Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

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He waited tentatively for an answer, but none came other than the
white-toothed smile that met him blandly.

"I reckon you know more than you aim to tell, Mr. Keller," continued
Pesky. "Don't you figure it's up to you, if we let you out of this
thing, to whack up any information you've got? The kind of reptile that
kills from ambush don't deserve any consideration."

Half an hour ago, the other would have agreed with him. The man that
shot his enemy from cover was a coyote--nothing less. But about that
brown slip of a creature, who had for three minutes crossed his orbit,
he wanted to reserve judgment.

"I expect I haven't got a thing to tell you that would help any," he
drawled, his eye full on that of the cowpuncher.

Pesky threw away his cigarette. "All right. You're the doctor. I'll
amble back, and report to the boss."

He did so, with the result that a truce was arranged.

Keller gave up his post of vantage, and came forward to surrender.

Weaver met him with a hard, wintry eye. "Understand, I don't concede
your innocence. You're my prisoner, and, by God, if I get any more proof
of your guilt, you've got to stand the gaff."

The other nodded quietly, meeting him eye to eye. Nor did his gaze fall,
though the big cattleman was the most masterful man on the range. Keller
was as easy and unperturbed as when he had been holding half a dozen
irate men at bay.

"No kick coming here. But, if it's just the same to you, I'll ask you to
get the proof first and hang me afterward."

"If you're homesteading, where's your place?"

"Back in the hills, close to the headwaters of Salt Creek."

"Huh! You'll make that good before I get through with you. And I want
to tell you this, too, Mr. Keller. It doesn't make any hit with me that
you're one of those thieving nesters. Moreover, there's another charge
against you. In the Malpais country we hang rustlers. The boys claim to
have you cinched. We'll see."

"Who's that with Curly?" Pesky called out. "By Moses, it's a woman!"

"It is the Sanderson girl," Weaver said in surprise.

Keller swung round as if worked by a spring. The cow-puncher had told
the truth. Curly's companion was not only a woman, but _the_ woman--the
same slim, tanned creature who had flashed past him on a wild race for
safety, only a few minutes earlier.

All eyes were focused upon her. Weaver waited for her to speak. Instead,
Curly took up the word. He was smiling broadly, quite unaware of the
mine he was firing.

"I found this young lady up on the rock rim. Since we were rounding up,
I thought I'd bring her down."

"Good enough. Miss Sanderson, you've been where you could see if anyone
passed into the canon. How about it? Anybody go up in last ten minutes?"

Phyllis moistened her dry lips and looked at the prisoner. "No," she
answered reluctantly.

Weaver wheeled on Keller, his eyes hard as jade. "That ties the rope
round your neck, my man."

"No," Phyllis cried. "He didn't do it."

The cattleman's stone wall eyes were on her now.

"Didn't? How do you know he didn't?"

"Because I--I passed him here as I rode up a few minutes ago."

"So you rode up a few minutes ago." Buck's lids narrowed. "And he was
here, was he? Ever meet Mr. Keller before?"

"Yes."

"When? Speak up. Mind, no lying."

This, struck the first spark of spirit from her. The deep eyes flashed.
"I'm not in the habit of lying, sir."

"Then answer my question."

"I've met him at the office when he came for his mail. And the boys
arrested him by mistake for a rustler. I saw him when they brought him
in."

"By mistake. How do you know it was by mistake?"

"It was I accused him. But I did it because I was angry at him."

"You accused an innocent man of rustling because you were sore at him.
You're ce'tainly a pleasant young lady, Miss Sanderson."

Her look flashed defiance at him, but she said nothing. In her slim
erectness was a touch of feminine ferocity that gave him another idea.

"So you just rode into the canon, did you?"

"Yes."

"Meet up with anybody in the valley before you came in?"

"No."

His eyes were like steel drills. They never left her. "Quite sure?"

"Yes."

"What were you doing there?"

She had no answer ready. Her wild look went round in search of a friend
in this circle of enemies. They found him in the man who was a prisoner.
His steadfast eyes told her to have no fear.

"Did you hear what I said?" demanded Weaver.

"I was--riding."

"Alone?"

The answer came so slowly that it was barely audible. "Yes."

"Riding in Antelope Valley?"

"Yes."

"Let me see that gun." Weaver held out his hand for the rifle.

Phyllis looked at him and tried to fight against his domination; then
slowly she handed him the rifle. He broke and examined it. From the
chamber he extracted an empty shell.

Grim as a hanging judge, his look chiselled into her.

"I expect the lead that was in here is in my arm. Isn't that right?"

"I--I don't know."

"Who does, then? Either you shot me or you know who did."

Her gaze evaded his, but was forced at last to the meeting.

"I did it."

She was looking at him steadily now. Since the thing must be faced, she
had braced herself to it. It was amazing what defiant pluck shone out of
her soft eyes. This man of iron saw it, and, seeing, admired hugely the
gameness that dwelt in her slim body. But none of his admiration showed
in the hard, weather-beaten face.

"So they make bushwhackers out of even the girls among your rustling,
sheep-herding outfit!" he taunted.

"My people are not rustlers. They have a right to be on earth, even if
you don't want them there."

"I'll show them what rights they have got in this part of the country
before I get through with them. But that ain't the point now. What I
want to know is how they came to send a girl to do their dirty killing
for them."

"They didn't send me. I just saw you, and--and shot on an impulse. Your
men have clubbed and poisoned our sheep. They wounded one of our
herders, and beat his brother when they caught him unarmed. They have
done a hundred mean and brutal things. You are at the bottom of it all;
and when I saw you riding there, looking like the lord of all the earth,
I just----"

"Well?"

"Couldn't help--what I did."

"You're a nicely brought up young woman--about as savage as the rest of
your wolf breed," jeered Weaver.

Yet he exulted in her--in the impulse of ferocity that had made her
strike swiftly, regardless of risk to herself, at the man who had
hounded and harried her kin to the feud that was now raging. Her shy,
untamed beauty would not itself have attracted him; but in combination
with her fierce courage it made to him an appeal which he conceded
grudgingly.

"What in Heaven's name brought you back after you had once got away?"
Weaver asked.

The girl looked at Keller without answering.

"I reckon I can tell you that, seh," explained that young man. "She
figured you would jump on me as the guilty party. It got on her
conscience that she had left an innocent man to stand for it. I
shouldn't wonder but she got to seeing a picture of you-all hanging me
or shooting me up. So she came back to own up, if she saw you had caught
me."

Weaver nodded. "That's the way I figure it, too. Gamest thing I ever saw
a woman do," he said in an undertone to Keller, with whom he was now
standing a little apart.

The latter agreed. "Never saw the beat of it. She's scared stiff, too.
Makes it all the pluckier. What will you do with her?"

"Take her along with me back to the ranch."

"I wouldn't do that," said the young man quickly.

"Wouldn't you?" Weaver's hard gaze went over him haughtily. "When I want
your advice, I'll ask you for it, young man. You're in luck to get off
scot-free yourself. That ought to content you for one day."

"But what are you going to do with her? Surely not have her imprisoned
for attacking you?"

"I'll do as I dashed please, and don't you forget it, Mr. Keller. Better
mind your own business, if you've got any."

With which Buck Weaver turned on his heel, and swung slowly to the
saddle. His arm was paining him a great deal, but he gave no sign of it.
He expected his men to game it out when they ran into bad luck, and he
was stoic enough to set them an example without making any complaints.

The little group of riders turned down the trail, passed through the
gateway that led to the valley below, and wound down among the
cow-backed hills toward the ranch roofs, which gleamed in the distance.
They were the houses of the Twin Star outfit, the big concern owned by
Buck Weaver, whose cattle fed literally upon a thousand hills.

It suited Buck's ironic humor to ride beside the girl who had just
attempted his life. He bore her no resentment. Had the offender been a
man, Buck would have snuffed out his life with as little remorse as he
would a guttering candle. But her sex and her youth, and some quality of
charm in her, had altered the equation. He meant to show her who was
master, but he would choose a different method.

What sport to tame the spirit of this wild desert beauty until she
should come like one of her own sheep dogs at his beck and call! He had
never yet met the woman he could not dominate. This one, too, would know
a good many new emotions before she rejoined her tribe in the hills.

He swung from the saddle at the ranch plaza, and greeted her with a deep
bow that mocked her.

"Welcome, Miss Sanderson, to the best the Twin Star outfit has to offer.
I hope you will enjoy your visit, which is going to be a long one."

To a Mexican woman, who had come out to the porch in answer to his call,
he delivered the girl, charging her duty in two quick sentences of
Spanish. The woman nodded her understanding, and led Phyllis inside.

Weaver noticed with delight that his captive's eye met his steadily,
with the defiant fierceness of some hunted wild thing. Here was a woman
worth taming, even though she was still a girl in years. His exultant
eye, returning from the last glimpse of the lissom figure as it
disappeared, met the gaze of Keller. That young man was watching him
with an odd look of challenge on his usually impassive face.

The cattleman felt the spur of a new antagonism stirring his blood.
There was something almost like a sneer on his lips as he spoke:

"Sorry to lose your company, Mr. Keller. But if you're homesteading, of
course, we'll have to let you go back to the hills right away. Couldn't
think of keeping you from that spring plowing that's waiting to be
done."

"You're putting up a different line of talk from what you did. How about
that charge of rustling against me, Mr. Weaver? Don't you want to hold
me while you investigate it?"

"No, I reckon not. Your lady friend gives you a clean bill of health.
She may or may not be lying. I'm not so sure myself. But without her the
case against you falls."

Keller knew himself dismissed cavalierly, and, much as he would have
liked to stay, he could find no further excuse to urge. He could hardly
invite himself to be either the guest or the prisoner of a man who did
not want him.

"Just as you say," he nodded, and turned carelessly to his pony.

Yet he was quite sure it would not be as Weaver said if he could help
it. He meant to take a hand in the game, no matter what the other might
decree. But for the present he acquiesced in the inevitable. Weaver was
technically within his rights in holding her until he had communicated
with the sheriff. A generous foe might not have stood out for his pound
of flesh, but Buck was as hard as nails. As for the reputation of the
girl, it was safe at the Twin Star ranch. Buck's sister, a maiden lady
of uncertain years, was on hand to play chaperone.

Larrabie swung to the saddle. His horse's hoofs were presently flinging
dirt toward the Twin Star as he loped up to the hills.

CHAPTER VIII

MISS-GOING-ON-EIGHTEEN

Time had been when the range was large enough for all, when every man's
cattle might graze at will from horizon to horizon. But with the push of
settlement to the frontier had come a change. The feeding ground became
overstocked. One outfit elbowed another, and lines began to be drawn
between the runs of different owners. Water holes were seized and
fenced, with or without due process of law.

With the establishment of forest reserves a new policy dominated the
government. Sanderson had been one of the first to avail himself of it
by leasing the public demesne for his stock. Later, learning that the
mountain parks were to be thrown open as a pasturage for sheep, he had
bought three thousand and driven them up, having first arranged terms
with the forestry service.

Buck Weaver, fighting the government reserve policy with all his might,
resented fiercely the attitude of Sanderson. A sharp, bitter quarrel had
resulted, and had left a smoldering bad feeling that flamed at times
into open warfare. Upon the wholesome Malpais country had fallen the
bitterness of a sheep and cattle feud.

The riders of the Twin Star outfit had thrice raided the Sanderson
flocks. Lambing sheep had been run cruelly. One herd had been clubbed
over a precipice, another decimated with poison. In return, the herders
shot and hamstrung Twin Star cows. A herder was held up and beaten by
cowboys. Next week a vaquero galloped home to the Twin Star ranch with a
bullet through his leg. This was the situation at the time when the
owner of the big ranch brought Phyllis a prisoner to its hospitality.

Nothing could have been more pat to his liking. He was, in large
measure, the force behind the law in San Miguel county. The sheriff whom
he had elected to office would be conveniently deaf to any illegality
there might be in his holding the girl, would if necessary give him an
order to hold her there until further notice. The attempt to assassinate
him would serve as excuse enough for a proceeding even more highhanded
than this. Her relatives could scarce appeal to the law, since the law
would then step in and send her to the penitentiary. He could use her
position as a hostage to force her stiff-necked father to come to terms.

But it was characteristic of the man that his reason for keeping her
was, after all, less the advantage he might gain by it than the pleasure
he found in tormenting her and her family. To this instinct of the
jungle beast was added the interest she had inspired in him. Untaught of
life she was, no doubt, a child of the desert, in some ways primitive as
Eve; but he perceived in her the capacity for deep feeling, for passion,
for that kind of fierce, dauntless endurance it is given some women to
possess.

Miss Weaver took charge of the comfort of her guest. Her manner showed
severe disapproval of this girl so lost to the feelings of her sex as to
have attempted murder. That she was young and pretty made matters worse.
Alice Weaver always had worshipped her brother, by the law of opposites
perhaps. She was as drab and respectable as Boston. All her tastes ran
to humdrum monotony. But turbulent, lawless Buck, the brother whom she
had brought up after the death of their mother, held her heart in the
hollow of his hard, careless hand.

"Have you had everything you wish?" she would ask Phyllis in a frigid
voice.

"I want to be taken home."

"You should have thought of that before you did the dreadful thing you
did."

"You are holding me here a prisoner, then?"

"An involuntary guest, my brother puts it. Until the sheriff can make
other arrangements."

"You have no right to do it without notifying my father. He is at Noches
with my brother."

"Mr. Weaver will do as he thinks best about that." The spinster shut
her lips tight and walked from the room.

Supper was brought to Phyllis by the Mexican woman. In spite of her
indignation she ate and slept well. Nor did her appetite appear impaired
next morning, when she breakfasted in her bedroom. Noon found her
promoted to the family dining room. Weaver carried his arm in a sling,
but made no reference to the fact. He attempted conversation, but
Phyllis withdrew into herself and had nothing more friendly than a plain
"No" or "Yes" for him. His sister was presently called away to arrange
some household difficulty. At once Phyllis attacked the big man lounging
in his chair at his ease.

"I want to go home. I've got to be at the schoolhouse to-morrow
morning," she announced.

"It won't hurt you any to miss a few days' schooling, my dear. You'll
learn more here than you will there, anyhow," he assured her pleasantly.
Buck was cracking two walnuts in the palm of his hand and let his lazy
smile drift her way only casually.

She stamped her foot. "I tell you I'm the teacher. It is necessary I
should be there."

"You a schoolmarm!" he repeated, in surprise. "How old are you?"

Her dress was scarcely below her shoe tops. She still had the slimness
of immature girlhood, the adorable shy daring of some uncaptured wood
nymph.

"Does that matter to you, sir?"

"How old?" he reiterated.

"Going-on-eighteen," she answered--not because she wanted to, but
because somehow she must. There was something compelling about this
man's will. She would have resisted it had she not wanted to gain her
point about going home.

"So you teach the kids their A B C's, do you? And you just out of them
yourself! How many scholars have you?"

"Fourteen."

"And they all love teacher, of course. Would you take me for a scholar,
Miss Going-On-Eighteen?"

"No!" she flamed.

"You'd find me right teachable. And I would promise to love you, too."

Color came and went in her face beneath the brow. How dared he mock her
so! It humiliated and embarrassed and angered her.

"Are you going to let me go back to my school?" she demanded.

"I reckon your school will have to get along without you for a few days.
Your fourteen scholars will keep right on loving you, I expect. 'To
memory dear, though far from eye.' Or, if you like, I'll send my boys up
into the hills, and round up the whole fourteen here for you. Then
school can keep right here in the house. How about that? Ain't that a
good notion, Miss Going-On-Eighteen?"

She could stand his ironic mockery no longer. She faced him, fearless as
a tiger: "You villain!"

With that, turning on her heel, she passed swiftly into her little
bedroom, and slammed the door. He heard the key turn in the lock.

"She's sure got some devil in her," he laughed appreciatively, and he
cracked another walnut.

Already he had struck the steel of her quality. She would be his
prisoner because she must, but the "no compromise" flag was nailed to
her masthead.

"I wonder why you are so fond of me?" he mused aloud next day when he
found her as unresponsive to his advances as a block of wood.

He was lying in the sand at her feet, his splendid body relaxed full
length at supple ease. Leaning on an elbow, he had been watching her for
some time.

Her gaze was on the distant line of hills; on her face that far-away
expression which told him that he was not on the map for her. Used as he
was to impressing himself upon the imagination of women, this stung his
vanity sharply. He liked better the times when her passion flamed out at
him.

Now he lost his sardonic mockery in a flash of anger.

"Do you hear me? I asked you a question."

She brought her head round until her eyes rested upon him.

"Will you ask it again, please? I wasn't listening."

"I want to know what makes you hate me so," he demanded roughly.

"Do I hate you?"

He laughed irritably. "What else do you call it? You won't hardly eat at
the same table with me. Last night you wouldn't come down to supper.
Same way this morning. If I sit down near you, soon you find an excuse
to leave. When I speak, you don't answer."

"You are my jailer, not my friend."

"I might be both."

"No, thank you!"

She said it with such quick, instinctive certainty that he ground his
teeth in resentment. He was the kind of man that always wanted what he
could not get. He began to covet this girl mightily, even while he told
himself that he was a fool for his pains. What was she but an untaught,
country schoolgirl? It would be a strange irony of fate if Buck Weaver
should fall in love with a sheepman's daughter.

"Many people would go far to get my friendship," he told her.

Quietly she looked at him. "The friends of my people are my friends.
Their enemies are mine."

"Yet you said you didn't hate me."

"I thought I did, but I find I don't."

"Not worth hating, I suppose?"

She neither corrected nor rejected his explanation.

He touched his wounded arm as he went on: "If you don't hate me, why
this compliment to me? I reckon good, genuine hate sent that bullet."

The girl colored, but after a moment's hesitation answered:

"Once I shot a coyote when I saw it making ready to pounce on one of our
lambs. I did not hate that coyote."

"Thank you," he told her ironically.

Her gaze went back to the mountains. She had always had a capacity for
silence. But it was as extraordinary to her as to him how, in the past
few days, she had sloughed the shy timidity of a mountain girl and found
the enduring courage of womanhood. Her wits, too, had taken on the edge
of maturity. He found that her tongue could strike swiftly and sharply.
She was learning to defend herself in all the ways women have acquired
by inheritance.

Weaver's jaw set like a vise. Getting to his feet, he looked down at her
with the hard, relentless eyes that had made his name a terror.

"Good enough, Miss Phyllis Sanderson. You've chosen your way. I'll
choose mine. You've got to learn that I'm master here; and, by God, I'll
teach it to you. Before I get through with you, young woman, you'll
come running when I snap my fingers. From to-day things will be
different. You'll eat your meals with us and not in your room. You'll
speak when you're spoken to. Set yourself up against me, and I'll bring
you to your knees fast enough. There's no law on the Twin Star Ranch but
Buck Weaver's will."

He strode away, almost herculean in figure, and every inch of him
forceful. She had never seen such a man, one so virile and, at the same
time, so wilful and so masterful. Before he was out of her sight, she
got an instance of his recklessness.

A Mexican vaquero was driving some horses into a corral. His master
strode up to him, and dragged him from the saddle.

"Didn't I tell you to take the colts down to the long pasture?"

"_Si, senor,_" answered the trembling native.

Weaver's great fist rose and fell once. The Mexican sank limply down.
Without another glance at him, the cattleman flung him aside, and strode
to the house.

As the owner of the Twin Star had said, so it was. Thereafter Phyllis
sat at the table with him and his sister, while Josephine, the Mexican
woman, waited upon them. The girl came and went at his bidding. But she
held herself with such a quiet aloofness that his victory was a barren
one.

"Do you want to go home?" he taunted her one morning, while at
breakfast.

"Is it likely I would want to stay here?" she retorted.

"Why not? What have you to complain of? Aren't you treated well?"

"Yes."

"What, then? Are you afraid?"

"No!" she answered, with a flash of her fine eyes.

"That's good, because you've got to stay here--or go to the pen. You may
take your choice."

"You're very generous. I suppose you don't expect to keep me here
always," she said scornfully.

"Until my arm gets well. Since you wounded it you ought to nurse it."

"Which I am not doing, even while I am here."

"Anyhow it soothes the temper of the invalid to have you around." He
grinned satirically.

"So I judge, from the effects."

"Meaning that I'm always in a rage when I leave you?"

"I notice your men are marked up a good deal these days."

"I'll tell them to thank you for it," he flung back.

Two days later, he scored on her hard for the first time. She came down
to breakfast just as two of the Twin Star riders brought a boy into the
hall.

She flew instantly into his arms, thereby embarrassing him vastly.

"Phil! How did you come here?"

Her brother nodded toward Curly and Pesky. "They found me outside and
got the drop on me."

"You were here looking for me?"

"Yes. Just got back from Noches. Dad is still there. He don't know."

"But--what are they going to do with you?"

"What would you suggest, Miss Phyllis?" a voice behind her gibed.

The speaker was Weaver. He filled the doorway of the dining room
triumphantly. She had had no fears for herself; he would see if she had
none for her brother.

The boy whirled on the ranchman like a tiger whelp. "I don't care what
you do. Go ahead and do your worst."

Weaver looked him over negligently, much as he might watch a struggling
calf. To him the boy was not an enemy--merely a tool which he could use
for his own ends. Phyllis, watching anxiously the hard, expressionless
face, felt that it was cruel as fate. She knew that somehow she would be
made to suffer through her love for her brother.

"You daren't touch him. He's done nothing," she cried.

"He shot at one of my riders. I can't have dangerous characters around.
I'm a peaceable man, me," grinned Buck.

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