept his secret. Isn't that the worst ever?" the girl flamed.

"He rode away not five minutes ago as big as coffee on that ugly roan of
his with the white stockings; knew what we thought about him, but didn't
pay any more attention to us than as if we were bumps on a log."

Healy strode out to the porch, told his story, and within five minutes
had organized his posse and appointed a rendezvous for two hours later
at Seven Mile.

At the appointed time his men were on hand, six of them, armed with
rifles and revolvers, ready for grim business.

From her window Phyllis saw them ride away, and persuaded herself that
she was glad. Vengeance was about to fall upon this insolent freebooter
who had not even manhood enough to appreciate a kindness. But as the
hours passed she was beset by a consuming anxiety. What more likely
than that he would resist! If so, there could be only one end. She
could not keep her thoughts from those seven men whom she had sent
against the one.

There was nobody to whom she could talk about it, for Phil and her
father were away at Noches. Restless as a caged panther, she twice had
her horse brought to the door, and rode into the hills to meet her
posse. But she could not be sure which way they would come, and after
venturing a short distance she would return for fear they might arrive
in her absence. Night had fallen over the country, and the stars were
out long before she got back the second time. Nine--ten--eleven o'clock
struck, and still no sign of those for whom she waited.

At last they came, their prisoner riding in the midst, bareheaded and
with his hands tied.

"I've got him, Phyl!" Healy cried in a voice that told the girl he was
riding on a wave of triumph.

"I see you have."

Nevertheless she looked not at the victor, but at the vanquished, and
never had she seen a man who looked more master of his fate than this
one. He was smiling down at her whimsically, and she saw they had not
taken him without a struggle. The marks of it were on them and on him.
Healy's cheek bone was laid open in a nasty cut, and Slim had a
handkerchief tied round his head.

As for Keller, his shirt was in ribbons and dyed with the stains of
blood from the wound that had broken out again in the battle. The hair
on the left side of his head was clotted with dried blood, and his
cheeks were covered with it. Both eyes were blacked, and hands and face
were scratched badly. But his mien was as jaunty, his smile as gallant,
as if he had come at the head of a conquering army.

"Good evenin', Miss Sanderson," he bowed ironically.

She looked at him, and turned away without answering. She heard Healy
curse softly and knew why. This man contrived somehow to rob him of his
triumph.

"You are none of you hurt, Brill?" the girl asked in a low voice.

"No. He fought like a wild cat, but we took him by surprise. He had only
his bare fists."

"How about him? Is he hurt?"

"I don't know--or care," the man answered sullenly.

"But he must be looked to."

"I don't know why. It ain't my fault we had to beat him up."

"I didn't say it _was_ your fault, Brill," she answered gently. "But any
one can see he has lost a lot of blood, and his wounds are full of dust.
They must be washed. I want him brought into the house. Aunt Becky and I
will look after him."

"No need of that. Slim will fix him up."

She shook her head. "No, Brill."

His eyes gave way first, but his surrender came with a bad grace.

"All right, Phyl. But he's going to be covered by a gun all the time.
I'm not taking chances on him."

"Then have him taken into my den. I'll wake Aunt Becky and we'll be
there in a few minutes."

When Phyllis arrived with Aunt Becky she found the nester sitting on the
lounge, Healy opposite him with a revolver close to his hand. The
prisoner's arms had been freed. His sardonic smile still twitched at the
corners of his mouth.

"You've ce'tainly begun your practice on a disreputable patient, Doctor
Sanderson. I haven't had time to comb my hair since that little seance
with your friends. We sure did have a sociable time. They're all good
mixers." He looked into the long glass opposite, laughed at sight of his
swollen face, then rattled into a misquotation of some verses he
remembered:

"There's many a black black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine;
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May."

"Put the water and things down on that table, Becky," her mistress told
her, ignoring the man's blithe folly.

"I'm giving you lots of chances to do the Good Samaritan act," he
continued. "Honest, I hate to be so much trouble. You'll have to blame
Mr. Healy. He's the responsible party for these little accidents of
mine."

"I'm going to be responsible for one more," the stockman told him
darkly.

"I understand your intentions are good, but I've noticed that sometimes
expectation outruns performance," his prisoner came back promptly.

"Not this time, I think."

Phyllis understood that Brill was threatening the nester and that the
latter was defying him lightly, but what either meant precisely she did
not know. She proceeded to business without a word except the necessary
directions to Becky. Not until the arm was dressed and the wound on the
head washed and bandaged did she address Keller.

"I'll send you a powder that will help you get to sleep. The doctor left
it here for Phil, and he did not need it," she said.

"Mebbe I won't need it, either." Keller laughed hardily, at his enemy it
seemed to the girl, and with some hint of a sinister understanding
between them from which she was excluded. "Thanks just the same, for
that and for everything else you've done for me."

Phyllis said "Good night" stiffly, and followed the old negress out. She
went directly to her bedroom, but not to sleep. The night was hot, and
it had been to her a day full of excitement. She had much to think of.
Going to the open window, she sat down in a low chair with her arms
across the sill.

Two men met beneath her window.

"Gimme the makings, Slim," one said to the other.

While he was shaking the tobacco from the pouch to the paper, Slim
spoke. "The boys ought all to be here in another hour, Budd. After that,
it won't take us long."

"Not long," the fat man answered uneasily.

There was a silence. Slim broke it. "We got to do it, o' course."

"Looks like. Got to make an example. No peace on the range till we do."

"I hate like sin to, Budd. He's so damn game."

"Me, too. But we got to. No two ways about it."

"I reckon. Brill says so. But I wish the cuss had a chanct to fight for
his life."

They moved off together in troubled silence, Budd's cigarette glowing
red in the darkness. Behind them they left a girl shocked and rigid.
They were going to lynch him! She knew it as certainly as if she had
been told it in set words. Her blood grew cold, and she shivered. While
the confused horror of it raced through her brain, she noticed
subconsciously that her fingers on the sill were trembling violently.

What could she do? She was only a girl. These men deferred to her in
the trivial pleasantries, but she knew they would go their grim way no
matter how she pleaded. And it would be her fault. She had betrayed the
rustler to them. It would be the same as if she had murdered him. He had
known while she was tending his wounds that she had delivered him to
death, and he had not even reproached her.

Courage flowed back to her heart. She would save him if it were
possible. It must be by strategy if at all. But how? For of course he
was guarded.

She stepped out into the corridor. All was dark there. She tiptoed along
it to the guest room, and found the door unlocked. Nobody was inside.
She canvassed in her mind the possibilities. They might have him
outdoors or in the men's bunk house with them under a guard, or they
might have locked him up somewhere until the arrival of the others. If
the latter, it must be in the store, since that was the only safe place
under lock and key.

Phyllis slipped out of the back door into the darkness, and skirted the
house at a distance. There were lights in the bunk house of the ranch
riders, and through the window she could see a group gathered. Creeping
close to the window, she looked in. Their prisoner was not with them. In
front of the store two men were seated in the darkness. She was almost
upon them before she saw them. Each of them carried a rifle.

"Hello! Who's that?" one of them cried sharply.

It was Tom Dixon.

Phyllis came forward and spoke. "That you, Tom? I suppose you are
guarding the prisoner."

"Yep. Can't you sleep, Phyl?" He walked a dozen yards with her.

"I couldn't, but I see you're keeping watch, all right. I probably can
now. I suppose I was nervous."

"No wonder. But you may sleep, all right. He won't trouble you any. I'll
guarantee that," he promised largely. "Oh, Phyl!"

She had turned to go, but she stopped at his call. "Well?"

"Don't you be mad at me. I was only fooling the other day. Course I
hadn't ought to have got gay. But a fellow makes a break once in a
while."

Under the stress of her deeper anxiety she had forgotten all about her
tiff with him. It had seemed important at the time, but since then Tom
and his affairs had been relegated to second place in her mind. He was
only a boy, full of the vanity that was a part of him. Somehow, her
anger against him was all burnt out.

"If you never will again, Tom," she conceded.

"I'll be good," he smiled, meaning that he would be good as long as he
must.

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