[Illustration]




Wyoming
a Story of the Outdoor West

By William MacLeod Raine




CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I. A DESERT MEETING
 CHAPTER II. THE KING OF THE BIG HORN COUNTRY
 CHAPTER III. AN INVITATION GIVEN AND ACCEPTED
 CHAPTER IV. AT THE LAZY D RANCH
 CHAPTER V. THE DANCE AT FRASER’S
 CHAPTER VI. A PARTY CALL
 CHAPTER VII. THE MAN FROM THE SHOSHONE FASTNESSES
 CHAPTER VIII. IN THE LAZY D HOSPITAL
 CHAPTER IX. MISS DARLING ARRIVES
 CHAPTER X. A SHEPHERD OF THE DESERT
 CHAPTER XI. A RESCUE
 CHAPTER XII. MISTRESS AND MAID
 CHAPTER XIII. THE TWO COUSINS
 CHAPTER XIV. FOR THE WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP
 CHAPTER XV. JUDD MORGAN PASSES
 CHAPTER XVI. HUNTING BIG GAME
 CHAPTER XVII. RUN TO EARTH
 CHAPTER XVIII. PLAYING FOR TIME
 CHAPTER XIX. WEST POINT TO THE RESCUE
 CHAPTER XX. TWO CASES OF DISCIPLINE
 CHAPTER XXI. THE SIGNAL LIGHTS
 CHAPTER XXII. EXIT THE “KING”
 CHAPTER XXIII. JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS’ MEETING




CHAPTER I.
A DESERT MEETING


An automobile shot out from a gash in the hills and slipped swiftly
down to the butte. Here it came to a halt on the white, dusty road,
while its occupant gazed with eager, unsated eyes on the great panorama
that stretched before her. The earth rolled in waves like a mighty sea
to the distant horizon line. From a wonderful blue sky poured down upon
the land a bath of sunbeat. The air was like wine, pure and strong, and
above the desert swam the rare, untempered light of Wyoming. Surely
here was a peace primeval, a silence unbroken since the birth of
creation.

It was all new to her, and wonderfully exhilarating. The infinite roll
of plain, the distant shining mountains, the multitudinous voices of
the desert drowned in a sunlit sea of space—they were all details of
the situation that ministered to a large serenity.

And while she breathed deeply the satisfaction of it, an exploding
rifle echo shattered the stillness. With excited sputtering came the
prompt answer of a fusillade. She was new to the West; but some
instinct stronger than reason told the girl that here was no playful
puncher shooting up the scenery to ventilate his exuberance. Her
imagination conceived something more deadly; a sinister picture of men
pumping lead in a grim, close-lipped silence; a lusty plainsman, with
murder in his heart, crumpling into a lifeless heap, while the thin
smoke-spiral curled from his hot rifle.

So the girl imagined the scene as she ran swiftly forward through the
pines to the edge of the butte bluff whence she might look down upon
the coulée that nestled against it. Nor had she greatly erred, for her
first sweeping glance showed her the thing she had dreaded.

In a semicircle, well back from the foot of the butte, half a dozen men
crouched in the cover of the sage-brush and a scattered group of
cottonwoods. They were perhaps fifty yards apart, and the attention of
all of them was focused on a spot directly beneath her. Even as she
looked, in that first swift moment of apprehension, a spurt of smoke
came from one of the rifles and was flung back from the forked pine at
the bottom of the mesa. She saw him then, kneeling behind his
insufficient shelter, a trapped man making his last stand.

From where she stood the girl distinguished him very clearly, and under
the field-glasses that she turned on him the details leaped to life.
Tall, strong, slender, with the lean, clean build of a greyhound, he
seemed as wary and alert as a panther. The broad, soft hat, the scarlet
handkerchief loosely knotted about his throat, the gray shirt, spurs
and overalls, proclaimed him a stockman, just as his dead horse at the
entrance to the coulée told of an accidental meeting in the desert and
a hurried run for cover.

That he had no chance was quite plain, but no plainer than the cool
vigilance with which he proposed to make them pay. Even in the matter
of defense he was worse off than they were, but he knew how to make the
most of what he had; knew how to avail himself of every inch of
sagebrush that helped to render him indistinct to their eyes.

One of the attackers, eager for a clearer shot, exposed himself a
trifle too far in taking aim. Without any loss of time in sighting,
swift as a lightning-flash, the rifle behind the forked pine spoke.
That the bullet reached its mark she saw with a gasp of dismay. For the
man suddenly huddled down and rolled over on his side.

His comrades appeared to take warning by this example. The men at both
ends of the crescent fell back, and for a minute the girl’s heart
leaped with the hope that they were about to abandon the siege.
Apparently the man in the scarlet kerchief had no such expectation. He
deserted his position behind the pine and ran back, crouching low in
the brush, to another little clump of trees closer to the bluff. The
reason for this was at first not apparent to her, but she understood
presently when the men who had fallen back behind the rolling hillocks
appeared again well in to the edge of the bluff. Only by his timely
retreat had the man saved himself from being outflanked.

It was very plain that the attackers meant to take their time to finish
him in perfect safety. He was surrounded on every side by a cordon of
rifles, except where the bare face of the butte hung down behind him.
To attempt to scale it would have been to expose himself as a mark for
every gun to certain death.

It was now that she heard the man who seemed to be directing the attack
call out to another on his right. She was too far to make out the
words, but their effect was clear to her. He pointed to the brow of the
butte above, and a puncher in white woolen chaps dropped back out of
range and swung to the saddle upon one of the ponies bunched in the
rear. He cantered round in a wide circle and made for the butte. His
purpose was obviously to catch their victim in the unprotected rear,
and fire down upon him from above.

The young woman shouted a warning, but her voice failed to carry. For a
moment she stood with her hands pressed together in despair, then
turned and swiftly scudded to her machine. She sprang in, swept
forward, reached the rim of the mesa, and plunged down. Never before
had she attempted so precarious a descent in such wild haste. The car
fairly leaped into space, and after it struck swayed dizzily as it shot
down. The girl hung on, her face white and set, the pulse in her temple
beating wildly. She could do nothing, as the machine rocked down, but
hope against many chances that instant destruction might be averted.

Utterly beyond her control, the motor-car thundered down, reached the
foot of the butte, and swept over a little hill in its wild flight. She
rushed by a mounted horseman in the thousandth part of a second. She
was still speeding at a tremendous velocity, but a second hill reduced
this somewhat. She had not yet recovered control of the machine, but,
though her eyes instinctively followed the white road that flashed
past, she again had photographed on her brain the scene of the turbid
tragedy in which she was intervening.

At the foot of the butte the road circled and dipped into the coulée.
She braced herself for the shock, but, though the wheels skidded till
her heart was in her throat, the automobile, hanging on the balance of
disaster, swept round in safety.

Her horn screamed an instant warning to the trapped man. She could not
see him, and for an instant her heart sank with the fear that they had
killed him. But she saw then that they were still firing, and she
continued her honking invitation as the car leaped forward into the
zone of spitting bullets.

By this time she was recovering control of the motor, and she dared not
let her attention wander, but out of the corner of her eye she
appreciated the situation. Temporarily, out of sheer amaze at this
apparition from the blue, the guns ceased their sniping. She became
aware that a light curly head, crouched low in the sage-brush, was
moving rapidly to meet her at right angles, and in doing so was
approaching directly the line of fire. She could see him dodging to and
fro as he moved forward, for the rifles were again barking.

She was within two hundred yards of him, still going rapidly, but not
with the same headlong rush as before, when the curly head disappeared
in the sage-brush. It was up again presently, but she could see that
the man came limping, and so uncertainly that twice he pitched forward
to the ground. Incautiously one of his assailants ran forward with a
shout the second time his head went down. Crack! The unerring rifle
rang out, and the impetuous one dropped in his tracks.

As she approached, the young woman slowed without stopping, and as the
car swept past Curly Head flung himself in headlong. He picked himself
up from her feet, crept past her to the seat beyond, and almost
instantly whipped his rifle to his shoulder in prompt defiance of the
fire that was now converged on them.

Yet in a few moments the sound died away, for a voice midway in the
crescent had shouted an amazed discovery:

“By God, it’s a woman!”

The car skimmed forward over the uneven ground toward the end of the
semicircle, and passed within fifty yards of the second man from the
end, the one she had picked out as the leader of the party. He was a
black, swarthy fellow in plain leather chaps and blue shirt. As they
passed he took a long, steady aim.

“Duck!” shouted the man beside her, and dragged her down on the seat so
that his body covered hers.

A puff of wind fanned the girl’s cheek.

“Near thing,” her companion said coolly. He looked back at the swarthy
man and laughed softly. “Some day you’ll mebbe wish you had sent your
pills straighter, Mr. Judd Morgan.”

Yet a few wheel-turns and they had dipped forward out of range among
the great land waves that seemed to stretch before them forever. The
unexpected had happened, and she had achieved a rescue in the face of
the impossible.

“Hurt badly?” the girl inquired briefly, her dark-blue eyes meeting his
as frankly as those of a boy.

“No need for an undertaker. I reckon I’ll survive, ma’am.”

“Where are you hit?”

“I just got a telegram from my ankle saying there was a cargo of lead
arrived there unexpected,” he drawled easily.

“Hurts a good deal, doesn’t it?”

“No more than is needful to keep my memory jogged up. It’s a sort of a
forget-me-not souvenir. For a good boy; compliments of Mr. Jim Henson,”
he explained.

Her dark glance swept him searchingly. She disapproved the assurance of
his manner even while the youth in her applauded his reckless
sufficiency. His gay courage held her unconsenting admiration even
while she resented it. He was a trifle too much at his ease for one who
had just been snatched from dire peril. Yet even in his insouciance
there was something engaging; something almost of distinction.

“What was the trouble?”

Mirth bubbled in his gray eyes. “I gathered, ma’am, that they wanted to
collect my scalp.”

“Do what?” she frowned.

“Bump me off—send me across the divide.”

“Oh, I know that. But why?”

He seemed to reproach himself. “Now how could I be so neglectful? I
clean forgot to ask.”

“That’s ridiculous,” was her sharp verdict.

“Yes, ma’am, plumb ridiculous. My only excuse is that they began
scattering lead so sudden I didn’t have time to ask many ‘Whyfors.’ I
reckon we’ll just have to call it a Wyoming difference of opinion,” he
concluded pleasantly.

“Which means, I suppose, that you are not going to tell me.”

“I got so much else to tell y’u that’s a heap more important,” he
laughed. “Y’u see, I’m enjoyin’ my first automobile ride. It was
certainly thoughtful of y’u to ask me to go riding with y’u, Miss
Messiter.”

“So you know my name. May I ask how?” was her astonished question.

He gave the low laugh that always seemed to suggest a private source of
amusement of his own. “I suspicioned that might be your name when I say
y’u come a-sailin’ down from heaven to gather me up like Enoch.”

“Why?”

“Well, ma’am, I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days
ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train
sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that
car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom
in this country. I don’t seem to remember having seen one before.”

“I see. You’re quite a Sherlock Holmes. Do you know anything more about
me?”

“I know y’u have just fallen heir to the Lazy D. They say y’u are a
schoolmarm, but I don’t believe it.”

“Well, I am.” Then, “Why don’t you believe it?” she added.

He surveyed her with his smile audacious, let his amused eyes wander
down from the mobile face with the wild-rose bloom to the slim young
figure so long and supple, then serenely met her frown.

“Y’u don’t look it.”

“No? Are you the owner of a composite photograph of the teachers of the
country?”

He enjoyed again his private mirth. “I should like right well to have
the pictures of some of them.”

She glanced at him sharply, but he was gazing so innocently at the
purple Shoshones in the distance that she could not give him the snub
she thought he needed.

“You are right. My name is Helen Messiter,” she said, by way of
stimulating a counter fund of information. For, though she was a young
woman not much given to curiosity, she was aware of an interest in this
spare, broad-shouldered youth who was such an incarnation of bronzed
vigor.

“Glad to meet y’u, Miss Messiter,” he responded, and offered his firm
brown hand in Western fashion.

But she observed resentfully that he did not mention his own name. It
was impossible to suppose that he knew no better, and she was driven to
conclude that he was silent of set purpose. Very well! If he did not
want to introduce himself she was not going to urge it upon him. In a
businesslike manner she gave her attention to eating up the dusty
miles.

“Yes, ma’am. I reckon I never was more glad to death to meet a lady
than I was to meet up with y’u,” he continued, cheerily. “Y’u sure
looked good to me as y’u come a-foggin’ down the road. I fair had been
yearnin’ for company but was some discouraged for fear the invitation
had miscarried.” He broke off his sardonic raillery and let his level
gaze possess her for a long moment. “Miss Messiter, I’m certainly under
an obligation to y’u I can’t repay. Y’u saved my life,” he finished
gravely.

“Nonsense.”

“Fact.”

“It isn’t a personal matter at all,” she assured him, with a touch of
impatient hauteur.

“It’s a heap personal to me.”

In spite of her healthy young resentment she laughed at the way in
which he drawled this out, and with a swift sweep her boyish eyes took
in again his compelling devil-may-care charm. She was a tenderfoot, but
intuition as well as experience taught her that he was unusual enough
to be one of ten thousand. No young Greek god’s head could have risen
more superbly above the brick-tanned column of the neck than this
close-cropped curly one. Gray eyes, deep and unwavering and masterful,
looked out of a face as brown as Wyoming. He was got up with no thought
of effect, but the tigerish litheness, the picturesque competency of
him, spake louder than costuming.

“Aren’t you really hurt worse than you pretend? I’m sure your ankle
ought to be attended to as soon as possible.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a lady doctor, ma’am,” he burlesqued his alarm.

“Can you tell me where the nearest ranch house is?” she asked, ignoring
his diversion.

“The Lazy D is the nearest, I reckon.”

“Which direction?”

“North by east, ma’am.”

“Then I’ll take the most direct road to it.

“In that case I’ll thank y’u for my ride and get out here.”

“But—why?”

He waved a jaunty hand toward the recent battlefield. “The Lazy D lies
right back of that hill. I expect, mebbe, those wolves might howl again
if we went back.”

“Where, then, shall I take you?”

“I hate to trouble y’u to go out of your way.

“I dare say, but I’m going just the same,” she told him, dryly.

“If you’re right determined—” He interrupted himself to point to the
south. “Do y’u see that camel-back peak over there?”

“The one with the sunshine on its lower edge?”

“That’s it, Miss Messiter. They call those two humps the Antelope
Peaks. If y’u can drop me somewhere near there I think I’ll manage all
right.”

“I’m not going to leave you till we reach a house,” she informed him
promptly. “You’re not fit to walk fifty yards.”

“That’s right kind of y’u, but I could not think of asking so much. My
friends will find me if y’u leave me where I can work a heliograph.”

“Or your enemies,” she cut in.

“I hope not. I’d not likely have the luck to get another invitation
right then to go riding with a friendly young lady.”

She gave him direct, cool, black-blue eyes that met and searched his.
“I’m not at all sure she is friendly. I shall want to find out the
cause of the trouble you have just had before I make up my mind as to
that.”

“I judge people by their actions. Y’u didn’t wait to find out before
bringing the ambulance into action,” he laughed.

“I see you do not mean to tell me.”

“You’re quite a lawyer, ma’am,” he evaded.

“I find you a very slippery witness, then.”

“Ask anything y’u like and I’ll tell you.”

“Very well. Who were those men, and why were they trying to kill you?”

“They turned their wolf loose on me because I shot up one of them
yesterday.”

“Dear me! Is it your business to go around shooting people? That’s
three I happen to know that you have shot. How many more?”

“No more, ma’am—not recently.”

“Well, three is quite enough—recently,” she mimicked. “You seem to me a
good deal of a desperado.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ like that, as if it didn’t matter in the least
whether you are or not,” she ordered.

“No, ma’am.”

“Oh!” She broke off with a gesture of impatience at his burlesque of
obedience. “You know what I mean—that you ought to deny it; ought to be
furious at me for suggesting it.”

“Ought I?”

“Of course you ought.”

“There’s a heap of ways I ain’t up to specifications,” he admitted,
cheerfully.

“And who are they—the men that were attacking you?”

There was a gleam of irrepressible humor in the bold eyes. “Your
cow-punchers, ma’am.”

“My cow-punchers?”

“They ce’tainly belong to the Lazy D outfit.”

“And you say that you shot one of my men yesterday?” He could see her
getting ready for a declaration of war.

“Down by Willow Creek—Yes, ma’am,” he answered, comfortably.

“And why, may I ask?” she flamed

“That’s a long story, Miss Messiter. It wouldn’t be square for me to
get my version in before your boys. Y’u ask them.” He permitted himself
a genial smile, somewhat ironic. “I shouldn’t wonder but what they’ll
give me a giltedged testimonial as an unhanged horse thief.”

“Isn’t there such a thing as law in Wyoming?” the girl demanded.

“Lots of it. Y’u can buy just as good law right here as in Kalamazoo.”

“I wish I knew where to find it.”

“Like to put me in the calaboose?”

“In the penitentiary. Yes, sir!” A moment later the question that was
in her thoughts leaped hotly from her lips. “Who are you, sir, that
dare to commit murder and boast of it?”

She had flicked him on the raw at last. Something that was near to pain
rested for a second in his eyes. “Murder is a hard name, ma’am. And I
didn’t say he was daid, or any of the three,” came his gentle answer.

“You _meant_ to kill them, anyhow.”

“Did I?” There was the ghost of a sad smile about his eyes.

“The way you act, a person might think you one of Ned Bannister’s men,”
she told him, scornfully.

“I expect you’re right.”

She repented her a little at a charge so unjust. “If you are not
ashamed of your name why are you so loath to part with it?”

“Y’u didn’t ask me my name,” he said, a dark flush sweeping his face.

“I ask it now.”

Like the light from a snuffed candle the boyish recklessness had gone
out of his face. His jaws were set like a vise and he looked hard as
hammered steel.

“My name is Bannister,” he said, coldly.

“Ned Bannister, the outlaw,” she let slip, and was aware of a strange
sinking of the heart.

It seemed to her that something sinister came to the surface in his
handsome face. “I reckon we might as well let it go at that,” he
returned, with bitter briefness.




CHAPTER II.
THE KING OF THE BIG HORN COUNTRY


Two months before this time Helen Messiter had been serenely teaching a
second grade at Kalamazoo, Michigan, notwithstanding the earnest
efforts of several youths of that city to induce her to retire to
domesticity “What’s the use of being a schoolmarm?” had been the burden
of their plaint. “Any spinster can teach kids _C-a-t_, Cat, but only
one in several thousand can be the prettiest bride in Kalamazoo.” None
of them, however, had been able to drive the point sufficiently home,
and it is probable that she would have continued to devote herself to
Young America if an uncle she had never seen had not died without a
will and left her a ranch in Wyoming yclept the Lazy D.

When her lawyer proposed to put the ranch on the market Miss Helen had
a word to say.

“I think not. I’ll go out and see it first, anyhow,” she said.

“But really, my dear young lady, it isn’t at all necessary. Fact is,
I’ve already had an offer of a hundred thousand dollars for it. Now, I
should judge that a fair price.”

“Very likely,” his client interrupted, quietly. “But, you see, I don’t
care to sell.”

“Then what in the world are you going to do with it?”

“Run it.”

“But, my dear Miss Messiter, it isn’t an automobile or any other kind
of toy. You must remember that it takes a business head and a great
deal of experience to make such an investment pay. I really think—”

“My school ends on the fourteenth of June. I’ll get a substitute for
the last two months. I shall start for Wyoming on the eighteenth of
April.”

The man of law gasped, explained the difficulties again carefully as to
a child, found that he was wasting his breath, and wisely gave it up.

Miss Messiter had started on the eighteenth of April, as she had
announced. When she reached Gimlet Butte, the nearest railroad point to
the Lazy D, she found a group of curious, weatherbeaten individuals
gathered round a machine foreign to their experience. It was on a flat
car, and the general opinion ran the gamut from a newfangled sewing
machine to a thresher. Into this guessing contest came its owner with
so brisk and businesslike an energy that inside of two hours she was
testing it up and down the wide street of Gimlet Butte, to the wonder
and delight of an audience to which each one of the eleven saloons of
the city had contributed its admiring quota.

Meanwhile the young woman attended strictly to business. She had
disappeared for half an hour with a suit case into the Elk House; and
when she returned in a short-skirted corduroy suit, leggings and
wide-brimmed gray Stetson hat, all Gimlet Butte took an absorbing
interest in the details of this delightful adventure that had happened
to the town. The population was out _en masse_ to watch her slip down
the road on a trial trip.

Presently “Soapy” Sothern, drifting in on his buckskin from the Hoodoo
Peak country, where for private reasons of his own he had been for the
past month a sojourner, reported that he had seen the prettiest sight
in the State climbing under a gasoline bronc with a monkey-wrench in
her hand. Where? Right over the hill on the edge of town. The immediate
stampede for the cow ponies was averted by a warning chug-chug that
sounded down the road, followed by the appearance of a flashing whir
that made the ponies dance on their hind legs.

“The gasoline bronc lady sure makes a hit with me,” announced “Texas,”
gravely. “I allow I’ll rustle a job with the Lazy D outfit.”

“She ce’tainly rides herd on that machine like a champeen,” admitted
Soapy. “I reckon I’ll drift over to the Lazy D with you to look after
yore remains, Tex, when the lightning hits you.”

Miss Messiter swung the automobile round in a swift circle, came to an
abrupt halt in front of the hotel, and alighted without delay. As she
passed in through the half score of admirers she had won, her dark eyes
swept smilingly over assembled Cattleland. She had already met most of
them at the launching of the machine from the flat car, and had
directed their perspiring energies as they labored to follow her
orders. Now she nodded a recognition with a little ripple of gay
laughter.

“I’m delighted to be able to contribute to the entertainment of Gimlet
Butte,” she said, as she swept in. For this young woman was possessed
of Western adaptation. It gave her no conscientious qualms to exchange
conversation fraternal with these genial savages.

The Elk House did not rejoice in a private dining room, and competition
strenuous ensued as to who should have the pleasure of sitting beside
the guest of honor. To avoid ill feeling, the matter was determined by
a game of freeze-out, in which Texas and a mature gentleman named, from
his complexion, “Beet” Collins, were the lucky victors. Texas
immediately repaired to the general store, where he purchased a new
scarlet bandanna for the occasion; also a cake of soap with which to
rout the alkali dust that had filtered into every pore of his hands and
face from a long ride across the desert.

Came supper and Texas simultaneously, the cow-puncher’s face scrubbed
to an apple shine. At the last moment Collins defaulted, his nerve
completely gone. Since, however, he was a thrifty soul, he sold his
place to Soapy for ten dollars, and proceeded to invest the proceeds in
an immediate drunk.

During the first ten minutes of supper Miss Messiter did not appear,
and the two guardians who flanked her chair solicitously were the
object of much badinage.

“She got one glimpse of that red haid of Tex and the pore lady’s took
to the sage,” explained Yorky.

“And him scrubbed so shiny fust time since Christmas before the big
blizzard,” sighed Doc Rogers.

“Shucks! She ain’t scared of no sawed-off, hammered-down runt like
Texas, No, siree! Miss Messiter’s on the absent list ’cause she’s
afraid she cayn’t resist the blandishments of Soapy. Did yo’ ever hear
about Soapy and that Caspar hash slinger?”

“Forget it, Slim,” advised Soapy, promptly. He had been engaged in
lofty and oblivious conversation with Texas, but he did not intend to
allow reminiscences to get under way just now.

At this opportune juncture arrived the mistress of the “gasoline
bronc,” neatly clad in a simple white lawn with blue trimmings. She
looked like a gleam of sunshine in her fresh, sweet youth; and not even
in her own school room had she ever found herself the focus of a
cleaner, more unstinted admiration. For the outdoors West takes off its
hat reverently to women worthy of respect, especially when they are
young and friendly.

Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure, the
desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her
warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and
when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big, untamed
outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover. She
was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these
men tell her what she wanted to know. To them, of course, it was an old
story, and whatever of romance it held was unconscious. But since she
wanted to talk of the West they were more than ready to please her.

So she listened, and drew them out with adroit questions when it was
necessary. She made them talk of life on the open range, of rustlers
and those who lived outside the law in the upper Shoshone country, of
the deadly war waging between the cattle and sheep industries.

“Are there any sheep near the Lazy D ranch?” she asked, intensely
interested in Soapy’s tale of how cattle and sheep could no more be got
to mix than oil and water.

For an instant nobody answered her question; then Soapy replied, with
what seemed elaborate carelessness:

“Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more’n fifteen
or twenty miles from your place.”

“And you say they are spoiling the range?”

“They’re ce’tainly spoiling it for cows.”

“But can’t something be done? If my cows were there first I don’t see
what right he has to bring his sheep there,” the girl frowned.

The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised
at the stillness, looked round. “Well?”

“Now you’re shouting, ma’am! That’s what we say,” enthused Texas,
spurring to the rescue.

“It doesn’t much matter what you say. What do you do?” asked Helen,
impatiently. “Do you lie down and let Mr. Bannister and his kind drive
their sheep over you?”

“Do we, Soapy?” grinned Texas. Yet it seemed to her his smile was not
quite carefree.

“I’m not a cowman myself,” explained Soapy to the girl. “Nor do I run
sheep. I—”

“Tell Miss Messiter what yore business is, Soapy,” advised Yorky from
the end of the table, with a mouthful of biscuit swelling his cheeks.

Soapy crushed the irrepressible Yorky with a look, but that young man
hit back smilingly.

“Soapy, he sells soap, ma’am. He’s a sorter city salesman, I reckon.”

“I should never have guessed it. Mr. Sothern does not _look_ like a
salesman,” said the girl, with a glance at his shrewd, hard,
expressionless face.

“Yes, ma’am, he’s a first-class seller of soap, is Mr. Sothern,”
chuckled the cow-puncher, kicking his friends gayly under the table.

“You can see I never sold _him_ any, Miss Messiter,” came back Soapy,
sorrowfully.

All this was Greek to the young lady from Kalamazoo. How was she to
know that Mr. Sothern had vended his soap in small cubes on street
corners, and that he wrapped bank notes of various denominations in the
bars, which same were retailed to eager customers for the small sum of
fifty cents, after a guarantee that the soap was good? His customers
rarely patronized him twice; and frequently they used bad language
because the soap wrapping was not as valuable as they had expected.
This was manifestly unfair, for Mr. Sothern, who made no claims to
philanthropy, often warned them that the soap should be bought on its
merits, and not with an eye single to the premium that might or might
not accompany the package.

“I started to tell you, ma’am, when that infant interrupted, that the
cowmen don’t aim to quit business yet a while. They’ve drawn a
dead-line, Miss Messiter.”

“A dead-line?”

“Yes, ma’am, beyond which no sheep herder is to run his bunch.”

“And if he does?” the girl asked, open eyed.

“He don’t do it twict, ma’am. Why don’t you pass the fritters to Miss
Messiter, Slim?”

“And about this Bannister. Who is he?”

Her innocent question seemed to ring a bell for silence; seemed to
carry with it some hidden portent that stopped idle conversation as a
striking clock that marks the hour of an execution.

The smile that had been gay grew grim, and men forgot the subject of
their light, casual talk. It was Sothern that answered her, and she
observed that his voice was grave, his face studiously without
expression.

“Mr. Bannister, ma’am, is a sheepman.”

“So I understood, but—” Her eyes traveled swiftly round the table, and
appraised the sudden sense of responsibility that had fallen on these
reckless, careless frontiersmen. “I am wondering what else he is.
Really, he seems to be the bogey man of Gimlet Butte.”

There was another instant silence, and again it was Soapy that lifted
it. “I expaict you’ll like Wyoming, Miss Messiter; leastways I hope you
will. There’s a right smart of country here.” His gaze went out of the
open door to the vast sea of space that swam in the fine sunset light.
“Yes, most folks that ain’t plumb spoilt with city ways likes it.”

“Sure she’ll like it. Y’u want to get a good, easy-riding hawss, Miss
Messiter,” advised Slim.

“And a rifle,” added Texas, promptly.

It occurred to her that they were all working together to drift the
conversation back to a safe topic. She followed the lead given her, but
she made up her mind to know what it was about her neighbor, Mr.
Bannister, the sheep herder, that needed to be handled with such
wariness and circumspection of speech.

Her chance came half an hour later, when she stood talking to the
landlady on the hotel porch in the mellow twilight that seemed to rest
on the land like a moonlit aura. For the moment they were alone.

“What is it about this man Bannister that makes men afraid to speak of
him?” she demanded, with swift impulse.

Her landlady’s startled eyes went alertly round to see that they were
alone. “Hush, child! You mustn’t speak of him like that,” warned the
older woman.

“Why mustn’t I? That’s what I want to know.”

“Is isn’t healthy.”

“What do you mean?”

Again that anxious look flashed round in the dusk. “The Bannister
outfit is the worst in the land. Ned Bannister is king of the whole Big
Horn country and beyond that to the Tetons.”

“And you mean to tell me that everybody is afraid of him—that men like
Mr. Sothern dare not say their soul is their own?” the newcomer asked,
contemptuously.

“Not so loud, child. He has spies everywhere That’s the trouble. You
don’t know who is in with him. He’s got the whole region terrified.”

“Is he so bad?”

“He is a devil. Last year he and his hell riders swept down on Topaz
and killed two bartenders just to see them kick, Ned Bannister said.
Folks allow they knew too much.”

“But the law—the Government? Haven’t you a sheriff and officers?”

“Bannister has. He elects the sheriff in this county.”

“Aren’t there more honest people here than villains?”

“Ten times as many, but the trouble is that the honest folks can’t
trust each other. You see, if one of them made a mistake and confided
in the wrong man—well, some fine day he would go riding herd and would
not turn up at night. Next week, or next month, maybe, one of his
partners might find a pile of bones in an arroyo.

“Have you ever seen this Bannister?”

“You _must_ speak lower when you talk of him, Miss Messiter,” the woman
insisted. “Yes, I saw him once; at least I think I did. Mighty few
folks know for sure that they have seen him. He is a mystery, and he
travels under many names and disguises.”

“When was it you think you saw him?”

“Two years ago at Ayr. The bank was looted that night and robbed of
thirty thousand dollars. They roused the cashier from his bed and made
him give the combination. He didn’t want to, and Ned Bannister”—her
voice sank to a tremulous whisper—“put red-hot running-irons between
his fingers till he weakened. It was a moonlight night—much such a
night as this—and after it was done I peeped through the blind of my
room and saw them ride away. He rode in front of them and sang like an
angel—did it out of daredeviltry to mock the people of the town that
hadn’t nerve enough to shoot him. You see, he knew that nobody would
dare hurt him ’count of the revenge of his men.”

“What was he like?” the mistress of the Lazy D asked, strangely awed at
this recital of transcendent villainy.

“’Course he was masked, and I didn’t see his face. But I’d know him
anywhere. He’s a long, slim fellow, built like a mountain lion. You
couldn’t look at him and ever forget him. He’s one of these graceful,
easy men that go so fur with fool women; one of the kind that half
shuts his dark, devil eyes and masters them without seeming to try.”

“So he’s a woman killer, too, is he? Any more outstanding
inconsistencies in this versatile Jesse James?”

“He’s plumb crazy about music, they say. Has a piano and plays Grigg
and Chopping, and all that classical kind of music. He went clear down
to Denver last year to hear Mrs. Shoeman sing.”

Helen smiled, guessing at Schumann-Heink as the singer in question, and
Grieg and Chopin as the composers named. Her interest was incredibly
aroused. She had expected the West and its products to exhilarate her,
but she had not looked to find so finished a Mephisto among its vaunted
“bad men.” He was probably overrated; considered a wonder because his
accomplishments outstepped those of the range. But Helen Messiter had
quite determined on one thing. She was going to meet this redoubtable
villain and make up her mind for herself. Already, before she had been
in Wyoming six hours, this emancipated young woman had decided on that.




CHAPTER III.
AN INVITATION GIVEN AND ACCEPTED


And already she had met him. Not only met him, but saved him from the
just vengeance about to fall upon him. She had not yet seen her own
ranch, had not spoken to a single one of her employés, for it had been
a part of her plan to drop in unexpected and examine the situation
before her foreman had a chance to put his best foot forward. So she
had started alone from Gimlet Butte that morning in her machine, and
had come almost in sight of the Lazy D ranch houses when the battle in
the coulée invited her to take a hand.

She had acted on generous impulse, and the unforeseen result had been
to save this desperado from justice. But the worst of it was that she
could not find it in her heart to regret it. Granted that he was a
villain, double-dyed and beyond hope, yet he was the home of such
courage, such virility, that her unconsenting admiration went out in
spite of herself. He was, at any rate, a _man_, square-jawed, resolute,
implacable. In the sinuous trail of his life might lie arson, robbery,
murder, but he still held to that dynamic spark of self-respect that is
akin to the divine. Nor was it possible to believe that those
unblinking gray eyes, with the capability of a latent sadness of
despair in them, expressed a soul entirely without nobility. He had a
certain gallant ease, a certain attractive candor, that did not consist
with villainy unadulterated.

It was characteristic even of her impulsiveness that Helen Messiter
curbed the swift condemnation that leaped to her lips when she knew
that the man sitting beside her was the notorious bandit of the
Shoshone fastnesses. She was not in the least afraid. A sure instinct
told her he was not the kind of a man of whom a woman need have fear so
long as her own anchor held fast. In good time she meant to let him
have her unvarnished opinion of him, but she did not mean it to be an
unconsidered one. Wherefore she drove the machine forward toward the
camelbacked peak he had indicated, her eyes straight before her, a
frown corrugating her forehead.

For him, having made his dramatic announcement, he seemed content for
the present with silence. He leaned back in the car and appreciated her
with a coolness that just missed impudence. Certainly her appearance
proclaimed her very much worth while. To dwell on the long lines of her
supple young body, the exquisite throat and chin curve, was a pleasure
with a thrill to it. As a physical creation, a mere innocent young
animal, he thought her perfect; attuned to a fine harmony of grace and
color. But it was the animating vitality of her, the lightness of
motion, the fire and sparkle of expression that gave her the
captivating charm she possessed.

They were two miles nearer the camel-backed peak before he broke the
silence.

“Beats a bronco for getting over the ground. Think I’ll have to get
one,” he mused aloud.

“With the money you took from the Ayr bank?” she flashed.

“I might drive off some of your cows and sell them,” he countered,
promptly. “About how much will they hold me up for a machine like
this?”

“This is only a runabout. You can get one for twelve or fourteen
hundred dollars of anybody’s money.”

“Of yours?” he laughed.

“I haven’t that much with me. If you’ll come over and hold up the ranch
perhaps we might raise it among us,” she jeered.

His mirth was genuine. “But right now I couldn’t get more than how much
off y’u?”

“Sixty-three dollars is all I have with me, and I couldn’t give you
more—_not even if you put red hot irons between my fingers_.” She gave
it to him straight, her blue eyes fixed steadily on him.

Yet she was not prepared for the effect of her words. The last thing
she had expected was to see the blood wash out of his bronzed face, to
see his sensitive nostrils twitch with pain. He made her feel as if she
had insulted him, as if she had been needlessly cruel. And because of
it she hardened her heart. Why should she spare him the mention of it?
He had not hesitated at the shameless deed itself. Why should she
shrink before that wounded look that leaped to his fine eyes in that
flash of time before he hardened them to steel?

“You did it—didn’t you?” she demanded.

“That’s what they say.” His gaze met her defiantly.

“And it is true, isn’t it?”

“Oh, anything is true of a man that herds sheep,” he returned,
bitterly.

“If that is true it would not be possible for you to understand how
much I despise you.”

“Thank you,” he retorted, ironically.

“I don’t understand at all. I don’t see how you can be the man they say
you are. Before I met you it was easy to understand. But somehow—I
don’t know—you don’t _look_ like a villain.” She found herself
strangely voicing the deep hope of her heart. It was surely impossible
to look at him and believe him guilty of the things of which, he was
accused. And yet he offered no denial, suggested no defense.

Her troubled eyes went over his thin, sunbaked face with its touch, of
bitterness, and she did not find it possible to dismiss the subject
without giving him a chance to set himself right.

“You can’t be as bad as they say. You are not, are you?” she asked,
naively.

“What do y’u think?” he responded, coolly.

She flushed angrily at what she accepted as his insolence. “A man of
any decency would have jumped at the chance to explain.”

“But if there is nothing to explain?”

“You are then guilty.”

Their eyes met, and neither of them quailed.

“If I pleaded not guilty would y’u believe me?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. How could I when it is known by
everybody? And yet—”

He smiled. “Why should I trouble y’u, then, with explanations? I reckon
we’ll let it go at guilty.”

“Is that all you can say for yourself?”

He seemed to hang in doubt an instant, then shook his head and refused
the opening.

“I expect if we changed the subject I could say a good deal for y’u,”
he drawled. “I never saw anything pluckier than the way y’u flew down
from the mesa and conducted the cutting-out expedition. Y’u sure
drilled through your punchers like a streak of lightning.”

“I didn’t know who you were,” she explained, proudly.

“Would it have made any difference if y’u had?”

Again the angry flush touched her cheeks. “Not a bit. I would have
saved you in order to have you properly hanged later,” she cut back
promptly.

He shook his head gayly. “I’m ce’tainly going to disappoint y’u some.
Your enterprising punchers may collect me yet, but not alive, I
reckon.”

“I’ll give them strict orders to bring you in alive.”

“Did you ever want the moon when y’u was a little kid?” he asked.

“We’ll see, Mr. Outlaw Bannister.”

He laughed softly, in the quiet, indolent fashion that would have been
pleasant if it had not been at her. “It’s right kind of you to take so
much interest in me. I’d most be willing to oblige by letting your boys
rope me to renew this acquaintance, ma’am.” Then, “I get out here Miss
Messiter,” he added.

She stopped on the instant. Plainly she could not get rid of him too
soon. “Haven’t you forgot one thing?” she asked, ironically.

“Yes, ma’am. To thank you proper for what y’u did for me.” He limped
gingerly down from the car and stood with his hand on one of the tires.
“I have been trying to think how to say it right; but I guess I’ll have
to give it up. All is that if I ever get a chance to even the score—”

She waved his thanks aside impatiently “I didn’t mean that. You have
forgotten to take my purse.”

His gravity was broken on the instant, and his laughter was certainly
delightfully fresh. “I clean forgot, but I expect I’ll drop over to the
ranch for it some day.”

“We’ll try to make to make you welcome, Mr. Bannister.”

“Don’t put yourself out at all. I’ll take pot-luck when I come.”

“How many of you may we expect?” she asked, defiantly.

“Oh, I allow to come alone.”

“You’ll very likely forget.”

“No, ma’am, I don’t know so many ladies that I’m liable to such an
oversight.

“I have heard a different story. But if you do remember to come, and
will let us know when you expect to honor the Lazy D, I’ll have
messengers sent to meet you.”

He perfectly understood her to mean leaden ones, and the humorous gleam
in his eye sparkled in appreciation of her spirit. “I don’t want all
that fuss made over me. I reckon I’ll drop in unexpected,” he said.

She nodded curtly. “Good-bye. Hope your ankle won’t trouble you very
much.”

“Thank y’u, ma’am. I reckon it won’t. Good-bye, Miss Messiter.”

Out of the tail of her eye she saw him bowing like an Italian opera
singer, as impudently insouciant, as gracefully graceless as any stage
villain in her memory. Once again she saw him, when her machine swept
round a curve and she could look back without seeming to do so, limping
across through the sage brush toward a little hillock near the road.
And as she looked the bare, curly head was inclined toward her in
another low, mocking bow. He was certainly the gallantest vagabond
unhanged.




CHAPTER IV.
AT THE LAZY D RANCH


Helen Messiter was a young woman very much alive, which implies that
she was given to emotions; and as her machine skimmed over the ground
to the Lazy D she had them to spare. For from the first this young man
had taken her eye, and it had come upon her with a distinct shock that
he was the notorious scoundrel who was terrorizing the countryside. She
told herself almost passionately that she would never have believed it
if he had not said so himself. She knew quite well that the coldness
that had clutched her heart when he gave his name had had nothing to do
with fear. There had been chagrin, disappointment, but nothing in the
least like the terror she might have expected. The simple truth was
that he had seemed so much a man that it had hurt her to find him also
a wild beast.

Deep in her heart she resented the conviction forced upon her. Reckless
he undoubtedly was, at odds with the law surely, but it was hard to
admit that attractive personality to be the mask of fiendish cruelty
and sinister malice. And yet—the facts spoke for themselves. He had not
even attempted a denial. Still there was a mystery about him, else how
was it possible for two so distinct personalities to dwell together in
the same body.

She hated him with all her lusty young will; not only for what he was,
but also for what she had been disappointed in not finding him after
her first instinctive liking. Yet it was with an odd little thrill that
she ran down again into the coulée where her prosaic life had found its
first real adventure. He might be all they said, but nothing could wipe
out the facts that she had offered her life to save his, and that he
had lent her his body as a living shield for one exhilarating moment of
danger.

As she reached the hill summit beyond the coulée, Helen Messiter was
aware that a rider in ungainly chaps of white wool was rapidly
approaching. He dipped down into the next depression without seeing
her; and when they came face to face at the top of the rise the result
was instantaneous. His pony did an animated two-step not on the
programme. It took one glance at the diabolical machine, and went up on
its hind legs, preliminary to giving an elaborate exhibition of
pitching. The rider indulged in vivid profanity and plied his quirt
vigorously. But the bronco, with the fear of this unknown evil on its
soul, varied its bucking so effectively that the puncher astride its
hurricane deck was forced, in the language of his kind, to “take the
dust.”

His red head sailed through the air and landed in the white sand at the
girl’s feet. For a moment he sat in the road and gazed with chagrin
after the vanishing heels of his mount. Then his wrathful eyes came
round to the owner of the machine that had caused the eruption. His
mouth had opened to give adequate expression to his feelings, when he
discovered anew the forgotten fact that he was dealing with a woman.
His jaw hung open for an instant in amaze; and when he remembered the
unedited vocabulary he had turned loose on the world a flood of purple
swept his tanned face.

She wanted to laugh, but wisely refrained. “I’m very sorry,” was what
she said.

He stared in silence as he slowly picked himself from the ground. His
red hair rose like the quills of a porcupine above a face that had the
appearance of being unfinished. Neither nose nor mouth nor chin seemed
to be quite definite enough.

She choked down her gayety and offered renewed apologies.

“I was going for a doc,” he explained, by way of opening his share of
the conversation.

“Then perhaps you had better jump in with me and ride back to the Lazy
D. I suppose that’s where you came from?”

He scratched his vivid head helplessly. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Then jump in.”

“I was going to Bear Creek, ma’am,” he added dubiously.

“How far is it?”

“’Bout twenty-five miles, and then some.”

“You don’t expect to walk, do you?”

“No; I allowed—”

“I’ll take you back to the ranch, where you can get another horse.”

“I reckon, ma’am, I’d ruther walk.”

“Nonsense! Why?”

“I ain’t used to them gas wagons.”

“It’s quite safe. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

Reluctantly he got in beside her, as happy as a calf in a branding pen.

“Are you the lady that sashaid off with Ned Bannister?” he asked
presently, after he had had time to smother successively some of his
fear, wonder and delight at their smooth, swift progress.

“Yes. Why?”

“The boys allow you hadn’t oughter have done it.” Then, to place the
responsibility properly on shoulders broader than his own, he added:
“That’s what Judd says.”

“And who is Judd?”

“Judd, he’s the foreman of the Lazy D.”

Below them appeared the corrals and houses of a ranch nestling in a
little valley flanked by hills.

“This yere’s the Lazy D,” announced the youth, with pride, and in the
spirit of friendliness suggested a caution. “Judd, he’s some peppery.
You wanter smooth him down some, seeing as he’s riled up to-day.”

A flicker of steel came into the blue eyes. “Indeed! Well, here we
are.”

“If it ain’t Reddy, _and_ the lady with the flying machine,” murmured a
freckled youth named McWilliams, emerging from the bunkhouse with a pan
of water which had been used to bathe the wound of one of the punctured
combatants.

“What’s that?” snapped a voice from within; and immediately its owner
appeared in the doorway and bored with narrowed black eyes the young
woman in the machine.

“Who are you?” he demanded, brusquely.

“Your target,” she answered, quietly. “Would you like to take another
shot at me?”

The freckled lad broke out into a gurgle of laughter, at which the
black, swarthy man beside him wheeled round in a rage. “What you
cacklin’ at, Mac?” he demanded, in a low voice.

“Oh, the things I notice,” returned that youth jauntily, meeting the
other’s anger without the flicker of an eyelid.

“It ain’t healthy to be so noticin’,” insinuated the other.

“Y’u don’t say,” came the prompt, sarcastic retort. “If you’re such a
darned good judge of health, y’u better be attending to some of your
patients.” He jerked a casual thumb over his shoulder toward the bunks
on which lay the wounded men.

“I shouldn’t wonder but what there might be another patient for me to
attend to,” snarled the foreman.

“That so? Well, turn your wolf loose when y’u get to feelin’ real
devilish,” jeered the undismayed one, strolling forward to assist Miss
Messiter to alight.

The mistress of the Lazy D had been aware of the byplay, but she had
caught neither the words nor their import. She took the offered brown
hand smilingly, for here again she looked into the frank eyes of the
West, unafraid and steady. She judged him not more than twenty-two, but
the school where he had learned of life had held open and strenuous
session every day since he could remember.

“Glad to meet y’u, ma’am,” he assured her, in the current phrase of the
semi-arid lands.

“I’m sure I am glad to meet _you_,” she answered, heartily. “Can you
tell me where is the foreman of the Lazy D?”

He introduced with a smile the swarthy man in the doorway. “This is him
ma’am—Mr. Judd Morgan.”

Now it happened that Mr. Judd Morgan was simmering with suppressed
spleen.

“All I’ve got to say is that you had no business mixing up in that
shootin’ affair back there. Perhaps you don’t know that the man you
saved is Ned Bannister, the outlaw,” was his surly greeting.

“Oh, yes, I know that.”

“Then what d’ye mean—Who are you, anyway?” His insolent eyes coasted
malevolently over her.

“Helen Messiter is my name.”

It was ludicrous to see the change that came over the man. He had been
prepared to bully her; and with a word she had pricked the bubble of
his arrogance. He swallowed his anger and got a mechanical smile in
working order.

“Glad to see you here, Miss Messiter,” he said, his sinister gaze
attempting to meet hers frankly “I been looking for you every day.”

“But y’u managed to surprise him, after all ma’am,” chuckled Mac.

“Where’s yo’ hawss, Reddy?” inquired a tall young man, who had appeared
silently in the doorway of the bunkhouse.

Reddy pinked violently. “I had an accident, Denver,” he explained.
“This lady yere she—”

“Scooped y’u right off yore hawss. Y’u _don’t_ say,” sympathized Mac so
breathlessly that even Reddy joined in the chorus of laughter that went
up at his expense.

The young woman thought to make it easy for him, and suggested an
explanation.

“His horse isn’t used to automobiles, and so when it met this one—”

“I got off,” interposed Reddy hastily, displaying a complexion like a
boiled beet.

“He got off,” Mac explained gravely to the increasing audience.

Denver nodded with an imperturbable face. “He got off.”

Mac introduced Miss Messiter to such of her employés as were on hand.
“Shake hands with Miss Messiter, Missou,” was the formula, the name
alone varying to suit the embarrassed gentlemen in leathers. Each of
them in turn presented a huge hand, in which her little one disappeared
for the time, and was sawed up and down in the air like a pump-handle.
Yet if she was amused she did not show it; and her pleasure at meeting
the simple, elemental products of the plains outweighed a great deal
her sense of the ludicrous.

“How are your patients getting along?” she presently asked of her
foreman.

“I reckon all right. I sent Reddy for a doc, but—”

“He got off,” murmured Mac pensively.

“I’ll go rope another hawss,” put in the man who had got off.

“Get a jump on you, then. Miss Messiter, would you like to look over
the place?”

“Not now. I want to see the men that were hurt. Perhaps I can help
them. Once I took a few weeks in nursing.”

“Bully for you, ma’am,” whooped Mac. “I’ve a notion those boys are
sufferin’ for a woman to put the diamond-hitch on them bandages.”

“Bring that suit-case in,” she commanded Denver, in the gentlest voice
he had ever heard, after she had made a hasty inspection of the first
wounded man.

From the suit-case she took a little leather medicine-case, the kind
that can be bought already prepared for use. It held among other things
a roll of medicated cotton, some antiseptic tablets, and a little steel
instrument for probing.

“Some warm water, please; and have some boiling on the range,” were her
next commands.

Mac flew to execute them.

It was a pleasure to see her work, so deftly the skillful hands
accomplished what her brain told them. In admiring awe the punchers
stood awkwardly around while she washed and dressed the hurts. Two of
the bullets had gone through the fleshy part of the arm and left clean
wounds. In the case of the third man she had to probe for the lead, but
fortunately found it with little difficulty. Meanwhile she soothed the
victim with gentle womanly sympathy.

“I know it hurts a good deal. Just a minute and I’ll be through.”

His hands clutched tightly the edges of his bunk. “That’s all right,
doc. You attend to roping that pill and I’ll endure the grief.”

A long sigh of relief went up from the assembled cowboys when she drew
the bullet out.

The sinewy hands fastened on the wooden bunk relaxed suddenly.

“’Frisco’s daid,” gasped the cook, who bore the title of Wun Hop for no
reason except that he was an Irishman in a place formerly held by a
Chinese.

“He has only fainted,” she said quietly, and continued with the
antiseptic dressing.

When it was all over, the big, tanned men gathered at the entrance to
the calf corral and expanded in admiration of their new boss.

“She’s a pure for fair. She grades up any old way yuh take her to the
best corn-fed article on the market,” pronounced Denver, with
enthusiasm.

“I got to ride the boundary,” sighed Missou. “I kinder hate to go right
now.”

“Here, too,” acquiesced another. “I got a round-up on Wind Creek to cut
out them two-year-olds. If ’twas my say-so, I’d order Mac on that job.”

“Right kind of y’u. Seems to me”—Mac’s sarcastic eye trailed around to
include all those who had been singing her praises—“the new queen of
this hacienda won’t have no trouble at all picking a prince consort
when she gets round to it. Here’s Wun Hop, not what y’u might call
anxious, but ce’tainly willing. Then Denver’s some in the turtle-dove
business, according to that hash-slinger in Cheyenne. Missou might be
induced to accept if it was offered him proper; and I allow Jim ain’t
turned the color of Redtop’s hair jest for instance. I don’t want to
leave out ’Frisco and the other boys carrying Bannister’s pills—”

“Nor McWilliams. I’d admire to include him,” murmured Denver.

That sunburned, nonchalant youth laughed musically. “Sure thing. I’d
hate to be left out. The only difference is—”

“Well?”

His roving eye circled blandly round. “I stand about one show in a
million. Y’u roughnecks are dead ones already.”

With which cold comfort he sauntered away to join Miss Messiter and the
foreman, who now appeared together at the door of the ranchhouse,
prepared to make a tour of the buildings and the immediate corrals.

“Isn’t there a woman on the place?” she was asking Morgan.

“No’m, there ain’t. Henderson’s daughter would come and stay with y’u a
while I reckon.”

“Please send for her at once, then, and ask her to come to-day.”

“All right. I’ll send one of the boys right away.”

“How did y’u leave ’Frisco, ma’am?” asked Mac, by way of including
himself easily.

“He’s resting quietly. Unless blood-poisoning sets in they ought all to
do well.”

“It’s right lucky for them y’u happened along. This is the hawss
corral, ma’am,” explained the young man just as Morgan opened his thin
lips to tell her.

Judd contrived to get rid of him promptly. “Slap on a saddle, Mac, and
run up the remuda so Miss Messiter can see the hawsses for herself,” he
ordered.

“Mebbe she’d rather ride down and look at the bunch,” suggested the
capable McWilliams.

As it chanced, she did prefer to ride down the pasture and look over
the place from on horseback. She was in love with her ranch already.
Its spacious distances, the thousands of cattle and the horses, these
picturesque retainers who served her even to the shedding of an enemy’s
blood; they all struck an answering echo in her gallant young heart
that nothing in Kalamazoo had been able to stir. She bubbled over with
enthusiasm, the while Morgan covertly sneered and McWilliams warmed to
the untamed youth in her.

“What about this man Bannister?” she flung out suddenly, after they had
cantered back to the house when the remuda had been inspected.

Her abrupt question brought again the short, tense silence she had
become used to expect.

“He runs sheep about twenty or thirty miles southwest of here,”
explained McWilliams, in a carefully casual tone.

“So everybody tells me, but it seems to me he spills a good deal of
lead on my men,” she answered impatiently. “What’s the trouble?”

“Last week he crossed the dead-line with a bunch of five thousand
sheep.”

“Who draws this dead-line?”

“The cattlemen got together and drew it. Your uncle was one of those
that marked it off, ma’am.”

“And Bannister crossed it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Yesterday ’Frisco come on him and one of his herders with
a big bunch of them less than fifteen miles from here. He didn’t know
it was Bannister, and took a pot-shot at him. ’Course Bannister came
back at him, and he got Frisco in the laig.”

“Didn’t know it was Bannister? What difference WOULD that make?” she
said impatiently.

Mac laughed. “What difference would it make, Judd?”

Morgan scowled, and the young man answered his own question. “We don’t
any of us go out of our way more’n a mile to cross Bannister’s trail,”
he drawled.

“Do you wear this for an ornament? Are you upholstered with hardware to
catch the eyes of some girl?” she asked, touching with the end of her
whip the revolver in the holster strapped to his chaps.

His serene, gay smile flashed at her. “Are y’u ordering me to go out
and get Ned Bannister’s scalp?”

“No, I am not,” she explained promptly. “What I am trying to discover
is why you all seem to be afraid of one man. He is only a man, isn’t
he?”

A veil of ice seemed to fall over the boyish face and leave it chiseled
marble. His unspeaking eyes rested on the swarthy foreman as he
answered:

“I don’t know what he is, ma’am. He may be one man, or he may be a
hundred. What’s more, I ain’t particularly suffering to find out. Fact
is, I haven’t lost any Bannisters.”

The girl became aware that her foreman was looking at her with a wary
silent vigilance sinister in its intensity.

“In short, you’re like the rest of the people in this section. You’re
afraid.”

“Now y’u’re shoutin’, Miss Messiter. I sure am when it comes to
shootin’ off my mouth about Bannister.”

“And you, Mr. Morgan?”

It struck her that the young puncher waited with a curious interest for
the answer of the foreman.

“Did it look like I was afraid this mawnin’, ma’am?” he asked, with
narrowed eyes.

“No, you all seemed brave enough then, when you had him eight to one.”

“I wasn’t there,” hastily put in McWilliams. “I don’t go gunning for my
man without giving him a show.”

“I do,” retorted Morgan cruelly. “I’d go if we was fifty to one. We’d
’a’ got him, too, if it hadn’t been for Miss Messiter. ’Twas a chance
we ain’t likely to get again for a year.”

“It wasn’t your fault you didn’t kill him, Mr. Morgan,” she said,
looking hard at him. “You may be interested to know that your last shot
missed him only about six inches, and me about four.”

“I didn’t know who you were,” he sullenly defended.

“I see. You only shoot at women when you don’t know who they are.” She
turned her back on him pointedly and addressed herself to McWilliams.
“You can tell the men working on this ranch that I won’t have any more
such attacks on this man Bannister. I don’t care what or who he is. I
don’t propose to have him murdered by my employés. Let the law take him
and hang him. Do you hear?”

“I ce’tainly do, and the boys will get the word straight,” he replied.

“I take it since yuh are giving your orders through Mac, yuh don’t need
me any longer for your foreman,” bullied Morgan.

“You take it right, sir,” came her crisp reply. “McWilliams will be my
foreman from to-day.”

The man’s face, malignant and wolfish, suddenly lost its mask. That she
would so promptly call his bluff was the last thing he had expected.
“That’s all right. I reckon yuh think yuh know your own business, but
I’ll put it to yuh straight. Long as yuh live you’ll be sorry for
this.”

And with that he wheeled away.

She turned to her new foreman and found him less radiant than she could
have desired. “I’m right sorry y’u did that. I’m afraid y’u’ll make
trouble for yourself,” he said quietly.

“Why?”

“I don’t know myself just why.” He hesitated before adding: “They say
him and Bannister is thicker than they’d ought to be. It’s a cinch that
he’s in cahoots somehow with that Shoshone bunch of bad men.”

“But—why, that’s ridiculous. Only this morning he was trying to kill
Bannister himself.”

“That’s what I don’t just savvy. There’s a whole lot about that
business I don’t get next to. I guess Bannister is at the head of them.
Everybody seems agreed about that. But the whole thing is a tangle of
contradiction to me. I’ve milled it over a heap in my mind, too.”

“What are some of the contradictions?”

“Well, here’s one right off the bat, as we used to say back in the
States. Bannister is a great musician, they claim; fine singer, and all
that. Now I happen to know he can’t sing any more than a bellowing
yearling.”

“How do you know?” she asked, her eyes shining with interest.

“Because I heard him try it. ’Twas one day last summer when I was out
cutting trail of a bunch of strays down by Dead Cow Creek. The day was
hot, and I lay down behind a cottonwood and dropped off to sleep. When
I awakened it didn’t take me longer’n an hour to discover what had woke
me. Somebody on the other side of the creek was trying to sing. It was
ce’tainly the limit. Pretty soon he come out of the brush and I seen it
was Bannister.”

“You’re sure it was Bannister?”

“If seeing is believing, I’m sure.”

“And was his singing really so bad?”

“I’d hate ever to hear worse.”

“Was he singing when you saw him?”

“No, he’d just quit. He caught sight of my pony grazing, and hunted
cover real prompt.”

“Then it might have been another man singing in the thicket.”

“It might, but it wasn’t. Y’u see, I’d followed him through the bush by
his song, and he showed up the moment I expected him.”

“Still there might have been another man there singing.”

“One chance in a million,” he conceded.

A sudden hope flamed up like tow in her heart. Perhaps, after all, Ned
Bannister was not the leader of the outlaws. Perhaps somebody else was
masquerading in his name, using Bannister’s unpopularity as a shield to
cover his iniquities. Still, this was an unlikely hypothesis, she had
to admit. For why should he allow his good name to be dragged in the
dust without any effort to save it? On a sudden impulse the girl
confided her doubt to McWilliams.

“You don’t suppose there can be any mistake, do you? Somehow I can’t
think him as bad as they say. He looks awfully reckless, but one feels
one could trust his face.”

“Same here,” agreed the new foreman. “First off when I saw him my think
was, ‘I’d like to have that man backing my play when I’m sitting in the
game with Old Man Hard Luck reaching out for my blue chips.’”

“You don’t think faces lie, do you?”

“I’ve seen them that did, but, gen’rally speaking, tongues are a heap
likelier to get tangled with the truth. But I reckon there ain’t any
doubt about Bannister. He’s known over all this Western country.”

The young woman sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right.”




CHAPTER V.
THE DANCE AT FRASER’S


“Heard tell yet of the dance over to Fraser’s?”

He was a young man of a brick red countenance and he wore loosely round
his neck the best polka dot silk handkerchief that could be bought in
Gimlet Butte, also such gala attire as was usually reserved only for
events of importance. Sitting his horse carelessly in the plainsman’s
indolent fashion, he asked his question of McWilliams in front of the
Lazy D bunkhouse.

“Nope. When does the shindig come off?”

“Friday night. Big thing. Y’u want to be there. All y’u lads.”

“Mebbe some of us will ride over.”

He of the polka dot kerchief did not appear quite satisfied. His glance
wandered toward the house, as it had been doing occasionally since the
moment of his arrival.

“Y’u bet this dance is ace high, Mac. Fancy costumes and masks. Y’u can
rent the costumes over to Slauson’s for three per. Texas, he’s going to
call the dances. Music from Gimlet Butte. Y’u want to get it tucked
away in your thinker that this dance ain’t on the order of culls. No,
sirree, it’s cornfed.”

“Glad to hear of it. I’ll cipher out somehow to be there, Slim.”

Slim’s glance took in the ranchhouse again. He had ridden twenty-three
miles out of his way to catch a glimpse of the newly arrived mistress
of the Lazy D, the report of whose good looks and adventures had
traveled hand in hand through many cañons even to the heart of the
Tetons. It had been on Skunk Creek that he had heard of her three days
before, and now he had come to verify the tongue of rumor, to see her
quite casually, of course, and do his own appraising. It began to look
as if he were going to have to ride off without a glimpse of her.

He nodded toward the house, turning a shade more purple than his native
choleric hue. “Y’u want to bring your boss with y’u, Mac. We been
hearing a right smart lot about her and the boys would admire to have
her present. It’s going to be strictly according to Hoyle—no
rough-house plays go, y’understand.”

“I’ll speak to her about it.” Mac’s deep amusement did not reach the
surface. He was quite well aware that Slim was playing for time and
that he was too bashful to plump out the desire that was in him. “Great
the way cows are jumpin’, ain’t it?”

“Sure. Well, I’ll be movin’ along to Slauson’s. I just drapped in on my
way. Thought mebbe y’u hadn’t heard tell of the dance.”

“Much obliged. Was it for old man Slauson y’u dug up all them togs,
Slim? He’ll ce’tainly admire to see y’u in that silk tablecloth y’u got
round your neck.”

Slim’s purple deepened again. “Y’u go to grass, Mac. I don’t aim to ask
y’u to be my valley yet awhile.”

“C’rect. I was just wondering do all the Triangle Bar boys ride the
range so handsome?”

“Don’t y’u worry about the Triangle Bar boys,” advised the embarrassed
Slim, gathering up his bridle reins.

With one more reluctant glance in the direction of the house he rode
away. When he reached the corral he looked back again. His gaze showed
him the boyish foreman doubled up with laughter; also the sweep of a
white skirt descending from the piazza.

“Now, ain’t that hoodooed luck?” the aggrieved rider of the Triangle
Bar outfit demanded of himself, “I made my getaway about three shakes
too soon, by gum!”

Her foreman was in the throes of mirth when Helen Messiter reached him.

“Include me in the joke,” she suggested.

“Oh, I was just thinkin’,” he explained inadequately.

“Does it always take you that way?”

“About these boys that drop in so frequent on business these days.
Funny how fond they’re getting of the Lazy D. There was that stock
detective happened in yesterday to show how anxious he was about your
cows. Then the two Willow Creek riders that wanted a job punching for
y’u, not to mention mention the Shoshone miner and the storekeeper from
Gimlet Butte and Soapy Sothern and—”

“Still I don’t quite see the joke.”

“It ain’t any joke with them. Serious business, ma’am.”

“What happened to start you on this line?”

“The lad riding down the road on that piebald pinto. He come twenty
miles out of his way, plumb dressed for a wedding, all to give me an
invite to a dance at Fraser’s. Y’u would call that real thoughtful of
him, I expect.”

She gayly sparkled. “A real ranch dance—the kind you have been telling
me about. Are Ida and I invited?”

“Invited? Slim hinted at a lynching if I came without y’u.”

She laughed softly, merry eyes flashing swiftly at him. “How gallant
you Westerners are, even though you do turn it into burlesque.”

His young laugh echoed hers. “Burlesque nothing. My life wouldn’t be
worth a thing if I went alone. Honest, I wouldn’t dare.”

“Since the ranch can’t afford to lose its foreman Ida and I will go
along,” she promised. “That is, if it is considered proper here.”

“Proper. Good gracious, ma’am! Every lady for thirty miles round will
be there, from six months old to eighty odd years. It wouldn’t be
_proper_ to stay at home.”

The foreman drove her to Fraser’s in a surrey with Ida Henderson and
one of the Lazy D punchers on the back seat. The drive was over
twenty-five miles, but in that silent starry night every mile was a
delight. Part of the way led through a beautiful cañon, along the rocky
mountain road of which the young man guided the rig with unerring
skill. Beyond the gorge the country debouched into a grassy park that
fell away from their feet for miles. It was in this basin that the
Fraser ranch lay.

The strains of the fiddle and the thumping of feet could be heard as
they drove up. Already the rooms seemed to be pretty well filled, as
Helen noticed when they entered. Three sets were on the floor for a
quadrille and the house shook with the energy of the dancers. On
benches against the walls were seated the spectators, and on one of
them stood Texas calling the dance.

“Alemane left. Right hand t’yer pardner and grand right and left.
Ev-v-rybody swing,” chanted the caller.

A dozen rough young fellows were clustered near the front door,
apparently afraid to venture farther lest their escape be cut off.
Through these McWilliams pushed a way for his charges, the cowboys
falling back respectfully at once when they discovered the presence of
Miss Messiter.

In the bedroom where she left her wraps the mistress of the Lazy D
found a dozen or more infants and several of their mothers. In the
kitchen were still other women and babies, some of the former very old
and of the latter very young. A few of the babies were asleep, but most
of them were still very much alive to this scene of unwonted hilarity
in their young lives.

As soon as she emerged into the general publicity of the dancing room
her foreman pounced upon Helen and led her to a place in the head set
that was making up. The floor was rough, the music jerky and uncertain,
the quadrilling an exhibition of joyous and awkward abandon; but its
picturesque lack of convention appealed to the girl from Michigan. It
rather startled her to be swung so vigorously, but a glance about the
room showed that these humorous-eyed Westerners were merely living up
to the duty of the hour as they understood it.

At the close of the quadrille Helen found herself being introduced to
“Mr. Robins,” alias Slim, who drew one of his feet back in an
embarrassed bow.

“I enjoy to meet y’u, ma’am,” he assured her, and supplemented this
with a request for the next dance, after which he fell into silence
that was painful in its intensity.

Nearly all the dances were squares, as few of those present understood
the intricacies of the waltz and two-step. Hence it happened that the
proficient McWilliams secured three round dances with his mistress.

It was during the lunch of sandwiches, cake and coffee that Helen
perceived an addition to the company. The affair had been advertised a
costume ball, but most of those present had construed this very
liberally. She herself, to be sure, had come as Mary Queen of Scots,
Mac was arrayed in the scarlet tunic and tight-fitting breeches of the
Northwest Mounted Police, and perhaps eight or ten others had made some
attempt at representing some one other than they were. She now saw
another, apparently a new arrival, standing in the doorway negligently.
A glance told her that he was made up for a road agent and that his
revolvers and mask were a part of the necessary costuming.

Slowly his gaze circled the room and came round to her. His eyes were
hard as diamonds and as flashing, so that the impact of their meeting
looks seemed to shock her physically. He was a tall man, swarthy of
hue, and he carried himself with a light ease that looked silken
strong. Something in the bearing was familiar yet not quite familiar
either. It seemed to suggest a resemblance to somebody she knew. And in
the next thought she knew that the somebody was Ned Bannister.

The man spoke to Fraser, just then passing with a cup of coffee, and
Helen saw the two men approach. The stranger was coming to be formally
introduced.

“Shake hands with Mr. Holloway, Miss Messiter. He’s from up in the hill
country and he rode to our frolic. Y’u’ve got three guesses to figure
out what he’s made up as.”

“One will be quite enough, I think,” she answered coldly.

Fraser departed on his destination with the coffee and the newcomer sat
down on the bench beside her.

“One’s enough, is it?” he drawled smilingly.

“Quite, but I’m surprised so few came in costume. Why didn’t you? But I
suppose you had your reasons.”

“Didn’t I? I’m supposed to be a bad man from the hills.”

She swept him casually with an indifferent glance. “And isn’t that what
you are in real life?”

His sharp scrutiny chiseled into her. “What’s that?”

“You won’t mind if I forget and call you Mr. Bannister instead of Mr.
Holloway?”

She thought his counterfeit astonishment perfect.

“So I’m Ned Bannister, am I?”

Their eyes clashed.

“Aren’t you?”

She felt sure of it, and yet there was a lurking doubt. For there was
in his manner something indescribably more sinister than she had felt
in him on that occasion when she had saved his life. Then a debonair
recklessness had been the outstanding note, but now there was something
ribald and wicked in him.

“Since y’u put it as a question, common politeness demands an answer.
Ned Bannister is my name.”

“You are the terror of this country?”

“I shan’t be a terror to y’u, ma’am, if I can help it,” he smiled.

“But you are the man they call the king?”

“I have that honor.”

“_Honor?_”

At the sharp scorn of her accent he laughed.

“Do you mean that you are proud of your villainy?” she demanded.

“Y’u’ve ce’tainly got the teacher habit of asking questions,” he
replied with a laugh that was a sneer.

A shadow fell across them and a voice said quietly, “She didn’t wait to
ask any when she saved your life down in the coulée back of the Lazy
D.”

The shadow was Jim McWilliams’s, and its owner looked down at the man
beside the girl with steady, hostile eyes.

“Is this your put in, sir?” the other flashed back.

“Yes, seh, it is. The boys don’t quite like seeing your hardware so
prominent at a social gathering. In this community guns don’t come into
the house at a ranch dance. I’m a committee to mention the subject and
to collect your thirty-eights if y’u agree with us.”

“And if I don’t agree with you?”

“There’s all outdoors ready to receive y’u, seh. It would be a pity to
stay in the one spot where your welcome’s wore thin.”

“Still I may choose to stay.”

“Ce’tainly, but if y’u decide that way y’u better step out on the porch
and talk it over with us where there ain’t ladies present.”

“Isn’t this a costume dance? What’s the matter with my guns? I’m an
outlaw, ain’t I?”

“I don’t know whether y’u are or not, seh. If y’u say y’u are we’re
ready to take your word. The guns have to be shucked if y’u stay here.
They might go off accidental and scare the ladies.”

The man rose blackly. “I’ll remember this. If y’u knew who y’u were
getting so gay with—”

“I can guess, Mr. Holloway, the kind of an outfit y’u freight with, and
I expect I could put a handle to another name for you.”

“By God, if y’u dare to say—”

“I don’t dare, especially among so many ladies,” came McWilliams’s
jaunty answer.

The eyes of the two men gripped, after which Holloway swung on his heel
and swaggered defiantly out of the house.

Presently there came the sound of a pony’s feet galloping down the
road. It had not yet died away when Texas announced that the supper
intermission was over.

“Pardners for a quadrille. Ladies’ choice.”

The dance was on again full swing. The fiddlers were tuning up and
couples gathering for a quadrille. Denver came to claim Miss Messiter
for a partner. Apparently even the existence of the vanished Holloway
was forgotten. But Helen remembered it, and pondered over the affair
long after daylight had come and brought with it an end to the
festivities.




CHAPTER VI.
A PARTY CALL


The mistress of the Lazy D, just through with her morning visit to the
hospital in the bunkhouse, stopped to read the gaudy poster tacked to
the wall. It was embellished with the drawing of a placid rider astride
the embodiment of fury incarnate, under which was the legend: “Stick to
Your Saddle.”

BIG FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION AT GIMLET BUTTE.
ROPING AND BRONCO BUSTING CONTESTS FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD
AND BIG PRIZES,
Including $1,000 for the Best Rider and the Same for Best Roper. Cow
Pony Races, Ladies’ Races and Ladies’ Riding Contest, Fireworks,
AND FREE BARBECUE!!!!
EVERYBODY COME AND TURN YOUR WOLF LOOSE.


A sudden thud of pounding hoofs, a snatch of ragtime, and her foreman
swept up in a cloud of white dust. His pony came from a gallop to an
instant halt, and simultaneously Mac landed beside her, one hand
holding the wide-brimmed hat he had snatched off in his descent, the
other hitched by a casual thumb to the belt of his chaps.

She laughed. “You really did it very well.”

Mac blushed. He was still young enough to take pride in his picturesque
regalia, to prefer the dramatic way of doing a commonplace thing. But,
though he liked this girl’s trick of laughing at him with a perfectly
grave face out of those dark, long-lashed eyes, he would have liked it
better if sometimes they had given back the applause he thought his
little tricks merited.

“Sho! That’s foolishness,” he deprecated.

“I suppose they got you to sit for this picture;” and she indicated the
poster with a wave of her hand.

“That ain’t a real picture,” he explained, and when she smiled added,
“as of course y’u know. No hawss ever pitched that way—and the saddle
ain’t right. Fact is, it’s all wrong.”

“How did it come here? It wasn’t here last night.”

“I reckon Denver brought it from Slauson’s. He was ridin’ that country
yesterday, and as the boys was out of smokin’ he come home that way.”

“I suppose you’ll all go?”

“I reckon.”

“And you’ll ride?”

“I aim to sit in.”

“At the roping, too?”

“No, m’m. I ain’t so much with the rope. It takes a Mexican to snake a
rope.”

“Then I’ll be able to borrow only a thousand dollars from you to help
buy that bunch of young cows we were speaking about,” she mocked.

“Only a thousand,” he grinned. “And it ain’t a cinch I’ll win. There
are three or four straightup riders on this range. A fellow come from
the Hole-in-the-Wall and won out last year.”

“And where were you?”

“Oh, I took second prize,” he explained, with obvious indifference.

“Well, you had better get first this year. We’ll have to show them the
Lazy D hasn’t gone to sleep.”

“Sure thing,” he agreed.

“Has that buyer from Cheyenne turned up yet?” she asked, reverting to
business.

“Not yet. Do y’u want I should make the cut soon as he comes?”

“Don’t you think his price is a little low—twenty dollars from brand
up?”

“It’s a scrub bunch. We want to get rid of them, anyway. But you’re the
doctor,” he concluded slangily.

She thought a moment. “We’ll let him have them, but don’t make the cut
till I come back. I’m going to ride over to the Twin Buttes.”

His admiring eyes followed her as she went toward the pony that was
waiting saddled with the rein thrown to the ground. She carried her
slim, lithe figure with a grace, a lightness, that few women could have
rivaled. When she had swung to the saddle, she half-turned in her seat
to call an order to the foreman.

“I think, Mac, you had better run up those horses from Eagle Creek.
Have Denver and Missou look after them.”

“Sure, ma’am,” he said aloud; and to himself: “She’s ce’tainly a
thoroughbred. Does everything well she tackles. I never saw anything
like it. I’m a Chink if she doesn’t run this ranch like she had been at
it forty years. Same thing with her gasoline bronc. That pinto, too.
He’s got a bad eye for fair, but she makes him eat out of her hand. I
reckon the pinto is like the rest of us—clean mashed.” He put his arms
on the corral fence and grew introspective. “Blamed if I know what it
is about her. ’Course she’s a winner on looks, but that ain’t it alone.
I guess it’s on account of her being such a game little gentleman. When
she turns that smile loose on a fellow—well, there’s sure sunshine in
the air. And game—why, Ned Bannister ain’t gamer himself.”

McWilliams had climbed lazily to the top board of the fence. He was an
energetic youth, but he liked to do his thinking at his ease. Now, as
his gaze still followed its lodestar, he suddenly slipped from his seat
and ran forward, pulling the revolver from its scabbard as he ran. Into
his eyes had crept a tense alertness, the shining watchfulness of the
tiger ready for its spring.

The cause of the change in the foreman of the Lazy D was a simple one,
and on its face innocent enough. It was merely that a stranger had
swung in casually at the gate of the short stable lane, and was due to
meet Miss Messiter in about ten seconds. So far good enough. A dozen
travelers dropped in every day, but this particular one happened to be
Ned Bannister.

From the stable door a shot rang out. Bannister ducked and shouted
genially: “Try again.”

But Helen Messiter whirled her pony as on a half-dollar, and charged
down on the stable.

“Who fired that shot?” she demanded, her eyes blazing.

The horse-wrangler showed embarrassment. He had found time only to lean
the rifle against the wall.

“I reckon I did, ma’am. Y’u see—”

“Did you get my orders about this feud?” she interrupted crisply.

“Yes, ma’am, but—”

“Then you may call for your time. When I give my men orders I expect
them to obey.”

“I wouldn’t ’a’ shot if I’d knowed y’u was so near him. Y’u was behind
that summer kitchen,” he explained lamely.

“You only expect to obey orders when I’m in sight. Is that it?” she
asked hotly, and without waiting for an answer delivered her ultimatum.
“Well, I won’t have it. I run this ranch as long as I am its owner. Do
you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am. I hadn’t ought to have did it, but when I seen Bannister
it come over me I owed him a pill for the one he sent me last week down
in the coulée. So I up and grabbed the rifle and let him have it.”

“Then you may up and grab your trunk for Medicine Hill. Shorty will
drive you tomorrow.”

When she returned to her unexpected guest, Helen found him in
conversation with McWilliams. The latter’s gun had found again its
holster, but his brown, graceful hand hovered close to its butt.

“Seems like a long time since the Lazy D has been honored by a visit
from Mr. Bannister,” he was saying, with gentle irony.

“That’s right. So I have come to make up for lost time,” came
Bannister’s quiet retort.

Miss Messiter did not know much about Wyoming human nature in the raw,
but she had learned enough to be sure that the soft courtesy of these
two youths covered a stark courage that might leap to life any moment.
Wherefore she interposed.

“We’ll be pleased to show you over the place, Mr. Bannister. As it
happens, we are close to the hospital. Shall we begin there?”

Her cool, silken defiance earned a smile from the visitor. “All your
cases doing well, ma’am?”

“It’s very kind of you to ask. I suppose you take an interest because
they are _your_ cases, too, in a way of speaking?”

“Mine? Indeed!”

“Yes. If it were not for you I’m afraid our hospital would be empty.”

“It must be right pleasant to be nursed by Miss Messiter. I reckon the
boys are grateful to me for scattering my lead so promiscuous.”

“I heard one say he would like to lam your haid tenderly,” murmured
McWilliams.

“With a two-by-four, I suppose,” laughed Bannister.

“Shouldn’t wonder. But, looking y’u over casual, it occurs to me he
might get sick of his job befo’ he turned y’u loose,” McWilliams
admitted, with a glance of admiration at the clean power showing in the
other’s supple lines.

Nor could either the foreman or his mistress deny the tribute of their
respect to the bravado of this scamp who sat so jauntily his seat
regardless of what the next moment might bring forth. Three wounded men
were about the place, all presumably quite willing to get a clean shot
at him in the open. One of them had taken his chance already, and
missed. Their visitor had no warrant for knowing that a second might
not any instant try his luck with better success. Yet he looked every
inch the man on horseback, no whit disturbed, not the least conscious
of any danger. Tall, spare, broad shouldered, this berry-brown young
man, crowned with close-cropped curls, sat at the gates of the enemy
very much at his insolent ease.

“I came over to pay my party call,” he explained.

“It really wasn’t necessary. A run in the machine is not a formal
function.”

“Maybe not in Kalamazoo.”

“I thought perhaps you had come to get my purse and the sixty-three
dollars,” she derided.

“No, ma’am; nor yet to get that bunch of cows I was going to rustle
from you to buy an auto. I came to ask you to go riding with me.”

The audacity of it took her breath. Of all the outrageous things she
had ever heard, this was the cream. An acknowledged outlaw, engaged in
feud with her retainers over that deadly question of the run of the
range, he had sauntered over to the ranch where lived a dozen of his
enemies, three of them still scarred with his bullets, merely to ask
her to go riding with him. The magnificence of his bravado almost
obliterated its impudence. Of course she would not think of going. The
idea! But her eyes glowed with appreciation of his courage, not the
less because the consciousness of it was so conspicuously absent from
his manner.

“I think not, Mr. Bannister” and her face almost imperceptibly
stiffened. “I don’t go riding with strangers, nor with men who shoot my
boys. And I’ll give you a piece of advice, sir. That is, to burn the
wind back to your home. Otherwise I won’t answer for your life. My
punchers don’t love you, and I don’t know how long I can keep them from
you. You’re not wanted here any more than you were at the dance the
other evening.”

McWilliams nodded. “That’s right. Y’u better roll your trail, seh; and
if y’u take my advice, you’ll throw gravel lively. I seen two of the
boys cutting acrost that pasture five minutes ago. They looked as if
they might be haided to cut y’u off, and I allow it may be their night
to howl. Miss Messiter don’t want to be responsible for y’u getting
lead poisoning.”

“Indeed!” Their visitor looked politely interested. “This solicitude
for me is very touching. I observe that both of you are carefully
blocking me from the bunkhouse in order to prevent another
practice-shot. If I can’t persuade you to join me in a ride, Miss
Messiter, I reckon I’ll go while I’m still unpunctured.” He bowed, and
gathered the reins for departure.

“One moment! Mr. McWilliams and I are going with you,” the girl
announced.

“Changed your mind? Think you’ll take a little _pasear_, after all?”

“I don’t want to be responsible for your killing. We’ll see you safe
off the place,” she answered curtly.

The foreman fell in on one side of Bannister, his mistress on the
other. They rode in close formation, to lessen the chance of an
ambuscade. Bannister alone chatted at his debonair ease, ignoring the
responsibility they felt for his safety.

“I got my ride, after all,” he presently chuckled. “To be sure, I
wasn’t expecting Mr. McWilliams to chaperon us. But that’s an added
pleasure.”

“Would it be an added pleasure to get bumped off to kingdom come?”
drawled the foreman, giving a reluctant admiration to his aplomb.

“Thinking of those willing boys of yours again, are you?” laughed
Bannister. “They’re ce’tainly a heap prevalent with their hardware, but
their hunting don’t seem to bring home any meat.”

“By the way, how _is_ your ankle, Mr. Bannister? I forgot to ask.” This
shot from the young woman.

He enjoyed it with internal mirth. “They did happen on the target that
time,” he admitted. “Oh, it’s getting along fine, but I aim to do most
of my walking on horseback for a while.”

They swept past the first dangerous grove of cottonwoods in safety, and
rounded the boundary fence corner.

“They’re in that bunch of pines over there,” said the foreman, after a
single sweep of his eyes in that direction.

“Yes, I see they are. You oughtn’t to let your boys wear red bandannas
when they go gunning, Miss Messiter. It’s an awful careless habit.”

Helen herself could see no sign of life in the group of pines, but she
knew their keen, trained eyes had found what hers could not. Riding
with one or another of her cowboys, she had often noticed how
infallibly they could read the country for miles around. A scattered
patch on a distant hillside, though it might be a half-hour’s ride from
them, told them a great deal more than seemed possible. To her the dark
spots sifted on that slope meant scrub underbrush, if there was any
meaning at all in them. But her riders could tell not only whether they
were alive, but could differentiate between sheep and cattle. Indeed,
McWilliams could nearly always tell whether they were _her_ cattle or
not. He was unable to explain to her how he did it. By a sort of
instinct, she supposed.

The pines were negotiated in safety, and on the part of the men with a
carelessness she could not understand. For after they had passed there
was a spot between her shoulder-blades that seemed to tingle in
expectation of a possible bullet boring its way through. But she would
have died rather than let them know how she felt.

Perhaps Bannister understood, however, for he remarked casually: “I
wouldn’t be ambling past so leisurely if I was riding alone. It makes a
heap of difference who your company is, too. Those punchers wouldn’t
take a chance at me now for a million dollars.”

“No, they’re some haidstrong, but they ain’t plumb locoed,” agreed Mac.

Fifteen minutes later Helen drew up at the line corner. “We’ll part
company here, Mr. Bannister. I don’t think there is any more danger
from my men.”

“Before we part there is something I want to say. I hold that a man has
as much right to run sheep on these hills as cows. It’s government
land, and neither one of us owns it. It’s bound to be a case of the
survival of the fittest. If sheep are hardier and more adapted to the
country, then cows have got to _vamos_. That’s nature, as it looks to
me. The buffalo and the antelope have gone, and I guess cows have got
to take their turn.”

Her scornful eyes burned him. “You came to tell me that, did you? Well,
I don’t believe a word of it. I’ll not yield my rights without a fight.
You may depend on that.”

“Here, too,” nodded her foreman. “I’m with my boss clear down the line.
And as soon as she lets me turn loose my six-gun, you’ll hear it pop,
seh.”

“I have not a doubt of it, Mr. McWilliams,” returned the sheepman
blithely. “In the meantime I was going to say that though most of my
interests are in sheep instead of cattle—”

“I thought most of your interests were in other people’s property,”
interrupted the young woman.

“It goes into sheep ultimately,” he smiled. “Now, what I am trying to
get at is this: I’m in debt to you a heap, Miss Messiter, and since I’m
not all yellow cur, I intend to play fair with you. I have ordered my
sheep back across the deadline. You can have this range to yourself for
your cattle. The fight’s off so far as we personally are concerned.”

A hint of deeper color touched her cheeks. Her manner had been cavalier
at best; for the most part frankly hostile; and all the time the man
was on an errand of good-will. Certainly he had scored at her expense,
and she was ashamed of herself.

“Y’u mean that you’re going to respect the deadline? asked Mac in
surprise.

“I didn’t say quite that,” explained the sheepman. “What I said was
that I meant to keep on my side of it so far as the Lazy D cattle are
concerned. I’ll let your range alone.”

“But y’u mean to cross it down below where the Bar Double-E cows run?”

Bannister’s gay smile touched the sardonic face. “Do you invite the
public to examine your hand when you sit into a game of poker, Mr.
McWilliams?”

“You’re dead right. It’s none of my business what y’u do so long as y’u
keep off our range,” admitted the foreman. “And next time the
conversation happens on Mr. Bannister, I’ll put in my little say-so
that he ain’t all black.”

“That’s very good of you, sir,” was the other’s ironical retort.

The girl’s gauntleted hand offered itself impulsively. “We can’t be
friends under existing circumstances, Mr. Bannister. But that does not
alter the fact that I owe you an apology. You came as a peace envoy,
and one of my men shot at you. Of course, he did not understand the
reason why you came, but that does not matter. I did not know your
reason myself, and I know I have been very inhospitable.”

“Are you shaking hands with Ned Bannister the sheepman or Ned Bannister
the outlaw?” asked the owner of that name, with a queer little smile
that seemed to mock himself.

“With Ned Bannister the gentleman. If there is another side to him I
don’t know it personally.”

He flushed underneath the tan, but very plainly with pleasure. “Your
opinions are right contrary to Hoyle, ma’am. Aren’t you aware that a
sheepman is the lowest thing that walks? Ask Mr. McWilliams.”

“I have known stockmen of that opinion, but—”

The foreman’s sentence was never finished. From a clump of bushes a
hundred yards away came the crack of a rifle. A bullet sang past,
cutting a line that left on one side of it Bannister, on the other Miss
Messiter and her foreman. Instantly the two men slid from their horses
on the farther side, dragged down the young woman behind the cover of
the broncos, and arranged the three ponies so as to give her the
greatest protection available. Somehow the weapons that garnished them
had leaped to their hands before their feet touched the ground.

“That coyote isn’t one of our men. I’ll back that opinion high,” said
McWilliams promptly.

“Who is he?” the girl whispered.

“That’s what we’re going to find out pretty soon,” returned Bannister
grimly. “Chances are it’s me he is trying to gather. Now, I’m going to
make a break for that cottonwood. When I go, you better run up a white
handkerchief and move back from the firing-line. Turn Buck loose when
you leave. He’ll stay around and come when I whistle.”

He made a run for it, zigzagging through the sage-brush so swiftly as
to offer the least certain mark possible for a sharpshooter. Yet twice
the rifle spoke before he reached the cottonwood.

Meanwhile Mac had fastened the handkerchief of his mistress on the end
of a switch he had picked up and was edging out of range. His tense,
narrowed gaze never left the bush-clump from which the shots were being
pumped, and he was careful during their retreat to remain on the danger
side of the road, in order to cover Helen.

“I guess Bannister’s right. He don’t want us, whoever he is.”

And even as he murmured it, the wind of a bullet lifted his hat from
his head. He picked it up and examined it. The course of the bullet was
marked by a hole in the wide brim, and two more in the side and crown.

“He ce’tainly ventilated it proper. I reckon, ma’am, we’ll make a run
for it. Lie low on the pinto’s neck, with your haid on the off side.
That’s right. Let him out.”

A mile and a half farther up the road Mac reined in, and made the
Indian peace-sign. Two dejected figures came over the hill and resolved
themselves into punchers of the Lazy D. Each of them trailed a rifle by
his side.

“You’re a fine pair of ring-tailed snorters, ain’t y’u?” jeered the
foreman. “Got to get gay and go projectin’ round on the shoot after y’u
got your orders to stay hitched. Anything to say for yo’selves?”

If they had it was said very silently.

“Now, Miss Messiter is going to pass it up this time, but from now on
y’u don’t go off on any private massacrees while y’u punch at the Lazy
D. Git that? This hyer is the last call for supper in the dining-cah.
If y’u miss it, y’u’ll feed at some other chuckhouse.” Suddenly the
drawl of his sarcasm vanished. His voice carried the ring of peremptory
command. “Jim, y’u go back to the ranch with Miss Messiter, _and keep
your eyes open_. Missou, I need y’u. We’re going back. I reckon y’u
better hang on to the stirrup, for we got to travel some. _Adios,
señorita!_”

He was off at a slow lope on the road he had just come, the other man
running beside the horse. Presently he stopped, as if the arrangement
were not satisfactory; and the second man swung behind him on the pony.
Later, when she turned in her saddle, she saw that they had left the
road and were cutting across the plain, as if to take the sharpshooter
in the rear.

Her troubled thoughts stayed with her even after she had reached the
ranch. She was nervously excited, keyed up to a high pitch; for she
knew that out on the desert, within a mile or two of her, men were
stalking each other with life or death in the balance as the price of
vigilance, skill and an unflawed steel nerve. While she herself had
been in danger, she had been mistress of her fear. But now she could do
nothing but wait, after ordering out such reinforcements as she could
recruit without delay; and the inaction told upon her swift, impulsive
temperament. Once, twice, the wind brought to her a faint sound.

She had been pacing the porch, but she stopped, white as a sheet.
Behind those faint explosions might lie a sinister tragedy. Her mind
projected itself into a score of imaginary possibilities. She listened,
breathless in her tensity, but no further echo of that battlefield
reached her. The sun still shone warmly on brown Wyoming. She looked
down into a rolling plain that blurred in the distance from knobs and
flat spaces into a single stretch that included a thousand rises and
depressions. That roll of country teemed with life, but the steady,
inexorable sun beat down on what seemed a shining, primeval waste of
space. Yet somewhere in that space the tragedy was being
determined—unless it had been already enacted.

She wanted to scream. The very stillness mocked her. So, too, did the
clicking windmill, with its monotonous regularity. Her pony still stood
saddled in the yard. She knew that her place was at home, and she
fought down a dozen times the tremendous impulse to mount and fly to
the field of combat.

She looked at her watch. How slowly the minutes dragged! It could not
be only five minutes since she had looked last time. Again she fell to
pacing the long west porch, and interrupted herself a dozen times to
stop and listen.

“I can bear it no longer,” she told herself at last, and in another
moment was in the saddle plying her pinto with the quirt.

But before she reached the first cottonwoods she saw them coming. Her
glasses swept the distant group, and with a shiver she made out the
dreadful truth. They were coming slowly, carrying something between
them. The girl did not need to be told that the object they were
bringing home was their dead or wounded.

A figure on horseback detached itself from the huddle of men and
galloped towards her. He was coming to break the news. But who was the
victim? Bannister or McWilliams she felt sure, by reason of the sinking
heart in her; and then it came home that she would be hard hit if it
were either.

The approaching rider began to take distinct form through her glasses.
As he pounded forward she recognized him. It was the man nicknamed
Denver. The wind was blowing strongly from her to him, and while he was
still a hundred yards away she hurled her question.

His answer was lost in the wind sweep, but one word of it she caught.
That word was “Mac.”




CHAPTER VII.
THE MAN FROM THE SHOSHONE FASTNESSES


Though the sharpshooter’s rifle cracked twice during his run for the
cottonwood, the sheepman reached the tree in safety. He could dodge
through the brush as elusively as any man in Wyoming. It was a trick he
had learned on the whitewashed football gridiron. For in his buried
past this man had been the noted half-back of a famous college, and one
of his specialties had been running the ball back after a catch through
a broken field of opponents. The lesson that experience had then
thumped into him had since saved his life on more than one occasion.

Having reached the tree, Bannister took immediate advantage of the lie
of the ground to snake forward unobserved for another hundred feet.
There was a dip from the foot of the tree, down which he rolled into
the sage below. He wormed his way through the thick scrub brush to the
edge of a dry creek, into the bed of which he slid. Then swiftly, his
body bent beneath the level of the bank, he ran forward in the sand. He
moved noiselessly, eyes and ears alert to aid him, and climbed the bank
at a point where a live oak grew.

Warily he peeped out from behind its trunk and swept the plain for his
foe. Nothing was to be seen of him. Slowly and patiently his eyes again
went over the semi-circle before him, for where death may lurk behind
every foot of vegetation, every bump or hillock, the plainsman leaves
as little as may be to chance. No faintest movement could escape the
sheepman’s eyes, no least stir fail to apprise his ears. Yet for many
minutes he waited in vain, and the delay told him that he had to do
with a trained hunter rather than a mere reckless cow-puncher. For
somewhere in the rough country before him his enemy lay motionless,
every faculty alive to the least hint of his presence.

It was the whirring flight of a startled dove that told Bannister the
whereabouts of his foe. Two hundred yards from him the bird rose, and
the direction it took showed that the man must have been trailing
forward from the opposite quarter. The sheepman slipped back into the
dry creek bed, retraced his steps for about a stone-throw, and again
crawled up the bank.

For a long time he lay face down in the grass, his gaze riveted to the
spot where he knew his opponent to be hidden. A faint rustle not born
of the wind stirred the sage. Still Bannister waited. A less
experienced plainsman would have blazed away and exposed his own
position. But not this young man with the steel-wire nerves. Silent as
the coming of dusk, no breaking twig or displaced brush betrayed his
self-contained presence.

Something in the clump he watched wriggled forward and showed
indistinctly through an opening in the underscrub. He whipped his rifle
into position and fired twice. The huddled brown mass lurched forward
and disappeared.

“Wonder if I got him? Seems to me I couldn’t have missed clean,”
thought Bannister.

Silence as before, vast and unbroken.

A scramble of running feet tearing a path through the brush, a
crouching body showing darkly for an eyeflash, and then the pounding of
a horse’s retreating feet.

Bannister leaped up, ran lightly across the intervening space, and with
his repeater took a potshot at the galloping horseman.

“Missed!” he muttered, and at once gave a sharp whistle that brought
his pony to him on the trot. He vaulted to the saddle and gave chase.
It was rough going, but nothing in reason can stop a cow-pony. As sure
footed as a mountain goat, as good a climber almost as a cat, Buck
followed the flying horseman over perilous rock rims and across
deep-cut creek beds. Pantherlike he climbed up the steep creek sides
without hesitation, for the round-up had taught him never to falter at
stiff going so long as his rider put him at it.

It was while he was clambering out of the sheer sides of a wash that
Bannister made a discovery. The man he pursued was wounded. Something
in the manner of the fellow’s riding had suggested this to him, but a
drop of blood splashed on a stone that happened to meet his eye made
the surmise a certainty.

He was gaining now—not fast, almost imperceptibly, but none the less
surely. He could see the man looking over his shoulder, once, twice,
and then again, with that hurried, fearful glance that measures the
approach of retribution. Barring accidents, the man was his.

But the unforeseen happened. Buck stepped in the hole of a prairie dog
and went down. Over his head flew the rider like a stone from a
catapult.

How long Ned Bannister lay unconscious he never knew. But when he came
to himself it was none too soon. He sat up dizzily and passed his hand
over his head. Something had happened.

What was it? Oh, yes, he had been thrown from his horse. A wave of
recollection passed over him, and his mind was clear once more.
Presently he got to his feet and moved rather uncertainly toward Buck,
for the horse was grazing quietly a few yards from him.

But half way to the pony he stopped. Voices, approaching by way of the
bed of Dry Creek, drifted to him.

“He must ’a’ turned and gone back. Mebbe he guessed we was there.”

And a voice that Bannister knew, one that had a strangely penetrant,
cruel ring of power through the drawl, made answer: “Judd said before
he fainted he was sure the man was Ned Bannister. I’d ce’tainly like to
meet up with my beloved cousin right now and even up a few old scores.
By God, I’d make him sick before I finished with him!”

“I’ll bet y’u would, Cap,” returned the other, admiringly. “Think we’d
better deploy here and beat up the scenery a few as we go?”

There are times when the mind works like lightning, flashes its
messages on the wings of an electric current. For Bannister this was
one of them. The whole situation lighted for him plainly as if it had
been explained for an hour.

His cousin had been out with a band of his cut-throats on some errand,
and while returning to the fastnesses of the Shoshone Mountains had
stopped to noon at a cow spring three or four miles from the Lazy D.
Judd Morgan, whom he knew to be a lieutenant of the notorious bandit,
had ridden toward the ranch in the hope of getting an opportunity to
vent his anger against its mistress or some of her men. While pursuing
the renegade Bannister had stumbled into a hornet’s nest, and was in
imminent danger of being stung to death. Even now the last speaker was
scrambling up the bank toward him.

The sheepman had to choose between leaving his rifle and immediate
flight. The latter was such a forlorn hope that he gave up Buck for the
moment, and ran back to the place where his repeating Winchester had
fallen. Without stopping he scooped the rifle up as he passed. In his
day he had been a famous sprinter, and he scudded now for dear life. It
was no longer a question of secrecy. The sound of men breaking their
hurried way through the heavy brush of the creek bank came crisply to
him. A voice behind shouted a warning, and from not a hundred yards in
front of him came an answering shout. Hemmed in from the fore and the
rear, he swung off at a right angle. An open stretch lay before him,
but he had to take his desperate chance without cover. Anything was
better than to be trapped like a wild beast driven by the beaters to
the guns.

Across the bare, brown mesa he plunged; and before he had taken a dozen
steps the first rifle had located its prey and was sniping at him. He
had perhaps a hundred yards to cover ere the mesa fell away into a
hollow, where he might find temporary protection in the scrub pines.
And now a second marksman joined himself to the first. But he was going
fast, already had covered half the distance, and it is no easy thing to
bring down a live, dodging target.

Again the first gun spoke, and scored another miss, whereat a mocking,
devilish laugh rang out in the sunshine.

“Y’u boys splash a heap of useless lead around the horizon. I reckon
Cousin Ned’s my meat. Y’u see, I get him in the flapper without
spoiling him complete.” And at the word he flung the rifle to his
shoulder and fired with no apparent aim.

The running man doubled up like a cottontail, but found his feet again
in an instant, though one arm hung limp by his side. He was within a
dozen feet of the hilldrop and momentary safety.

“Shall I take him, Cap?” cried one of the men.

“No; he’s mine.” The rifle smoked once more and again the runner went
down. But this time he plunged headlong down the slope and out of
sight.

The outlaw chief turned on his heel. “I reckon he’ll not run any more
to-day. Bring him into camp and we’ll take him along with us,” he said
carelessly, and walked away to his horse in the creek bed.

Two of the men started forward, but they stopped half way, as if rooted
to the ground. For a galloping horseman suddenly drew up at the very
point for which they were starting. He leaped to the ground and warned
them back with his rifle. While he covered them a second man rode up
and lifted Bannister to his saddle.

“Ready, Mac,” he gave the word, and both horses disappeared with their
riders over the brow of the hill. When the surprised desperadoes
recovered themselves and reached that point the rescuers had
disappeared in the heavy brush.

The alarm was at once given, and their captain, cursing them in a
raucous bellow for their blunder, ordered immediate pursuit. It was
some little time before the trail of the fugitives was picked up, but
once discovered they were over hauled rapidly.

“We’re not going to get out without swapping lead,” McWilliams admitted
anxiously. “I wisht y’u wasn’t hampered with that load, but I reckon
I’ll have to try to stand them off alone.”

“We bucked into a slice of luck when I opened on his bronc mavericking
around alone. Hadn’t been for that we could never have made it,” said
Missou, who never crossed a bridge until he came to it.

“We haven’t made it yet, old hoss, not by a long mile, and two more on
top o’ that. They’re beginning to pump lead already. Huh! Got to drap
your pills closer’n that ’fore y’u worry me.”

“I believe he’s daid, anyway,” said Missou presently, peering down into
the white face of the unconscious man.

“Got to hang onto the remains, anyhow, for Miss Helen. Those coyotes
are too much of the wolf breed to leave him with them.”

“Looks like they’re gittin’ the aim some better,” equably remarked the
other a minute later, when a spurt of sand flew up in front of him.

“They’re ce’tainly crowding us. I expaict I better send them a
‘How-de-do?’ so as to discourage them a few.” He took as careful aim as
he could on the galloping horse, but his bullet went wide.

“They’re gaining like sixty. It’s my offhand opinion we better stop at
that bunch of trees and argue some with them. No use buck-jumpin’ along
to burn the wind while they drill streaks of light through us.”

“All right. Take the trees. Y’u’ll be able to get into the game some
then.”

They debouched from the road to the little grove and slipped from their
horses.

“Deader’n hell,” murmured Missou, as he lifted the limp body from his
horse. “But I guess we’ll pack what’s left back to the little lady at
the Lazy D.”

The leader of the pursuers halted his men just out of range and came
forward alone, holding his right hand up in the usual signal of peace.
In appearance he was not unlike Ned Bannister. There was the same long,
slim, tiger build, with the flowing muscles rippling easily beneath the
loose shirt; the same effect of power and dominance, the same clean,
springy stride. The pose of the head, too, even the sweep of salient
jaw, bore a marked resemblance. But similarity ceased at the
expression. For instead of frankness there lurked here that hint of the
devil of strong passion uncontrolled. He was the victim of his own
moods, and in the space of an hour one might, perhaps, read in that
face cold cunning, cruel malignity, leering ribaldry, as well as the
hard-bitten virtues of unflinching courage and implacable purpose.

“I reckon you’re near enough,” suggested Mac, when the man had
approached to within a hundred feet of the tree clump.

“_Y’u’re_ drawing the dead-line,” the other acknowledged, indolently.
“It won’t take ten words to tell y’u what I want and mean to have. I’m
giving y’u two minutes to hand me over the body of Ned Bannister. If
y’u don’t see it that way I’ll come and make a lead mine of your whole
outfit.”

“Y’u can’t come too quick, seh. We’re here a-shootin’, and don’t y’u
forget it,” was McWilliams’s prompt answer.

The sinister face of the man from the Shoshones darkened. “Y’u’ve
signed your own death warrants,” he let out through set teeth, and at
the word swung on his heel.

“The ball’s about to open. Pardners for a waltz. Have a dust-cutter,
Mac, before she grows warm.”

The puncher handed over his flask, and the other held it before his eye
and appraised the contents in approved fashion. “Don’t mind if I do.
Here’s how!”

“How!” echoed Missou, in turn, and tipped up the bottle till the liquor
gurgled down his baked throat.

“He’s fanning out his men so as to, get us both at the front and back
door. Lucky there ain’t but four of them.”

“I guess we better lie back to back,” proposed Missou. “If our luck’s
good I reckon they’re going to have a gay time rushing this fort.”

A few desultory shots had already been dropped among the cottonwoods,
and returned by the defendants when Missou let out a yell of triumph.

“Glory Hallelujah! Here comes the boys splittin’ down the road
hell-for-leather. That lopsided, ring-tailed snorter of a hawss-thief
is gathering his wolves for a hike back to the tall timber. Feed me a
cigareet, Mac. I plumb want to celebrate.”

It was as the cow-puncher had said. Down the road a cloud of dust was
sweeping toward them, in the centre of which they made out three
hardriding cowboys from the ranch. Farther back, in the distance, was
another dust whirl. The outlaw chief’s hard, vigilant gaze swept over
the reinforcements! and decided instantly that the game had gone
against him for the present. He whistled shrilly twice, and began a
slow retreat toward the hills. The miscreants flung a few defiant shots
at the advancing cowmen, and disappeared, swallowed up in the earth
swells.

The homeward march was a slow one, for Bannister had begun to show
signs of consciousness and it was necessary to carry him with extreme
care. While they were still a mile from the ranch house the pinto and
its rider could be seen loping toward them.

“Ride forward, Denver, and tell Miss Helen we’re coming. Better have
her get everything fixed to doctor him soon as we get there. Give him
the best show in the world, and he’ll still be sailing awful close to
the divide. I’ll bet a hundred plunks he’ll cash in, anyway.”

“_Done!_”

The voice came faintly from the improvised litter. Mac turned with a
start, for he had not known that Bannister was awake to his
surroundings. The man appeared the picture of helplessness, all the
lusty power and vigor stricken out of him; but his indomitable spirit
still triumphed over the physical collapse, for as the foreman looked a
faint smile touched the ashen lips. It seemed to say: “Still in the
ring, old man.”




CHAPTER VIII.
IN THE LAZY D HOSPITAL


Helen’s first swift glance showed that the wounded man was Bannister.
She turned in crisp command to her foreman.

“Have him taken to my room and put to bed there. We have no time to
prepare another. And send one of the boys on your best horse for a
doctor.”

They carried the limp figure in with rough tenderness and laid him in
the bed. McWilliams unbuckled the belt and drew off the chaps; then,
with the help of Denver, undressed the wounded man and covered him with
quilts. So Helen found him when she came in to attend his wounds,
bringing with her such things as she needed for her task. Mrs. Winslow,
the housekeeper, assisted her, and the foreman stayed to help, but it
was on the mistress of the ranch that the responsibility of saving him
fell. Missou was already galloping to Bear Creek for a doctor, but the
girl knew that the battle must be fought and the issue decided before
he could arrive.

He had fallen again into insensibility and she rinsed and dressed his
wounds, working with the quiet impersonal certainty of touch that did
not betray the inner turmoil of her soul. But McWilliams, his eyes
following her every motion and alert to anticipate her needs, saw that
the color had washed from her face and that she was controlling herself
only to meet the demands of the occasion.

As she was finishing, the sheepman opened his eyes and looked at her.

“You are not to speak or ask questions. You have been wounded and we
are going to take care of you,” she ordered.

“That’s right good of y’u. I ce’tainly feel mighty trifling.” His wide
eyes traveled round till they fell on the foreman. “Y’u see I came back
to help fill your hospital. Am I there now? Where am I?” His gaze
returned to Helen with the sudden irritation of the irresponsible sick.

“You are at the Lazy D, in my room. You are not to worry about
anything. Everything’s all right.”

He took her at her word and his eyes closed; but presently he began to
mutter unconnected words and phrases. When his lids lifted again there
was a wilder look in his eyes, and she knew that delirium was
beginning. At intervals it lasted for long; indeed, until the doctor
came next morning in the small hours. He talked of many things Helen
Messiter did not understand, of incidents in his past life, some of
them jerky with the excitement of a tense moment, others apparently
snatches of talk with relatives. It was like the babbling of a child,
irrelevant and yet often insistent. He would in one breath give orders
connected with the lambing of his sheep, in the next break into
football talk, calling out signals and imploring his men to hold them
or to break through and get the ball. Once he broke into curses, but
his very oaths seemed to come from a clean heart and missed the
vulgarity they might have had. Again his talk rambled inconsequently
over his youth, and he would urge himself or someone else of the same
name to better life.

“Ned, Ned, remember your mother,” he would beseech. “She asked me to
look after you. Don’t go wrong.” Or else it would be, “Don’t disgrace
the general, Ned. You’ll break his heart if you blacken the old name.”
To this theme he recurred repeatedly, and she noticed that when he
imagined himself in the East his language was correct and his
intonation cultured, though still with a suggestion of a Southern
softness.

But when he spoke of her his speech lapsed into the familiar drawl of
Cattleland. “I ain’t such a sweep as y’u think, girl. Some day I’ll
sure tell y’u all about it, and how I have loved y’u ever since y’u
scooped me up in your car. You’re the gamest little lady! To see y’u
come a-sailin’ down after me, so steady and businesslike, not turning a
hair when the bullets hummed—I sure do love y’u, Helen.” And then he
fell upon her first name and called her by it a hundred times softly to
himself.

This happened when she was alone with him, just before the doctor came.
She heard it with starry eyes and with a heart that flushed for joy a
warmer color into her cheeks. Brushing back the short curls, she kissed
his damp forehead. It was in the thick of the battle, before he had
weathered that point where the issues of life and death pressed
closely, and even in the midst of her great fears it brought her
comfort. She was to think often of it later, and always the memory was
to be music in her heart. Even when she denied her love for him,
assured herself it was impossible she could care for so shameful a
villain, even then it was a sweet torture to allow herself the luxury
of recalling his broken delirious phrases. At the very worst he could
not be as bad as they said; some instinct told her this was impossible.
His fearless devil-may-care smile, his jaunty, gallant bearing, these
pleaded against the evidence for him. And yet was it conceivable that a
man of spirit, a gentleman by training at least, would let himself lie
under the odium of such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled
thoughts fought this profitless conflict for days. Nor could she
dismiss it from her mind. Even after he began to mend she was still on
the rack. For in some snatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the
man seemed to glow in his face, poignant remembrance would stab her
with recollection of the difference between what he was and what he
seemed to be.

One of the things that had been a continual surprise to Helen was the
short time required by these deep-cheated and clean-blooded Westerners
to recover from apparently serious wounds. It was scarce more than two
weeks since Bannister had filled the bunkhouse with wounded men, and
already two of them were back at work and the third almost fit for
service. For perhaps three days the sheepman’s life hung in the
balance, after which his splendid constitution and his outdoor life
began to tell. The thermometer showed that the fever had slipped down a
notch, and he was now sleeping wholesomely a good part of his time.
Altogether, unless for some unseen contingency, the doctor prophesied
that the sheepman was going to upset the probabilities and get well.

“Which merely shows, ma’am, what is possible when you give a sound man
twenty-four hours a day in our hills for a few years,” he added.
“Thanks to your nursing he’s going to shave through by the narrowest
margin possible. I told him to-day that he owed his life to you, Miss
Messiter.”

“I don’t think you need have told him that Doctor,” returned that young
woman, not a little vexed at him, “especially since you have just been
telling me that he owes it to Wyoming air and his own soundness of
constitution.”

When she returned to the sickroom to give her patient his medicine he
wanted to tell her what the doctor had said, but she cut him off
ruthlessly and told him not to talk.

“Mayn’t I even say ‘Thank you?’” he wanted to know.

“No; you talk far too much as it is.”

He smiled “All right. Y’u sit there in that chair, where I can see y’u
doing that fancywork and I’ll not say a word. It’ll keep, all right,
what I want to say.”

“I notice you keep talking,” she told him, dryly.

“Yes, ma’am. Y’u had better have let me say what I wanted to, but I’ll
be good now.”

He fell asleep watching her, and when he awoke she was still sitting
there, though it was beginning to grow dark. He spoke before she knew
he was awake.

“I’m going to get well, the doctor thinks.”

“Yes, he told me,” she answered.

“Did he tell y’u it was your nursing saved me?”

“Please don’t think about that.”

“What am I to think about? I owe y’u a heap, and it keeps piling up. I
reckon y’u do it all because it’s your Christian duty?” he demanded.

“It is my duty, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t, though I expaict Bighorn County will forget to
give y’u a unanimous vote of thanks for doing it. I asked if y’u did it
because it was your duty?”

“The reason doesn’t matter so that I do it,” she answered, steadily.

“Reasons matter some, too, though they ain’t as important as actions
out in this country. Back in Boston they figure more, and since y’u
used to go to school back there y’u hadn’t ought to throw down your
professor of ethics.”

“Don’t you think you have talked enough for the present?” she smiled,
and added: “If I make you talk whenever I sit beside you I shall have
to stay away.”

“That’s where y’u’ve ce’tainly got the drop on me, ma’am. I’m a clam
till y’u give the word.”

Before a week he was able to sit up in a chair for an hour or two, and
soon after could limp into the living room with the aid of a walking
stick and his hostess. Under the tan he still wore an interesting
pallor, but there could be no question that he was on the road to
health.

“A man doesn’t know what he’s missing until he gets shot up and is
brought to the Lazy D hospital, so as to let Miss Messiter exercise her
Christian duty on him,” he drawled, cheerfully, observing the sudden
glow on her cheek brought by the reference to his unanswered question.

He made the lounge in the big sunny window his headquarters. From it he
could look out on some of the ranch activities when she was not with
him, could watch the line riders as they passed to and fro and command
a view of one of the corrals. There was always, too, the turquoise sky,
out of which poured a flood of light on the roll of hilltops. Sometimes
he read to himself, but he was still easily tired, and preferred
usually to rest. More often she read aloud to him while he lay back
with his leveled eyes gravely on her till the gentle, cool abstraction
she affected was disturbed and her perplexed lashes rose to reproach
the intensity of his gaze.

She was of those women who have the heavenborn faculty of making home
of such fortuitous elements as are to their hands. Except her piano and
such knickknacks as she had brought in a single trunk she had had to
depend upon the resources of the establishment to which she had come,
but it is wonderful how much can be done with some Navajo rugs, a
bearskin, a few bits of Indian pottery and woven baskets and a
judicious arrangement of scenic photographs. In a few days she would
have her pictures from Kalamazoo, pending which her touch had
transformed the big living room from a cheerless barn into a spot that
was a comfort to the eye and heart. To the wounded man who lay there
slowly renewing the blood he had lost the room was the apotheosis of
home, less, perhaps, by reason of what it was in itself than because it
was the setting for her presence—for her grave, sympathetic eyes, the
sound of her clear voice, the light grace of her motion. He rejoiced in
the delightful intimacy the circumstances made necessary. To hear
snatches of joyous song and gay laughter even from a distance, to watch
her as she came in and out on her daily tasks, to contest her opinions
of books and life and see how eagerly she defended them; he wondered
himself at the strength of the appeal these simple things made to him.
Already he was dreading the day when he must mount his horse and ride
back into the turbulent life from which she had for a time, snatched
him.

“I’ll hate to go back to sheepherding,” he told her one day at lunch,
looking at her across a snow-white tablecloth upon which were a service
of shining silver, fragile china teacups and plates stamped Limoges.

He was at the moment buttering a delicious French roll and she was
daintily pouring tea from an old family heirloom. The contrast between
this and the dust and the grease of a midday meal at the end of a
“chuck wagon” lent accent to his smiling lamentation.

“A lot of sheepherding _you_ do,” she derided.

“A shepherd has to look after his sheep, y’u know.”

“You herd sheep just about as much as I punch cows.”

“I have to herd my herders, anyhow, and that keeps me on the move.”

“I’m glad there isn’t going to be any more trouble between you and the
Lazy D. And that reminds me of another thing. I’ve often wonered who
those men could have been that attacked you the day you were hurt.”

She had asked the question almost carelessly, without any thought that
this might be something he wished to conceal, but she recognized her
mistake by the wariness that filmed his eyes instantly.

“Room there for a right interesting guessing contest,” he replied.

“_You_ wouldn’t need to guess,” she charged, on swift impulse.

“Meaning that I know?”

“You do know. You can’t deny that you now.”

“Well, say that I know?”

“Aren’t you going to tell?”

He shook his head. “Not just yet. I’ve got private reasons for keeping
it quiet a while.”

“I’m sure they are creditable to you,” came her swift ironic retort.

“Sure,” he agreed, whimsically. “I must live up to the professional
standard. Honor among thieves, y’u know.”




CHAPTER IX.
MISS DARLING ARRIVES


Miss Messiter clung to civilization enough, at least, to prefer that
her chambermaid should be a woman rather than a Chinese. It did not
suit her preconceived idea of the proper thing that Lee Ming should
sweep floors, dust bric-a-brac, and make the beds. To see him
slosh-sloshing around in his felt slippers made her homesick for
Kalamazoo. There were other reasons why the proprieties would be better
served by having another woman about the place; reasons that had to do
with the chaperone system that even in the uncombed West make its
claims upon unmarried young women of respectability. She had with her
for the present fourteen-year-old Ida Henderson, but this arrangement
was merely temporary.

Wherefore on the morning after her arrival Helen had sent two letters
back to “the States.” One of these had been to Mrs. Winslow, a widow of
fifty-five, inviting her to come out on a business basis as housekeeper
of the Lazy D. The buxom widow had loved Helen since she had been a
toddling baby, and her reply was immediate and enthusiastic. Eight days
later she had reported in person. The second letter bore the
affectionate address of Nora Darling, Detroit, Michigan. This also in
time bore fruit at the ranch in a manner worthy of special mention.

It was the fourth day after Ned Bannister had been carried back to the
Lazy D that Helen Messiter came out to the porch of the house with a
letter in her hand. She found her foreman sitting on the steps waiting
for her, but he got up as soon as he heard the fall of her light
footsteps behind him.

“You sent for me, ma’am?” he asked, hat in hand.

“Yes; I want you to drive into Gimlet Butte and bring back a person
whom you’ll find at the Elk House waiting for you. I had rather you
would go yourself, because I know you’re reliable.”

“Thank you, ma’am. How will I know him?”

“It’s a woman—a spinster. She’s coming to help Mrs. Winslow. Inquire
for Miss Darling. She isn’t used to jolting two days in a rig, but I
know you will be careful of her.”

“I’ll surely be as careful of the old lady as if she was my own
mother.”

The mistress of the ranch smothered a desire to laugh.

“I’m sure you will. At her age she may need a good deal of care. Be
certain you take rug enough.”

“I’ll take care of her the best I know how. Expect she’s likely
rheumatic, but I’ll wrop her up till she looks like a Cheyenne squaw
when tourist is trying to get a free shoot at her with camera.”

“Please do. I want her to get a good impression of Wyoming so that she
will stay. I don’ know about the rheumatism, but you might ask her.”

There were pinpoints of merriment behind the guileless innocence of her
eyes, but they came to the surface only after the foreman had departed.

McWilliams ordered a team of young horse hitched, and presently set out
on his two day journey to Gimlet Butte. He reached that town in good
season, left the team at a corral and walked back to the Elk House. The
white dust of the plains was heavy on him, from the bandanna that
loosely embraced the brown throat above the flannel shirt to the
encrusted boots but through it the good humor of his tanned face smiled
fraternally on a young woman he passes at the entrance to the hotel.
Her gay smile met his cordially, and she was still in his mind while he
ran his eye down the register in search of the name he wanted. There it
was—Miss Nora Darling, Detroit, Michigan—in the neatest of little round
letters, under date of the previous day’s arrivals.

“Is Miss Darling in?” asked McWilliams of the half-grown son of the
landlady who served in lieu of clerk and porter.

“Nope! Went out a little while ago. Said to tell anybody to wait that
asked for her.”

Mac nodded, relieved to find that duty had postponed itself long enough
for him to pursue the friendly smile that had not been wasted on him a
few seconds before. He strolled out to the porch and decided at once
that he needed a cigar more than anything else on earth. He was helped
to a realization of his need by seeing the owner of the smile disappear
in an adjoining drug store.

She was beginning on a nut sundae when the puncher drifted in. She
continued to devote even her eyes to its consumption, while the foreman
opened a casual conversation with the drug clerk and lit his cigar.

“How are things coming in Gimlet Butte?” he asked, by way of prolonging
his stay rather than out of desire for information.

Yes, she certainly had the longest, softest lashes he had ever seen,
and the ripest of cherry lips, behind the smiling depths of which
sparkled two rows of tiny pearls. He wished she would look at _him_ and
smile again. There wasn’t any use trying to melt a sundae with it,
anyhow.

“Sure, it’s a good year on the range and the price of cows jumping,” he
heard his sub-conscious self make answer to the patronizing inquiries
of him of the “boiled” shirt.

“Funny how pretty hair of that color was especially when there was so
much of it. You might call it a sort of coppery gold where the little
curls escaped in tendrils and ran wild. A fellow—”

“Yes, I reckon most of the boys will drop around to the Fourth of July
celebration. Got to cut loose once in a while, y’u know.”

A shy glance shot him and set him a-tingle with a queer delight.
Gracious, what pretty dark velvety lashes she had!

She was rising already, and as she paid for the ice cream that innocent
gaze smote him again with the brightest of Irish eyes conceivable. It
lingered for just a ponderable sunlit moment or him. She had smiled
once more.

After a decent interval Mac pursued his _petite_ charmer to the hotel.
She was seated on the porch reading a magazine, and was absorbedly
unconscious of him when he passed. For a few awkward moments he hung
around the office, then returned to the porch and took the chair most
distant from her. He had sat there a long ten minutes before she let
her hands and the magazine fall into her lap and demurely gave him his
chance.

“Can you tell me how far it is to the Lazy D ranch?”

“Seventy-two miles as the crow flies, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

The conversation threatened to die before it was well born. Desperately
McWilliams tried to think of something to say to keep it alive without
being too bold.

“If y’u were thinking of traveling out that way I could give y’u a
lift. I just came in to get another lady—an old lady that has just come
to this country.”

“Thank you, but I’m expecting a conveyance to meet me here. You didn’t
happen to pass one on the way, I suppose?”

“No, I didn’t. What ranch were y’u going to, ma’am?

“Miss Messiter’s—the Lazy D.”

A suspicion began to penetrate the foreman’s brain. “Y’u ain’t Miss
Darling?”

“What makes you so sure I’m not?” she asked, tilting her dimpled chin
toward him aggressively.

“Y’u’re too young,” he protested, helplessly.

“I’m no younger than you are,” came her quick, indignant retort.

Thus boldly accused of his youth, the foreman blushed. “I didn’t mean
that. Miss Messiter said she was an old lady—”

“You needn’t tell fibs about it. She couldn’t have said anything of the
kind. Who are _you_, anyhow?” the girl demanded, with spirit.

“I’m the foreman of the Lazy D, come to get Miss Darling. My name is
McWilliams—Jim McWilliams.”

“I don’t need your first name, Mr. McWilliams,” she assured him,
sweetly. “And will you please tell me why you have kept me waiting here
more than thirty hours?”

“Miss Messiter didn’t get your letter in time. Y’u see, we don’t get
mail every day at the Lazy D,” he explained, the while he hopefully
wondered just when she was going to need his last name.

“I don’t see why you don’t go after your mail every day at least,
especially when Miss Messiter was expecting me. To leave me waiting
here thirty hours—I’ll not stand it. When does the next train leave for
Detroit?” she asked, imperiously.

The situation seemed to call for diplomacy, and Jim McWilliams moved to
a nearer chair. “I’m right sorry it happened, ma’am, and I’ll bet Miss
Messiter is, too. Y’u see, we been awful busy one way and ’nother, and
I plumb neglected to send one of the boys to the post-office.”

“Why didn’t one of them walk over after supper?” she demanded,
severely.

He curbed the smile that was twitching at his facial muscles.

“Well, o’ course it ain’t so far,—only forty-three miles—still—”

“Forty-three miles to the post-office?”

“Yes, ma’am, only forty-three. If you’ll excuse me this time—”

“Is it really forty-three?”

He saw that her sudden smile had brought out the dimples in the oval
face and that her petulance had been swept away by his astounding
information.

“Forty-three, sure as shootin’, except twict a week when it comes to
Slauson’s, and that’s only twenty miles,” he assured her. “Used to be
seventy-two, but the Government got busy with its rural free delivery,
and now we get it right at our doors.”

“You must have big doors,” she laughed.

“All out o’ doors,” he punned. “Y’u see, our house is under our hat,
and like as not that’s twenty miles from the ranchhouse when night
falls.”

“Dear me!” She swept his graceful figure sarcastically. “And, of
course, twenty miles from a brush, too.”

He laughed with deep delight at her thrust, for the warm youth in him
did not ask for pointed wit on the part of a young woman so attractive
and with a manner so delightfully provoking.

“I expaict I have gathered up some scenery on the journey. I’ll go
brush it off and get ready for supper. I’d admire to sit beside y’u and
pass the butter and the hash if y’u don’t object. Y’u see, I don’t
often meet up with ladies, and I’d ought to improve my table manners
when I get a chanct with one so much older than I am and o’ course so
much more experienced.”

“I see you don’t intend to pass any honey with the hash,” she flashed,
with a glimpse of the pearls.

“_Didn’t_ y’u say y’u was older than me? I believe I’ve plumb forgot
how old y’u said y’u was, Miss Darling.”

“Your memory’s such a sieve it wouldn’t be worth while telling you.
After you’ve been to school a while longer maybe I’ll try you again.”

“Some ladies like ’em young,” he suggested, amiably.

“But full grown,” she amended.

“Do y’u judge by my looks or my ways?” he inquired, anxiously.

“By both.”

“That’s right strange,” he mused aloud. “For judging by some of your
ways you’re the spinster Miss Messiter was telling me about, but
judging by your looks y’u’re only the prettiest and sassiest
twenty-year-old in Wyoming.”

And with this shot he fled, to see what transformation he could effect
with the aid of a whiskbroom, a tin pan of alkali water and a roller
towel.

When she met him at the supper table her first question was, “Did Miss
Messiter say I was an old maid?”

“Sho! I wouldn’t let that trouble me if I was y’u. A woman ain’t any
older than she looks. Your age don’t show to speak of.”

“But did she?”

“I reckon she laid a trap for me and I shoved my paw in. She wanted to
give me a pleasant surprise.”

“Oh!”

“Don’t y’u grow anxious about being an old maid. There ain’t any in
Wyoming to speak of. If y’u like I’ll tell the boys you’re worried and
some of them will be Johnnie-on-the-Spot. They’re awful gallant,
cowpunchers are.”

“Some of them may be,” she differed. “If you want to know I’m just
twenty-one.”

He sawed industriously at his steak. “Y’u don’t say! Just old enough to
vote—like this steer was before they massacreed him.”

She gave him one look, and thereafter punished him with silence.

They left Gimlet Butte early next morning and reached the Lazy D
shortly after noon on the succeeding day. McWilliams understood
perfectly that strenuous competition would inevitably ensue as soon as
the Lazy D beheld the attraction he had brought into their midst. Nor
did he need a phrenologist to tell him that Nora was a born flirt and
that her shy slant glances were meant to penetrate tough hides to
tender hearts. But this did not discourage him, and he set about making
his individual impression while he had her all to himself. He wasn’t at
all sure how deep this went, but he had the satisfaction of hearing his
first name, the one she had told him she had no need of, fall
tentatively from her pretty lips before the other boys caught a glimpse
of her.

Shortly after his arrival at the ranch Mac went to make his report to
his mistress of some business matters connected with the trip.

“I see you got back safely with the old lady,” she laughed when she
caught sight of him.

His look reproached her. “Y’u said a spinster.”

“But it was you that insisted on the rheumatism. By the way, did you
ask her about it?”

“We didn’t get that far,” he parried.

“Oh! How far did you get?” She perched herself on the porch railing and
mocked him with her friendly eyes. Her heart was light within her and
she was ready for anything in the way of fun, for the doctor had just
pronounced her patient out of danger if he took proper care of himself.

“About as fur as I got with y’u, ma’am,” he audaciously retorted.

“We might disagree as to how far that is,” she flung back gayly with
heightened color.

“No, ma’am, I don’t think we would.”

“But, gracious! You’re not a Mormon. You don’t want us both, do you?”
she demanded, her eyes sparkling with the exhilaration of the tilt.

“Could I get either one of y’u, do y’u reckon? That’s what’s worrying
me.”

“I see, and so you intend to keep us both on the string.”

His joyous laughter echoed hers. “I expaict y’u would call that
presumption or some other dictionary word, wouldn’t y’u?”

“In anybody else perhaps, but surely not in Mr. McWilliams.”

“I’m awful glad to be trotting in a class by myself.”

“And you’ll let us know when you have made your mind up which of us it
is to be?”

“Well, mine ain’t the only mind that has to be made up,” he drawled.

She took this up gleefully. “I can’t answer for Nora, but I’ll jump at
the chance—if you decide to give it to me.”

He laughed delightedly into the hat he was momentarily expecting to put
on. “I’ll mill it over a spell and let y’u know, ma’am.”

“Yes, think it over from all points of view. Of course she is prettier,
but then I’m not afflicted with rheumatism and probably wouldn’t flirt
as much afterward. I have a good temper, too, as a rule, but then so
has Nora.”

“Oh, she’s prettier, is she?” With boyish audacity he grinned at her.

“What do you think?”

He shook his head. “I’ll have to go to the foot of the class on that,
ma’am. Give me an easier one.”

“I’ll have to choose another subject then. What did you do about that
bunch of Circle 66 cows you looked at on your way in?”

They discussed business for a few minutes, after which she went back to
her patient and he to his work.

“Ain’t she a straight-up little gentleman for fair?” the foreman asked
himself in rhetorical and exuberant question, slapping his hat against
his leg as he strode toward the corral. “Think of her coming at me like
she did, the blamed little thoroughbred. Y’u bet she knows me down to
the ground and how sudden I got over any fool notions I might a-started
to get in my cocoanut. But the way she came back at me, quick as
lightning and then some, pretendin’ all that foolishness and knowin’
all the time I’d savez the game.”

Both McWilliams and his mistress had guessed right in their surmise as
to Nora Darling’s popularity in the cow country. She made an immediate
and pronounced hit. It was astonishing how many errands the men found
to take them to “the house,” as they called the building where the
mistress of the ranch dwelt. Bannister served for a time as an
excellent excuse. Judging from the number of the inquiries which the
men found it necessary to make as to his progress, Helen would have
guessed him exceedingly popular with her riders. Having a sense of
humor, she mentioned this to McWilliams one day.

He laughed, and tried to turn it into a compliment to his mistress. But
she would have none of it.

“I know better, sir. They don’t come here to see me. Nora is the
attraction, and I have sense enough to know it. My nose is quite out of
joint,” she laughed.

Mac looked with gay earnestness at the feature she had mentioned.
“There’s a heap of difference in noses,” he murmured, apparently
apropos of nothing.

“That’s another way of telling me that Nora’s pug is the sweetest thing
you ever saw,” she charged.

“I ain’t half such a bad actor as some of the boys,” he deprecated.

“Meaning in what way?”

“The Nora Darling way.”

He pronounced her name so much as if it were a caress that his mistress
laughed, and he joined in it.

“It’s your fickleness that is breaking my heart, though I knew I was
lost as soon as I saw your beatific look on the day you got back with
Nora. The first week I came none of you could do enough for me. Now
it’s all Nora, darling.” She mimicked gayly his intonation.

“Well, ma’am, it’s this way,” explained the foreman with a grin.
“Y’u’re right pleasant and friendly, but the boys have got a savvy way
down deep that y’u’d shuck that friendliness awful sudden if any of
them dropped around with ‘Object, Matrimony’ in their manner.
Consequence is, they’re loaded down to the ground with admiration of
their boss, but they ain’t presumptuous enough to expaict any more. I
had notions, mebbe, I’d cut more ice, me being not afflicted with
bashfulness. My notions faded, ma’am, in about a week.”

“Then Nora came?” she laughed.

“No, ma’am, they had gone glimmering long before she arrived. I was
just convalescent enough to need being cheered up when she drapped in.”

“And are you cheered up yet?” his mistress asked.

He took off his dusty hat and scratched his head. “I ain’t right
certain, yet, ma’am. Soon as I know I’m consoled, I’ll be round with an
invite to the wedding.”

“That is, if you are.”

“If I am—yes. Y’u can’t most always tell when they have eyes like
hers.”

“You’re quite an authority on the sex considering your years.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He looked aggrieved, thinking himself a man grown. “How
did y’u say Mr. Bannister was?”

“Wait, and I’ll send Nora out to tell you,” she flashed, and
disappeared in the house.

Conversation at the bunkhouse and the chucktent sometimes circled
around the young women at the house, but its personality rarely grew
pronounced. References to Helen Messiter and the housemaid were usually
by way of repartee at each other. For a change had come over the spirit
of the Lazy D men, and, though a cheerful profanity still flowed freely
when they were alone together, vulgarity was largely banished.

The morning after his conversation with Miss Messiter, McWilliams was
washing in the foreman’s room when the triangle beat the call for
breakfast, and he heard the cook’s raucous “Come and get it.” There was
the usual stampede for the tent, and a minute later Mac flung back the
flap and entered. He took the seat at the head of the table, along the
benches on both sides of which the punchers were plying busy knives and
forks.

“A stack of chips,” ordered the foreman; and the cook’s “Coming up” was
scarcely more prompt than the plate of hot cakes he set before the
young man.

“Hen fruit, sunny side up,” shouted Reddy, who was further advanced in
his meal.

“Tame that fog-horn, son,” advised Wun Hop; but presently he slid three
fried eggs from a frying-pan into the plate of the hungry one.

“I want y’u boys to finish flankin’ that bunch of hill calves to-day,”
said the foreman, emptying half a jug of syrup over his cakes.

“Redtop, he ain’t got no appetite these days,” grinned Denver, as the
gentleman mentioned cleaned up a second loaded plate of ham, eggs and
fried potatoes. “I see him studying a Wind River Bible* yesterday.
Curious how in the spring a young man’s fancy gits to wandering on
house furnishing. Red, he was taking the catalogue alphabetically.
Carpets was absorbin’ his attention, chairs on deck, and chandeliers in
the hole, as we used to say when we was baseball kids.”

[* A Wind River Bible in the Northwest ranch country is a catalogue of
one of the big Chicago department stores that does a large shipping
business in the West.]


“Ain’t a word of truth in it,” indignantly denied the assailed, his
unfinished nose and chin giving him a pathetic, whipped puppy look.
“Sho! I was just looking up saddles. Can’t a fellow buy a new saddle
without asking leave of Denver?”

“Cyarpets used to begin with a C in my spelling-book, but saddles got
off right foot fust with a S,” suggested Mac amiably.

“He was ce’tainly trying to tree his saddle among the C’s. He was
looking awful loving at a Turkish rug. Reckon he thought it was a
saddle-blanket,” derided Denver cheerfully.

“Huh! Y’u’re awful smart, Denver,” retaliated Reddy, his complexion
matching his hair. “Y’u talk a heap with your mouth. Nobody believes a
word of what y’u say.”

Denver relaxed into a range song by way of repartee:

“I want mighty bad to be married,
    To have a garden and a home;
I ce’tainly aim to git married,
    And have a gyurl for my own.”


“Aw! Y’u fresh guys make me tired. Y’u don’t devil me a bit, not a bit.
Whyfor should I care what y’u say? I guess this outfit ain’t got no
surcingle on me.” Nevertheless, he made a hurried end of his breakfast
and flung out of the tent.

“Y’u boys hadn’t ought to wound Reddy’s tender feelings, and him so
bent on matrimony!” said Denver innocently. “Get a move on them fried
spuds and sashay them down this way, if there’s any left when y’u fill
your plate, Missou.”

Nor was Reddy the only young man who had dreams those days at the Lazy
D. Cupid must have had his hands full, for his darts punctured more
than one honest plainsman’s heart. The reputation of the young women at
the Lazy D seemed to travel on the wings of the wind, and from far and
near Cattleland sent devotees to this shrine of youth and beauty. So
casually the victims drifted in, always with a good business excuse
warranted to endure raillery and sarcasm, that it was impossible to say
they had come of set purpose to sun themselves in feminine smiles.

As for Nora, it is not too much to say that she was having the time of
her life. Detroit, Michigan, could offer no such field for her
expansive charms as the Bighorn country, Wyoming. Here she might have
her pick of a hundred, and every one of them picturesquely begirt with
flannel shirt, knotted scarf at neck, an arsenal that bristled, and a
sun-tan that could be achieved only in the outdoors of the Rockies.
Certainly these knights of the saddle radiated a romance with which
even her floorwalker “gentleman friend” could not compete.




CHAPTER X.
A SHEPHERD OF THE DESERT


It had been Helen Messiter’s daily custom either to take a ride on her
pony or a spin in her motor car, but since Bannister had been quartered
at the Lazy D her time had been so fully occupied that she had given
this up for the present. The arrival of Nora Darling, however, took so
much work off her hands that she began to continue her rides and
drives.

Her patient was by this time so far recovered that he did not need her
constant attendance and there were reasons why she decided it best to
spend only a minimum of her time with him. These had to do with her
increasing interest in the man and the need she felt to discourage it.
It had come to a pretty pass, she told herself scornfully, when she
found herself inventing excuses to take her into the room where this
most picturesque of unhanged scamps was lying. Most good women are at
heart puritans, and if Helen was too liberal to judge others narrowly
she could be none the less rigid with herself. She might talk to him of
her duty, but it was her habit to be frank in thought and she knew that
something nearer than that abstraction had moved her efforts in his
behalf. She had fought for his life because she loved him. She could
deny it no longer. Nor was the shame with which she confessed it
unmingled with pride. He was a man to compel love, one of the mood
imperative, chain-armored in the outdoor virtues of strength and
endurance and stark courage. Her abasement began only where his
superlation ended. That a being so godlike in equipment should have
been fashioned without a soul, and that she should have given her heart
to him. This was the fount of her degradation.

It was of these things she thought as she drove in the late afternoon
toward those Antelope Peaks he had first pointed out to her. She swept
past the scene of the battle and dipped down into the plains for a run
to that western horizon behind the jagged mountain line of which the
sun was radiantly setting in a splash of glorious colors. Lost in
thought, space slipped under her wheels unnoticed. Not till her car
refused the spur and slowed to a despondent halt did she observe that
velvet night was falling over the land.

She prowled round the machine after the fashion of the motorist,
examining details that might be the cause of the trouble. She
discovered soon enough with instant dismay that the gasolene tank was
empty. Reddy, always unreliable, must have forgotten to fill it when
she told him to.

By the road she must be thirty miles from home if she were a step;
across country as the crow flies, perhaps twenty. She was a young woman
of resolution, and she wasted no time in tears or regrets. The XIX
ranch, owned by a small “nester” named Henderson, could not be more
than five or six miles to the southeast. If she struck across the hills
she would be sure to run into one of the barblines. At the XIX she
could get a horse and reach the Lazy D by midnight. Without any
hesitation she struck out. It was unfortunate that she did not have on
her heavy laced high boots, but she realized that she must take things
as she found them. Things might have been a good deal worse, she
reflected philosophically.

And before long they were worse, for the increasing darkness blotted
out the landmarks she was using as guides and she was lost among the
hill waves that rolled one after another across the range. Still she
did not give way, telling herself that it would be better after the
moon was up. She could then tell north from south, and so have a line
by which to travel. But when at length the stars came out, thousands
upon thousands of them, and looked down on a land magically flooded
with chill moonlight, the girl found that the transformation of Wyoming
into this sense of silvery loveliness had toned the distant mountain
line to an indefinite haze that made it impossible for her to
distinguish one peak from another.

She wandered for hours, hungry and tired and frightened, though this
last she would not confess.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she told herself over and over.
“Even if I have to stay out all night it will do me no harm. There’s no
need to be a baby about it.”

But try to evade it as she would, there was something in the loneliness
of this limitless stretch of hilltop that got on her nerves. The very
shadows cast by the moonshine seemed too fantastic for reality.
Something eerie and unearthly hovered over it all, and before she knew
it a sob choked up her throat.

Vague fancies filtered through her mind, weird imaginings born of the
night in a mind that had been swept from the moorings of reason. So
that with no sensible surprise there came to her in that moonlit sea of
desert the sound of a voice a clear sweet tenor swelling bravely in
song with the very ecstacy of pathos.

It was the prison song from “Il Trovatore,” and the desolation of its
lifted appeal went to the heart like water to the roots of flowers.

Ah! I have sigh’d to rest me.
Deep in the quiet grave.


The girl’s sob caught in her breast, stilled with the awe of that
heavenly music. So for an instant she waited before it was borne in on
her that the voice was a human one, and that the heaven from which it
descended was the hilltop above her.

A wild laugh, followed by an oath, cut the dying echoes of the song.
She could hear the swish of a quirt falling again and again, and the
sound of trampling hoofs thudding on the hard, sun-cracked ground.
Startled, she sprang to her feet, and saw silhouetted against the
skyline a horse and his rider fighting for mastery.

The battle was superb while it lasted. The horse had been a famous
outlaw, broken to the saddle by its owner out of the sheer passion for
victory, but there were times when its savage strength rebelled at
abject submission, and this was one of them. It swung itself skyward,
and came down like a pile-driver, camel-backed, and without joints in
the legs. Swiftly it rose again lunging forward and whirling in the
air, then jarred down at an angle. The brute did its malevolent best, a
fury incarnate. But the ride, was a match, and more than a match, for
it. He sat the saddle like a Centaur, with the perfect: unconscious
grace of a born master, swaying in his seat as need was, and spurring
the horse to a blinder fury.

Sudden as had been the start, no less sudden was the finish of the
battle. The bronco pounded to a stiff-legged standstill, trembled for a
long minute like an aspen, and sank to a tame surrender, despite the
sharp spurs roweling its bloody sides.

“Ah, my beauty. You’ve had enough, have you?” demanded the cruel,
triumphant voice of the rider. “You would try that game, would you?
I’ll teach you.”

“Stop spurring that horse, you bully.”

The man stopped, in sheer amazement at this apparition which had leaped
out of the ground almost at his feet. His wary glance circled the hills
to make sure she was alone.

“Ce’tainly, ma’am. We’re sure delighted to meet up with you. Ain’t we,
Two-step?”

For himself, he spoke the simple truth. He lived in his sensations,
spurring himself to fresh ones as he had but just now been spurring his
horse to sate the greed of conquest in him. And this high-spirited,
gallant creature—he could feel her vital courage in the very ring of
her voice—offered a rare fillip to his jaded appetite. The dusky,
long-lashed eyes which always give a woman an effect of beauty, the
splendid fling of head, and the piquant, finely cut features, with
their unconscious tale of Brahmin caste, the long lines of the supple
body, willowy and yet plump as a partridge—they went to his head like
strong wine. Here was an adventure from the gods—a stubborn will to
bend, the pride of a haughty young beauty to trail in the dust, her
untamed heart to break if need be. The lust of the battle was on him
already. She was a woman to dream about,

“Sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
Or Cytherea’s breath,”


he told himself exultantly as he slid from his horse and stood bowing
before her.

And he, for his part, was a taking enough picture of devil-may-care
gallantry gone to seed. The touch of jaunty impudence in his humility,
not less than the daring admiration of his handsome eyes and the easy,
sinuous grace of his flexed muscles, labeled him what he was—a man bold
and capable to do what he willed, and a villain every inch of him.

Said she, after that first clash of stormy eyes with bold, admiring
ones:

“I am lost—from the Lazy D ranch.”

“Why, no, you’re found,” he corrected, white teeth flashing in a smile.

“My motor ran out of gasolene this afternoon. I’ve been”—there was a
catch in her voice—“wandering ever since.”

“You’re played out, of course, and y’u’ve had no supper,” he said, his
quiet close gaze on her.

“Yes, I’m played out and my nerve’s gone.” She laughed a little
hysterically. “I expect I’m hungry and thirsty, too, though I hadn’t
noticed it before.”

He whirled to his saddle, and had the canteen thongs unloosed in a
moment. While she drank he rummaged from his saddle-bags some
sandwiches of jerky and a flask of whiskey. She ate the sandwiches, he
the while watching her with amused sympathy in his swarthy countenance.

“You ain’t half-bad at the chuck-wagon, Miss Messiter,” he told her.

She stopped, the sandwich part way to her mouth. “I don’t remember your
face. I’ve met so many people since I came to the Lazy D. Still, I
think I should remember you.”

He immediately relieved of duty her quasi apology. “You haven’t seen
_my face_ before,” he laughed, and, though she puzzled over the double
meaning that seemed to lurk behind his words and amuse him, she could
not find the key to it.

It was too dark to make out his features at all clearly, but she was
sure she had seen him before or somebody that looked very much like
him.

“Life on the range ain’t just what y’u can call exciting,” he
continued, “and when a young lady fresh from back East drops among us
while sixguns are popping, breaks up a likely feud and mends right
neatly all the ventilated feudists it’s a corollary to her fun that’s
she is going to become famous.”

What he said was true enough. The unsolicited notoriety her exploit had
brought upon her had been its chief penalty. Garbled versions of it had
appeared with fake pictures in New York and Chicago Sunday supplements,
and all Cattleland had heard and discussed it. No matter into what
unfrequented cañon she rode, some silent cowpuncher would look at her
as they met with admiring eyes behind which she read a knowledge of the
story. It was a lonely desolate country, full of the wide deep silences
of utter emptiness, yet there could be no footfall but the whisper of
it was bruited on the wings of the wind.

“Do you know where the Lazy D ranch is from here?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Can you take me home?”

“I surely can. But not to-night. You’re more tired than y’u know. We’ll
camp here, and in the mo’ning we’ll hit the trail bright and early.”

This did not suit her at all. “Is it far to the Lazy D?” she inquired
anxiously.

“Every inch of forty miles. There’s a creek not more than two hundred
yards from here. We’ll stay there till morning,” he made answer in a
matter of course voice, leading the way to the place he had mentioned.

She followed, protesting. Yet though it was not in accord with her
civilized sense of fitness, she knew that what he proposed was the
common sense solution. She was tired and worn out, and she could see
that his broncho had traveled far.

Having reached the bank of the creek, he unsaddled, watered his horse
and picketed it, and started a fire. Uneasily she watched him.

“I don’t like to sleep out. Isn’t there a ranchhouse near?”

“Y’u wouldn’t call it near by the time we had reached it. What’s to
hinder your sleeping here? Isn’t this room airy enough? And don’t y’u
like the system of lighting? ’Twas patented I forget how many million
years ago. Y’u ain’t going to play parlor girl now after getting the
reputation y’u’ve got for gameness, are y’u?”

But he knew well enough that it was no silly schoolgirl fear she had,
but some deep instinct in her that distrusted him and warned her to
beware. So, lightly he took up the burden of the talk while he gathered
cottonwood branches for the fire.

“Now if I’d only thought to bring a load of lumber and some
carpenters—and a chaperon,” he chided himself in burlesque, his bold
eyes closely on the girl’s face to gloat on the color that flew to her
cheeks at his suggestion.

She hastened to disclaim lightly the feeling he had unmasked in her.
“It is a pity, but it can’t be helped now. I suppose I am cross and
don’t seem very grateful. I’m tired out and nervous, but I am sure that
I’ll enjoy sleeping out. If I don’t I shall not be so ungenerous as to
blame you.”

He soon had a cup of steaming coffee ready for her, and the heat of it
made a new woman of her. She sat in the warm fire glow, and began to
feel stealing over her a delightful reaction of languor. She told
herself severely it was ridiculous to have been so foolishly prim about
the inevitable.

“Since you know my name, isn’t it fair that I should know yours?” she
smilingly asked, more amiably than she had yet spoken to him.

“Well, since I have found the lamb that was lost, y’u may call me a
shepherd of the desert.”

“Then, Mr. Shepherd, I’m very glad to meet you. I don’t remember when I
ever was more glad to meet a stranger.” And she added with a little
laugh: “It’s a pity I’m too sleepy to do my duty by you in a social
way.”

“We’ll let that wait till to-morrow. Y’u’ll entertain me plenty then.
I’ll make your bunk up right away.”

She was presently lying with her feet to the fire, snugly rolled in his
saddle blankets. But though her eyes were heavy, her brain was still
too active to permit her to sleep immediately. The excitement of her
adventure was too near, the emotions of the day too poignantly vivid,
to lose their hold on her at once. For the first time in her life she
lay lapped in the illimitable velvet night, countless unwinking stars
lighting the blue-black dream in which she floated. The enchantment of
the night’s loveliness swept through her sensitive pulses and thrilled
her with the mystery of the great life of which she was an atom. Awe
held her a willing captive.

She thought of many things, of her past life and its incongruity with
the present, of the man who lay wounded at the Lazy D, of this other
wide-shouldered vagabond who was just now in the shadows beyond the
firelight, pacing up and down with long, light even strides as he
looked to his horse and fed the fire. She watched him make an end of
the things he found to do and then take his place opposite her. Who and
what was he, this fascinating scamp who one moment flooded the moonlit
desert with inspired snatches from the opera sung in the voice of an
angel, and the next lashed at his horse like a devil incarnate? How
reconcile the outstanding inconsistencies in him? For his every
inflection, every motion, proclaimed the strain of good blood gone
wrong and trampled under foot of set, sardonic purpose, indicated him a
man of culture in a hell of his own choosing. Lounging on his elbow in
the flickering shadows, so carelessly insouciant in every picturesque
inch of him, he seemed to radiate the melodrama of the untamed
frontier, just as her guest of tarnished reputation now at the ranch
seemed to breathe forth its romance.

“Sleep well, little partner. Don’t be afraid; nothing can harm you,”
this man had told her.

Promptly she had answered, “I’m not afraid, thank you, in the least”;
and after a moment had added, not to seem hostile, “Good night, big
partner.”

But despite her calm assurance she knew she did not feel so entirely
safe as if it had been one of her own ranch boys on the other side of
the fire, or even that other vagabond who had made so direct an appeal
to her heart. If she were not afraid, at least she knew some vague hint
of anxiety.

She was still thinking of him when she fell asleep, and when she
awakened the first sound that fell on her ears was his tuneful whistle.
Indeed she had an indistinct memory of him in the night, wrapping the
blankets closer about her when the chill air had half stirred her from
her slumber. The day was still very young, but the abundant desert
light dismissed sleep summarily. She shook and brushed the wrinkles out
of her clothes and went down to the creek to wash her face with the
inadequate facilities at hand. After redressing her hair she returned
to the fire, upon which a coffee pot was already simmering.

She came up noiselessly behind him, but his trained senses were
apprised of her approach.

“Good mo’ning! How did y’u find your bedroom?” he asked, without
turning from the bacon he was broiling on the end of a stick.

“Quite up to the specifications. With all Wyoming for a floor and the
sky for a ceiling, I never had a room I liked better. But have you eyes
in the back of your head?”

He laughed grimly. “I have to be all eyes and ears in my business.”

“Is your business of a nature so sensitive?”

“As much so as stocks on Wall Street. And we haven’t any ticker to warn
us to get under cover. Do you take cream in your coffee, Miss
Messiter?”

She looked round in surprise. “Cream?”

“We’re in tin-can land, you know, and live on air-tights. I milk my cow
with a can-opener. Let me recommend this quail on toast.” He handed her
a battered tin plate, and prepared to help her from the frying-pan.

“I suppose that is another name for pork?”

“No, really. I happened to bag a couple of hooters before you wakened.”

“You’re a missionary of the good-foods movement. I shall name your
mission St. Sherry’s-in-the-Wilderness.”

“Ah, Sherry’s! That’s since my time. I don’t suppose I should know my
way about in little old New York now.”

She found him eager to pick up again the broken strands that had
connected him with the big world from which he had once come. It had
been long since she had enjoyed a talk more, for he expressed himself
with wit and dexterity. But through her enjoyment ran a note of
apprehension. He was for the moment a resurrected gentleman. But what
would he be next? She had an insistent memory of a heavenly flood of
music broken by a horrible discord of raucous oaths.

It was he that lingered over their breakfast, loath to make the first
move to bring him back into realities; and it was she that had to
suggest the need of setting out. But once on his feet, he saddled and
packed swiftly, with a deftness born of experience.

“We’ll have to ask Two-step to carry double to-day,” he said, as he
helped her to a place behind him.

Two-step had evidently made an end of the bronco spree upon which he
had been the evening before, for he submitted sedately to his unusual
burden. The first hilltop they reached had its surprise to offer the
girl. In a little valley below them, scarce a mile away, nestled a
ranch with its corrals and buildings.

“Look!” she exclaimed; and then swiftly, “Didn’t you know it was
there?”

“Yes, that’s the Hilke place,” he answered with composure. “It hasn’t
been occupied for years.”

“Isn’t that some one crossing to the corral now?”

“No. A stray cow, I reckon.”

They dropped into a hollow between the hills and left the ranch on
their left. She was not satisfied, and yet she had not grounds enough
upon which to base a suspicion. For surely the figure she had seen had
been that of a man.

He let his horse take it easy, except when some impulse of mischief
stirred him to break into a canter so as to make the girl put her arm
round his waist for support. They stopped about noon by a stream in a
cañon defile to lunch and rest the pony.

“I don’t remember this place at all. Are we near home?” she asked.

“About five miles. I reckon you’re right tired. It’s an unhandy way to
ride.”

Every mile took them deeper into the mountains, through winding cañons
and over unsuspected trails, and the girl’s uneasiness increased with
the wildness of the country.

“Are you _sure_ we’re going the right way? I Don’t think we can be,”
she suggested more than once.

“Dead sure,” he answered the last time, letting Two-step turn into a
blind draw opening from sheer cañon walls.

A hundred feet from the entrance they rode round a great slide of rock
into a tiny valley containing a group of buildings.

He swung from the horse and offered a hand to help her dismount.

A reckless, unholy light burned in his daring eyes.

“Home at last, Miss Messiter. Let me offer you a thousand welcomes.”

An icy hand seemed to clutch at her heart. “Home! What do you mean?
This isn’t the Lazy D.”

“Not at all. The Lazy D is sixty miles from here. This is where I hang
out—and you, for the present.”

“But—I don’t understand. How dare you bring me here?”

“The desire for your company, Miss Messiter, made of me a Lochinvar.”

She saw, with a shiver, that the ribald eyes were mocking her.

“Take me back this instant—this instant,” she commanded, but her
imperious voice was not very sure of itself. “Take me home at once, you
liar.”

“I expect you don’t quite understand,” he exclaimed, with gentle
derision. “You’re a prisoner of war, Miss Messiter.”

“And who are you?” she faltered.

But before he spoke she found an answer to her question, found it by a
flash of divination she could never afterward explain.

“You’re the man I met at Fraser’s dance—the man they call the King of
the Bighorn country.”

He accepted identification with an elaborate bow. “Correct, ma’am. I’m
Ned Bannister the king.”

An instant before she had been sitting rigid with a face of startled
fear, but as he spoke a great wave of joy beat into her heart. For if
this man were the terror of the country the one she had left wounded at
her house could not be. She forgot that she was herself in peril,
forgot everything in the swift conviction that the man she loved was an
honest gentleman and worthy of her.

The man standing by the horse could not understand the light that had
so immediately leaped to her eyes. Even _his_ vanity hesitated at the
obvious deduction that she had already succumbed to his attractions.

“But I don’t understand-0that isn’t your real name, is it? I know
another man who calls himself Ned Bannister.”

He laughed scornfully. “My cousin, the sheepherder. Yes, that’s his
name, too. We both have a right to it.”

“Your cousin?”

The familiarity in him that had been haunting her all day and that had
deceived her at the dance was now explained. It was her lover of which
this man reminded her. Now that she had been given the clue she could
trace kinship in manner, gait and appearance.

“I’m not proud of my mealy-mouthed namesake,” he replied.

“Nor he of you, I am sure,” she quickly answered.

“I dare say not. But won’t y’u ’light, Miss Messiter?”

She slipped immediately to the ground beside him. Her eyes looked him
over with quiet scorn.

“From first to last you have done nothing but lie to me. When we were
out last night you knew that ranch was close at hand. You lied to me
again when you said it was deserted.”

“Very well. We’ll say I lied, though it’s not a nice word in so pretty
a mouth, as yours, Miss Messiter. Y’u ought to read up again the fable
about the toads dropping from the beautiful lady’s lips.”

“What’s your object? What do you expect to gain by it?”

“Up to date I’ve gained a right interesting guest. Y’u will be
diverting enough. With so charming a lady visiting me I’m not worrying
about getting bored.”

“So you war on women, you coward.”

The change in him was instantaneous. It was as if a thousand years of
civilization had been sponged out in an eyebeat. He stood before her a
savage primeval, his tight-lipped smile cruel in its triumph.

“Did I begin this fight? Didn’t y’u and your punchers try to balk me by
taking that sheep-herder from me after I had bagged him? That was your
hour. By God, this is mine! I’ll teach y’u it isn’t safe to interfere
with me. What I want I get one way or another, and don’t y’u forget it,
my girl.”

She was afraid to the very marrow of her. But she would not show her
fear, nor could he read it in the slim superb erectness with which she
gave him defiance.

“You coward!”

“That’s twice you’ve called me that,” he cried, his face flushing
darkly and his eyes glittering.

“You’ll crawl on your knees to me and beg pardon before I’m through
with y’u, my beauty. Y’u’ll learn to lick the hand that strikes y’u.
You’re mine—mine to do with as I please. Don’t forget that for a
moment. I’ll break your spirit or I’ll break your heart.”

His ferocity appalled her, but her brave eyes held their own. With an
oath he turned on his heel and struck the palms of his hands together.
An Indian squaw came running from one of the cabins. He flung at her a
sentence or two in the native tongue and pointed at his captive. She
asked a question impassively and he jabbed out a threat. The squaw
nodded her head, and motioned to the girl to follow her.

When Helen Messiter was alone in the room that was to serve as her
prison she sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands in a
despair that was for the moment utter.




CHAPTER XI.
A RESCUE


Helen Messiter was left alone until darkness fell, when the Cheyenne
squaw brought in a kerosene lamp and shortly afterward her supper. The
woman either could not or would not speak English, and her only answer
to her captive’s advances was by sullen grunts. At the expiration of
half an hour she returned for the dishes, locking the door after her
when she left.

The room itself was comfortable enough. It was evidently Bannister’s
own, judging from its contents. Two or three rifles hung in racks. On
top of the bookcase was a half-filled tobacco pouch and several pipes,
all of them lying carelessly on a pile of music which ran from Verdi to
ragtime. In his books she found the same shallow catholicity. Side by
side with Montaigne’s “Essays,” a well-worn Villon in thé original,
Stevenson’s “Letters” and “Anna Karenina,” dozens of paper-covered
novels, mostly the veriest trash, held their disreputable own. Some of
them were French, others detective stories, still others melodramatic
tales of love. The piano was an expensive one, but not in the best of
tune. Everything in the room contributed to the effect of capacity
untempered by discipline and discrimination. Plainly he was a man of
taste who had outraged and deadened his power of differentiation by
abuse.

For Helen the silent night was alive with alarms. The moaning of the
wind, the slightest rustle outside, the creaking of a board, were
enough to set her heart wildly beating. She did not undress, but by the
light of her dim, ragged wick sought for composure from the pages of
Montaigne and Stevenson. When the first gray day streaks came she was
still reading, but with their coming she blew out her light and lay
down. She fell asleep at once, and it was five hours later that the
knock of her attendant awakened her from heavy slumber.

With the bright sunlit day she was again mistress of her nerves,
prepared to meet resolutely whatever danger might confront her. But the
morning passed quietly enough, and after lunch the Indian woman led her
into the little valley promenade in front of the buildings and sat down
on a rock while her captive enjoyed the sunshine.

The course of Helen’s saunterings took her toward the rock slide that
made the gateway of the valley. She was wondering if it could have been
left unguarded, when a rough voice warned her back. Looking round, she
caught sight of a man seated cross-legged on a great boulder. It took
only a second glance to certify that the man was her former foreman,
Judd Morgan.

She had never seen anything more malevolent than his triumph.

“Better stay in the valley, Miss Messiter. Y’u might right easily get
lost outside,” he jeered.

Without reply she turned her back on him and began to retrace her way
to the house. Stung by her contempt, he sprang up and strode after her.

“So y’u won’t speak to me, eh? Think yourself too good to speak to a
common everyday God damned white man, do y’u?”

Apparently she did not know he was on the map. In a fury he caught at
her shoulder and whirled her round.

“Now, by God, do y’u see me? I’m Judd Morgan, the man y’u kicked off
the Lazy D. I told y’u then y’u were going to be sorry long as y’u
lived.”

“Don’t you dare touch me, you hound!” Her blazing eyes menaced him so
fiercely that he hesitated.

There was the sound of a quick, light step running toward them. Morgan
half turned, was caught in a grip of steel and hurled headlong among a
pile of broken rocks.

“Y’u would dare, would y’u?” panted his assailant, passionately, ready
to obliterate the offender if he showed fight.

Morgan got up slowly, his head bleeding from contact with the sharp
rocks. There was murder in his bloodshot eye, but he knew his master,
and after trying vainly to face him down he swung away with an oath.

“I’ll have to apologize for that coyote, Miss Messiter. These fellows
need a hint occasionally as to how to behave,” said Bannister.

“Your hints are rather forceful, are they not?”

“I ain’t running a Sunday school,” he admitted.

“So I have gathered. I wonder where he learned to bully women,” she
mused aloud.

“Putting it another way, you think there ought to be some one to
apologize for his master.”

He was smiling at her without the least rancor, and it came on her with
a woman’s swift instinct that safety lay in humoring his volatile moods
and diverting him from those that were dangerous.

“Since I’m a prisoner of war I wouldn’t dare think that—not aloud, at
least. You might starve me,” she told him, saucily.

“Still, down in your heart y’u think—”

“That there is a great deal of difference between master and man. One
is a gentleman in his best moments; the other is always a ruffian.”

She had touched his vanity. As he walked beside her she could almost
see his complacency purr.

“I’m a miscreant, I reckon, but I was a gentleman first.”

Fortunately he did not see the flash of veiled scorn she shot at him
under her long lashes.

With her breakfast next morning the Cheyenne woman brought a note
signed “Shepherd-of-the-Desert.” In it Bannister asked permission to
pay his respects. The girl divined that he was in his better mood, and
penciled on his note the favor she could scarce refuse.

But she was scarcely prepared for the impudent air of jocund spring he
brought into her prison, the gay assumption of _camaraderie_ so
inconsistent with the facts. Yet since safety lay in an avoidance of
the tragic, she set herself to match his mood.

At sight of the open Tennyson on the table he laughed and quoted:

She only said, “The day is dreary.”
“He cometh not,” she said.


“But, you see, he comes,” he added. “What say, Mariana of the Robbers’
Roost, to making a picnic day of it? We’ll climb the Crags and lunch on
the summit.”

“The Crags?”

“That Matterhorn-shaped peak that begins at our back door. Are you for
it?”

While this mood was uppermost in him she felt reasonably safe. It was a
phase of him she certainly did not mean to discourage. Besides, she had
a youthful confidence in her powers that she was loath to give up
without an effort to find the accessible side of his ruthless heart.

“I’ll try it; but you must help me when we come to the bad places,” she
said.

“Sure thing! It’s a deal. You’re a right good mountaineer, I’ll bet.”

“Thank you ; but you had better save your compliments till I make
good,” she told him, with the most piquant air of gayety in the world.

They started on horseback, following a mountain trail that zigzagged
across the foothills toward the Crags. He had unearthed somewhere a
boy’s saddle that suited her very well, and the pony she rode was one
of the easiest she had ever mounted. At the end of an hour’s ride they
left the horses and began the ascent on foot. It was a stiff climb,
growing steeper as they ascended, but Helen Messiter had not tramped
over golf links for nothing. She might grow leg weary,’ but she would
not cry “Enough!” And he, on his part, showed the tactful consideration
for the resources of her strength he had already taught her to expect
from that other day’s experience on the plains. It was a very rare hand
of assistance that he offered her, but often he stopped to admire the
beautiful view that stretched for many miles below them, in order that
she might get a minute’s breathing space.

Once he pointed out, far away on the horizon, a bright gleam that
caught the sunlight like a heliograph.

“That’s the big rock slide back of the Lazy, D,” he explained.

She drew a long breath, and flashed a stealthy look at him.

“It’s a long way from here, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t find it so far last time I took the trip—not the last half of
the journey, anyhow,” he answered.

“You’re very complimentary. I was only wondering whether I could find
it if I should manage to escape.”

He stroked his black mustache and smiled gallantly at her. “I reckon I
won’t let so pretty a prisoner escape.”

“Do you expect me to burden your hospitality forever and a day?
Wouldn’t that be a little too much of Mariana of the Robbers’ Roost?”
she asked, lightly.

“I’m willing to risk it.”

He looked with half-shut smoldering eyes at her slender exquisiteness,
so instinct with the vital charm of sex. There was veiled passion in
his eyes, but there was in them, too, a desire to stand well with her.
He meant to win her, but if possible he would win with her own
reluctant consent. She must bring him with hesitant feet a heart
surrendered in spite of her pride and flinty puritanism. The vanity of
the man craved a victory that should be of the spirit as well as of the
flesh.

Deftly she guided the conversation back to less dangerous channels. In
this the increasing difficulty of the climb assisted her, for after
they reached the last ascent sustained talk became impossible.

“See that trough above us near the summit?. Y’u’ll have to hang on by
your eyelashes, pardner.” He always burlesqued the word of comradeship
a little to soften its familiarity.

“Dear me! Is it that bad?”

“It is so bad that at the top y’u have to jump for a grip and draw
yourself up by your arms.”

“I’ll never be able to do it.”

“I’m here to help.”

“But if one should miss?”

He shrugged. “Ah! That’s a theological question. If the sky pilots
guess right, for y’u heaven and for me hell.”

They negotiated the trough successfully to its uptilted end. She had a
bad moment when he leaped for the rock rim above from the narrow ledge
on which they stood. But he caught it, drew himself up without the
least trouble and turned to assist her. He sat down on the rock edge
facing the abyss beneath them, and told her to lock her hands together
above his left foot. Then slowly, inch by inch, he drew her up till
with one of his hands he could catch her wrist. A moment later she was
standing on his rigid toes, from which position she warily edged to
safety above.

“Well done, little pardner. You’re the first woman ever climbed the
Crags.” He offered a hand to celebrate the achievement.

“If I am it is all due to you, big pardner. I could never have made
that last bit alone.”

They ate lunch merrily in the pleasant sunlight, and both of them
seemed as free from care as a schoolboy on a holiday.

“It’s good to be alive, isn’t it?” he asked her after they had eaten,
as he lay on the warm ground at her feet. “And what a life it is here!
To be riding free, with your knees pressing a saddle, in the wind and
the sun. There’s something in a man to which the wide spaces call. I’d
rather lie here in the sunbeat with you beside me than be a king. You
remember the ‘Last Ride’ that fellow Browning tells about? I reckon
he’s dead right. If a man could only capture his best moments and hold
them forever it would be heaven to the _n_th degree.”

She studied her sublimated villain with that fascination his vagaries
always excited in her. Was ever a more impossible combination put
together than this sentimental scamp with the long record of evil?

“Say it,” he laughed.” Whang it out I ask, anything you like, pardner.”

Pluckily daring, she took him at his word. “I was only wondering at the
different men I find in you. Before I have known you a dozen hours I
discover in you the poet and the man of action, the schoolboy and the
philosopher, the sentimentalist and the cynic, and—may I say it?—the
gentleman and the blackguard. One feels a sense of loss. You should
have specialized. You would have made such a good soldier, for
instance. Pity you didn’t go to West Point.”

“Think so?” He was immensely flattered at her interest in him.

“Yes. You surely missed your calling. You were born for a soldier;
cavalry, I should say. What an ornament to society you would have been
if your energies had found the right vent! But they didn’t find it—and
you craved excitement, I suppose. Perhaps you had to go the way you
did.”

“Therefore I am what I am? Please particularize.”

“I can’t, because I don’t understand you. But I think this much is
true, that you have set yourself against all laws of God and man. Yet
you are not consistent, since you are better than your creed. You tell
yourself there shall be no law for you but your own will, and you find
there is, something in you stronger than desire that makes you shrink
at many things. You can kill in fair fight, but you can’t knife a man
in the back, can you?”

“I never have.”

“You have a dreadfully perverted set of rules, but you play by them.
That’s why I know I’m safe with you, even when you are at your worst.”

She announced this boldly, just as if she had no doubts.

“Oh, you know you’re safe, do you?”

“Of course I do. You were once a gentleman and you can’t forget it
entirely. That’s the weakness in your philosophy of total depravity.”
“You speak with an assurance you don’t always feel, I reckon. And I
expect I wouldn’t bank too much on those divinations of yours, if I
were you.” He rolled over so that he could face her more directly.
“You’ve been mighty frank, Miss Messiter, and I take off my hat to your
sand. Now I’m going to be frank awhile. You interest me. I never met a
woman that interested me so much. But you do a heap more than interest
me. No, you sit right there and listen. Your cheeky pluck and that
insolent, indifferent beauty of yours made a hit with me the first
minute I saw you that night. I swore I’d tame you, and that’s why I
brought you to the ranch. Your eye flashed a heap too haughty for me to
give you the go-by. Mind you, I meant to be master. I meant to make you
mine as much as that dog that licked my hand before we started. What I
meant then I still mean, but in a different way.

“That’s as far as it went with me then, but before we reached here next
day I knew the thing cut deeper with me. I ain’t saying that I love
you, because I’m a sweep and it’s just likely I don’t know passion from
love. But I’ll tell you this—there hasn’t been a waking moment since
then I haven’t been on fire to be with you. That’s why I stayed away
until I knew I wasn’t so likely to slop over. But here, I’m doing it
right this minute. I care more for you than I do for anything else on
this earth. But that makes it worse for you. I never cared for anybody
without bringing ruin on them. I broke my mother’s heart and spoiled
the life of a girl I was going to marry. That’s the kind of scoundrel I
am. Even if I can make you care for me—and I reckon I can if y’u are
like other women—I’ll likely drag you through hell after me.”

The simulation of despair in his beautiful eyes spoke more impressively
than his self-scorning words. She was touched in spite of herself,
despite, too, his colossal egotism. For there is an appeal about the
engaging sinner that drums in a woman’s head and calls to her heart.
All good women are missionaries in the last analysis, and Miss Messiter
was not an exception to her sex. Even though she knew he was half a
fraud and that his emotion was theatric, she could not let the moment
pass.

She leaned forward, a sweet, shy dignity in her manner. “Is it too late
to change? Why not begin now? There is still a to-morrcw, and it need
not be the slave of yesterday. Life for all of us is full of
milestones.”

“And how shall I begin my new career of saintliness?” he asked, with a
swift return to blithe irony.

“The nearest duty. Take me back to my ranch. Begin a life of rigid
honesty.”

“Give you up now that I have found you? That is just the last thing I
would do,” he cried, with glancing eyes. “No—no. The clock can’t be
turned back. I have sowed and I must reap.”

He leaped to his feet. “Come! We must be going.”

She rose sadly, for she knew the mood of sentimental regret for his
wasted life had passed, and she had failed.

They descended the trough and reached the boulder field that had marked
the terminal of the glacier. At the farther edge of it the outlaw
turned to point out to the girl a great bank of snow on a mountainside
fifteen miles away.

He changed his weight as he turned, when a rock slipped under his foot
and he came down hard. He was up again in an instant, but Helen
Messiter caught the sharp intake of his breath when he set foot to the
ground.

“You’ve sprained your ankle!” she cried.

“Afraid so. It’s my own rotten carelessness.” He broke into a storm of
curses and limped forward a dozen steps, but he had to set his teeth to
stand the pain.

“Lean on me,” she said, gently. “I reckon I’ll have to,” he grimly
answered.

They covered a quarter of a mile, with many stops to rest the swollen
ankle. Only by the irregularity of his breathing and the damp moisture
on his forehead could she tell the agony he was enduring.

“It must be dreadful,” she told him once.

“I’ve got to stand for it, I reckon.”

Again she said, when they had reached a wooded grove where pines grew
splendid on a carpet of grass: “Only two hundred yards more. I think I
can bring your pony as far as the big cottonwood.”

She noticed that he leaned heavier and heavier on her. However, when
they reached the cottonwood he leaned no more, but pitched forward in a
faint. The water bottle was empty, but she ran down to where the ponies
had been left, and presently came back with his canteen. She had been
away perhaps twenty minutes, and when she came back he waved a hand
airily at her.

“First time in my life that ever happened,” he apologized, gayly. “But
why didn’t y’u get on Jim and cut loose for the Lazy D while you had
the chance?”

“I didn’t think of it. Perhaps I shall next time.”

“I shouldn’t. Y’u see, I’d follow you and bring you back. And if I
didn’t find you there would be a lamb lost again in these hills.”

“The sporting thing would be to take a chance.”

“And leave me here alone? Well, I’m going to give you a show to take
it.” He handed her his revolver. “Y’u may need this if you’re going
traveling.”

“Are you telling me to go?” she asked, amazed.

“I’m telling you to do as you think best. Y’u may take a hike or y’u
may bring back Two-step to me. Suit yourself.”

“I tell you plainly, I sha’n’t come back.”

“And I’m sure y’u will.”

“But I won’t. The thing’s absurd. Would you?”

“No, I shouldn’t. But y’u will.”

“I won’t. Good-bye.” She held out her hand.

He shook his head, looking steadily at her. “What’s the use? You’ll be
back in half an hour.”

“Not I. Did you say I must keep the Antelope Peaks in a line to reach
the Lazy D.

“Yes, a little to the left. Don’t be long, little pardner.”

“I hate to leave you here. Perhaps I’ll send a sheriff to take care of
you.”

“Better bring Two-step up to the south of that bunch of cottonwoods.
It’s not so steep that way.”

“I’ll mention it to the sheriff. I’m not coming myself.”

She left him apparently obstinate in the conviction that she would
return. In reality he was taking a gambler’s chance, but it was of a
part with the reckless spirit of the man that the risk appealed to him.
It was plain he could not drag himself farther. Since he must let her
go for the horse alone, he chose that she should go with her eyes open
to his knowledge of the opportunity of escape.

But Helen Messiter had not the slightest intention of returning. She
had found her chance, and she meant to make the most of it. As rapidly
ias her unaccustomed fingers would permit she saddled and cinched her
pony. She had not ridden a hundred yards before Two-step came crashing
through the young cottonwood grove after her. Objecting to being left
alone, he had broken the rein that tied him. The girl tried to
recapture the horse in order that the outlaw might not be left entirely
without means of reaching camp, but her efforts were unsuccessful. She
had to give it up and resume her journey.

Of course the men at his ranch would miss their chief and search for
him. There could be no doubt but that they would find him. She
bolstered up her assurance of this as she rode toward the Antelope
Peaks, but her hope lacked buoyancy, because she doubted if they had
any idea of where he had been going to spend the day.

She rode slower and slower, and finally came to a long halt for
consideration. Vividly there rose before her a picture of the miscreant
waiting grimly for death or rescue. Well, she was not to blame. If she
deserted him it was to save herself. But to leave him helpless——

No, she could not leave a crippled man to die alone, even though he
were her enemy. That was the goal to which her circling thoughts came
always home, and with a sob she turned her horse’s head. It was a piece
of soft-headed folly, she confessed, but she could not help it.

So back she went and found him lying just where she had left him. His
derisive smile offered

her no thanks. She doubted, indeed, whether he felt any sense of
gratitude.

“Y’u didn’t break your neck hurrying,” he said.

She made her confession with a palpable chagrin. “I meant to ride away.
I rode a mile or two. But I had to come back. I couldn’t leave you here
alone.”

His eyes sparkled triumphantly. She saw that he had misunderstood the
reason of her return, that he was pluming himself on a conquest of his
fascinated victim.

“One couldn’t leave even a broken-legged dog without help,” she added,
quietly.

“So how could we expect a woman to leave the man she’s getting ready to
love?”

She let her contemptuous eyes rest on him in silence.

“That’s right. Look at me as if I were dirt under your feet. Hate me,
if it makes y’u feel better. But y’u’ll have to come to loving me just
the same.”

“Can you get on without help?” she asked, ranging the pony alongside
him.

“Yes.” He dragged himself to the saddle and smiled down at her. “So y’u
better make up your mind to that soon as convenient.”

Disdaining answer, she walked in front of the pony down the trail. She
was tired, but her elastic tread would not admit it to him. For she was
dramatizing unconsciously, with firmly clenched fingers that bit into
her palms, the march of the unconquerable.

Evening had fallen before they reached the ranch. It was beautifully
still, except for the call of the quails. The hazy violet outline of
the mountains came to silhouette against the skyline with a fine edge.

As they passed the pony corral he spoke again. “I’ll never forget
to-day. I’ve got it fenced from all the yesterdays and to-morrows. I
have surely enjoyed our little picnic.”

“Nor will I forget it,” she flung back quickly, as she followed him
into the house. “For I never before met a man wholly incapable of
gratitude and entirely lacking in all the elements that go to
distinguish a human being from a wolf.”

He turned to speak to her, and as he did so a quiet voice cautioned
him:

“Don’t move, seh, except to throw up your hands.”

At the sound of that pleasant drawl Helen’s heart jumped to her throat.
Jim McWilliams, half seated on the edge of the table, was looking
intently at Bannister, and there was a revolver in his hand. On the
other side of the room sat Morgan and the Cheyenne woman, apparently in
charge of the young giant Denver.

Bannister’s hands went up, even as he whirled with a snarl toward the
man Morgan.

“I told y’u to watch out, y’u muttonhead!”

“But y’u clean forgot to remember to watch out your own self,” spoke up
McWilliams, unbuckling the belt from the waist of his new captive.

“Oh, Mac, you blessed boy!” cried Helen, with an hysterical laugh that
was half a sob.

“How did you ever find me?”

“Followed the track of the gas wagon to where it ran out of juice. We
lost your trail after that, but Denver and me had the good luck to pick
it up again where y’u’d camped that night. We mislaid it again up in
the hills, and Denver he knew about this place. We dropped in just
casual for information, but when we set our peepers on Judd we allowed
we would stay awhile, him being so anxious to have us.”

“You dear boys! I’m so glad! You don’t know,” she sobbed, dropping
weakly into thes nearest chair.

“We can guess, ma’am,” her foreman answered grimly, his eyes on
Bannister.” And if either of these scoundrels have treated y’u so they
need their light put out all y’u have got to do is to say so.”

“No, no, Mac. Let us go away from here and leave them. Can’t we go
now—this very minute?”

The foreman’s eyes found those of Denver and the latter nodded. Neither
of them had had a bite to eat since the previous evening, and they were
naturally ravenous.

“All right. We’ll go right now, ma’am. Denver, I’ll take care of these
beauties while y’u step into the pantry with Mrs. Lo-the-poor-Indian
and put up a lunch. Y’u don’t want to forget we’re hungry enough to eat
the wool off a pair of chaps.”

“I ain’t likely to forget it, am I?” grinned Denver, as he rose.

“You poor boys! I know you are starved. I’ll see about the lunch if one
of you will get the I horses round,” Helen broke in. “Only let us hurry
and get away from here.”

Ten minutes later they were in the saddle. For the sake of precaution
Mac walked two of his captives with them for about a mile before
releasing them. Bannister, unable to travel, they left behind.

“We’ll get down out of the hills and then cut acrost to the Meeker
ranch,” said McWilliams, after they had ridden forward a few miles.
“I’ll telephone from there to Slauson’s and have the old man send a boy
over to the Lazy D with the good word. We’ll get an early start from
Meeker’s and make it home in the afternoon.”

“How did you leave Mr. Bannister?” asked Helen, in a carefully careless
voice.

She had held back this question for nearly an hour till Denver, who was
guiding the party, had passed out of earshot.

“Left him with two of the boys holding him down. He was plumb anxious
to commit suicide by joining the hunt for y’u, but I had other
thoughts,” grinned Mac.

She felt herself flushing in the darkness. “We’ve made a great mistake
about him, Mac, It’s his cousin of the same name that is the
desperado—the man we just left.”

“Yes, that’s what Judd let out before y’u and the King arrived. It made
me plumb glad to my gizzard to hear it.”

“I was pleased, too.”

“Somehow I suspicioned that,” he made answer, with banter in his dry
tones.

“Of course I would be glad to know that he is not a villain,” she
defended.

“Sure!”

“Well, one doesn’t like to think that a friend——”

“He’s your friend, is he?” chuckled Mac.

“Why shouldn’t he be?”

“I’m offering no objections, ma’am.”

“You act as if——”

“Sho! Don’t pay any attention to me. Sometimes I get these spells of
laughing in to myself. They just come. Doctors never could find a
reason.”

“Oh, well!”

“He was your enemy and now he’s your friend. Course since I’m your
foreman I got to keep posted on how we stand with our neighbors. If
your feelings change to him again y’u’ll let me know, I expect.”

“Why should they change?” she asked in a cold voice that her rising
color belied.

“Search _me!_ I just thought mebbe——”

“You think too much,” she cut in, shortly.

“Yes, ma’am,” admitted the youth, meekly, but from time to time as they
rode she could hear, faint sounds of mirth from his direction.

McWilliams telephoned from the Meeker ranch to Slauson’s, and inside of
two hours the Lazy D knew that its owner had been found. As one puncher
after another reported there on jaded ponies to get the latest word
they heard that all was well. Each one at once unsaddled, ate and
turned in for the first night’s sleep he had had since his mistress had
been missing. Next morning they rode in a body to meet her.

She saw them galloping toward her in a cloud of dust, and presently she
was the centre of a circle of her happy family. They were like
boys—exuberant in their joy at her deliverance and eager to set out at
once to avenge her wrongs.

Ned Bannister, from his window, saw them coming. When the group
separated at the corral and she rode from among them with McWilliams
toward the house the sheepman could sit still no longer. He limped to
the front door and waved the American flag which he had unearthed for
the occasion.




CHAPTER XII.
MISTRESS AND MAID


Now that it was safely concluded, Helen thought the adventure almost
worthwhile for the spontaneous expressions of good will it had drawn
forth from her adherents. Mrs. Winslow and Nora had taken her to their
arms and wept and laughed over her in turn, and in their silent
undemonstrative way she had felt herself hedged in by unusual
solicitude on the part of her riders. It was good—none but she knew how
good—to be back among her own, to bask in a friendliness she could not
doubt. It was best of all to sit opposite Ned Bannister again with no
weight on her heart from the consciousness of his unworthiness.

She could affect to disregard the gray eyes that followed her with such
magnetized content about the living room, but beneath her cool
self-containment she knew the joyous heart in her was strangely
buoyant. He loved her, and she had a right to let herself love him.
This was enough for the present.

“They’re so plumb glad to see y’u they can’t let y’u alone,” laughed
Bannister at the sound of a knock on the door that was about the fifth
in as many minutes.

This time it proved to be Nora, come to find out what her mistress
would like for supper. Helen turned to the invalid.

“What would you like, Mr. Bannister?”

“I should like a porterhouse with mushrooms,” he announced promptly.

“You can’t have it. You know what the doctor said.” Very peremptorily
she smiled this at him.

“He’s an old granny, Miss Messiter.”

“You may have an egg on toast.”

“Make it two,” he pleaded. “Excitement’s just like caviar to the
appetite, and seeing y’u safe—”

“Very well—two,” she conceded.

They ate supper together in a renewal of the pleasant intimacy so
delightful to both. He lay on the lounge, propped up with sofa
cushions, the while he watched her deft fingers butter the toast and
prepare his egg. It was surely worth while to be a convalescent, given
so sweet a comrade for a nurse; and after he had moved over to the
table he enjoyed immensely the gay firmness with which she denied him
what was not good for him.

“I’ll bet y’u didn’t have supper like this at Robbers’ Roost.” he told
her, enthusiastically.

“It wasn’t so bad, considering everything.” She was looking directly at
him as she spoke. “Your cousin is rather a remarkable man in some ways.
He manages to live on the best that can be got in tin-can land.”

“Did he tell y’u he was my cousin?” he asked, slowly.

“Yes, and that his name was Ned Bannister, too?”

“Did that explain anything to y’u?”

“It explained a great deal, but it left some things not clear yet.”

“For instance?”

“For one thing, the reason why you should bear the odium of his crimes.
I suppose you don’t care for him, though I can see how you might in a
way.”

“I don’t care for him in the least, though I used to when we were boys.
As to letting myself be blamed for his crimes. I did it because I
couldn’t help myself. We look more or less alike, and he was cunning
enough to manufacture evidence against me. We were never seen together,
and so very few know that there are two Bannisters. At first I used to
protest, but I gave it up. There wasn’t the least use. I could only
wait for him to be captured or killed. In the meantime it didn’t make
me any more popular to be a sheepman.”

“Weren’t you taking a long chance of being killed first? Some one with
a grudge against him might have shot you.”

“They haven’t yet,” he smiled.

“You might at least have told _me_ how it was,” she reproached.

“I started to tell y’u that first day, but it looked so much of a fairy
tale to unload that I passed it up.”

“Then you ought not to blame me for thinking you what you were not.”

“I don’t remember blaming y’u. The fact is I thought it awful white of
y’u to do your Christian duty so thorough, me being such a miscreant,”
he drawled.

“You gave me no chance to think well of you.”

“But yet y’u did your duty from A to Z.”

“We’re not talking about my duty,” she flashed back. “My point is that
you weren’t fair to me. If I thought ill of you how could I help it?”

“I expaict your Kalamazoo conscience is worryin’ y’u because y’u
misjudged me.”

“It isn’t,” she denied instantly.

“I ain’t of a revengeful disposition. I’ll forgive y’u for doing your
duty and saving my life twice,” he said, with a smile of whimsical
irony.

“I don’t want your forgiveness.”

“Well, then for thinking me a ‘bad man.’”

“You ought to beg _my_ pardon. I was a friend, at least you say I acted
like one—and you didn’t care enough to right yourself with me.”

“Maybe I cared too much to risk trying it. I knew there would be proof
some time, and I decided to lie under the suspicion until I could get
it. I see now that wasn’t kind or fair to you. I am sorry I didn’t tell
y’u all about it. May I tell y’u the story now?”

“If you wish.”

It was a long story, but the main points can be told in a paragraph.
The grandfather of the two cousins, General Edward Bannister, had worn
the Confederate gray for four years, and had lost an arm in the service
of the flag with the stars and bars. After the war he returned to his
home in Virginia to find it in ruins, his slaves freed and his fields
mortgaged. He had pulled himself together for another start, and had
practiced law in the little town where his family had lived for
generations. Of his two sons, one was a ne’er-do-well. He was one of
those brilliant fellows of whom much is expected that never develops.
He had a taste for low company, married beneath him, and, after a
career that was a continual mortification and humiliation to his
father, was killed in a drunken brawl under disgraceful circumstances,
leaving behind a son named for the general. The second son of General
Bannister also died young, but not before he had proved his devotion to
his father by an exemplary life. He, too, was married and left an only
son, also named for the old soldier. The boys were about of an age and
were well matched in physical and mental equipment. But the general,
who had taken them both to live with him, soon discovered that their
characters were as dissimilar as the poles. One grandson was frank,
generous, open as the light; the other was of a nature almost
degenerate. In fact, each had inherited the qualities of his father.
Tales began to come to the old general’s ears that at first he refused
to credit. But eventually it was made plain to him that one of the boys
was a rake of the most objectionable type.

There were many stormy scenes between the general and his grandson, but
the boy continued to go from bad to worse. After a peculiarly flagrant
case, involving the character of a respectable young girl, young Ned
Bannister was forbidden his ancestral home. It had been by means of his
cousin that this last iniquity of his had been unearthed, and the boy
had taken it to his grandfather in hot indignation as the last hope of
protecting the reputation of the injured girl. From that hour the evil
hatred of his cousin, always dormant in the heart, flamed into active
heat. The disowned youth swore to be revenged. A short time later the
general died, leaving what little property he had entirely to the one
grandson. This stirred again the bitter rage of the other. He set fire
to the house that had been willed his cousin, and took a train that
night for Wyoming. By a strange irony of fate they met again in the
West years later, and the enmity between them was renewed, growing
every month more bitter on the part of the one who called himself the
King of the Bighorn Country.

She broke the silence after his story with a gentle “Thank you. I can
understand why you don’t like to tell the story.”

“I am very glad of the chance to tell it to you,” he answered.

“When you were delirious you sometimes begged some one you called Ned
not to break his mother’s heart. I thought then you might be speaking
to yourself as ill people do. Of course I see now it was your cousin
that was on your mind.”

“When I was out of my head I must have talked a lot of nonsense,” he
suggested, in the voice of a question. “I expect I had opinions I
wouldn’t have been scattering around so free if I’d known what I was
saying.”

He was hardly prepared for the tide of color that swept her cheeks at
his words nor for the momentary confusion that shuttered the shy eyes
with long lashes cast down.

“Sick folks do talk foolishness, they say,” he added, his gaze trained
on her suspiciously.

“Do they?”

“Mrs. Winslow says I did. But when I asked her what it was I said she
only laughed and told me to ask y’u. Well, I’m askin’ now.”

She became very busy over the teapot. “You talked about the work at
your ranch—sheep dipping and such things.”

“Was that all?”

“No, about lots of other things—football and your early life. I don’t
see what Mrs. Winslow meant. Will you have some more tea?”

“No, thank y’u. I have finished. Yes, that ce’tainly seems harmless. I
didn’t know but I had been telling secrets.” Still his unwavering eyes
rested quietly on her.

“Secrets?” She summoned her aplomb to let a question rest lightly in
the face she turned toward him, though she was afraid she met his eyes
hardly long enough for complete innocence “Why, yes, secrets.” He
measured looks with her deliberately before he changed the subject, and
he knew again the delightful excitement of victory. “Are y’u going to
read to me this evening?”

She took his opening so eagerly that he smiled, at which her color
mounted again.

“If y’u like. What shall I read?”

“Some more of Barrie’s books, if y’u don’t mind. When a fellow is weak
as a kitten he sorter takes to things that are about kids.”

Nora came in and cleared away the supper things. She was just beginning
to wash them when McWilliams and Denver dropped into the kitchen by
different doors. Each seemed surprised and disappointed at the presence
of the other. Nora gave each of them a smile and a dishcloth.

“Reddy, he’s shavin’ and Frisco’s struggling with a biled shirt—I mean
with a necktie,” Denver hastily amended. “They’ll be along right soon,
I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Y’u better go tell the boys Miss Nora don’t want her kitchen littered
up with so many of them,” suggested his rival.

“Y’u’re foreman here. I don’t aim to butt into your business, Mac,”
grinned back the other, polishing a tea plate with the towel.

“I want to get some table linen over to Lee Ming to-night,” said Nora,
presently.

“Denver, he’ll be glad to take it for y’u, Miss Nora. He’s real
obliging,” offered Mac, generously.

“I’ve been in the house all day, so I need a walk. I thought perhaps
one of you gentlemen—” Miss Nora looked from one to the other of them
with deep innocence.

“Sure, I’ll go along and carry it. Just as Mac says, I’ll be real
pleased to go,” said Denver, hastily.

Mac felt he had been a trifle precipitate in his assumption that Nora
did not intend to go herself. Lee Ming had established a laundry some
half mile from the ranch, and the way thereto lay through most
picturesque shadow and moonlight. The foreman had conscientious
scruples against letting Denver escort her down such a veritable
lovers’ lane of romantic scenery.

“I don’t know as y’u ought to go out in the night air with that cold,
Denver. I’d hate a heap to have y’u catch pneumony. It don’t seem to me
I’d be justified in allowin’ y’u to,” said the foreman, anxiously.

“You’re _that_ thoughtful, Mac. But I expect mebbe a little saunter
with Miss Nora will do my throat good. We’ll walk real slow, so’s not
to wear out my strength.”

“Big, husky fellows like y’u are awful likely to drop off with
pneumony. I been thinkin’ I got some awful good medicine that would be
the right stuff for y’u. It’s in the drawer of my wash-stand. Help
yourself liberal and it will surely do y’u good. Y’u’ll find it _in a
bottle_.”

“I’ll bet it’s good medicine, Mac. After we get home I’ll drop around.
In the washstand, y’u said?”

“I hate to have y’u take such a risk,” Mac tried again. “There ain’t a
bit of use in y’u exposing yourself so careless. Y’u take a hot
footbath and some of that medicine, Denver, then go right straight to
bed, and in the mo’ning y’u’ll be good as new. Honest, y’u won’t know
yourself.”

“Y’u got the _best_ heart, Mac.”

Nora giggled.

“Since I’m foreman I got to be a mother to y’u boys, ain’t I?”

“Y’u’re liable to be a grandmother to us if y’u keep on,” came back the
young giant.

“Y’u plumb discourage me, Denver,” sighed the foreman.

“No, sir! The way I look at it, a fellow’s got to take some risk. Now,
y’u cayn’t tell some things. I figure I ain’t half so likely to catch
pneumony as y’u would be to get heart trouble if y’u went walking with
Miss Nora,” returned Denver.

A perfect gravity sat on both their faces during the progress of most
of their repartee.

“If your throat’s so bad, Mr. Halliday, I’ll put a kerosene rag round
it for you when we get back,” Nora said, with a sweet little glance of
sympathy that the foreman did not enjoy.

Denver, otherwise “Mr. Halliday,” beamed. “Y’u’re real kind, ma’am.
I’ll bet that will help it on the outside much as Mac’s medicine will
inside.”

“What’ll y’u do for my heart, ma’am, if it gits bad the way Denver
figures it will?”

“Y’u might try a mustard plaster,” she gurgled, with laughter.

For once the debonair foreman’s ready tongue had brought him to defeat.
He was about to retire from the field temporarily when Nora herself
offered first aid to the wounded.

“We would like to have you come along with us, Mr. McWilliams. I want
you to come if you can spare the time.”

The soft eyes telegraphed an invitation with such a subtle suggestion
of a private understanding that Mac was instantly encouraged to accept.

He knew, of course, that she was playing them against each other and
sitting back to enjoy the result, but he was possessed of the hope
common to youths in his case that he really was on a better footing
with her than the other boys. This opinion, it may be added, was shared
by Denver, Frisco and even Reddy as regards themselves. Which is merely
another way of putting the regrettable fact that this very charming
young woman was given to coquetting with the hearts of her admirers.

“Any time y’u get oneasy about that cough y’u go right on home, Denver.
Don’t stay jest out of politeness. We’ll never miss y’u, anyhow,” the
foreman assured him.

“Thank y’u, Mac. But y’u see I got to stay to keep Miss Nora from
getting bored.”

“Was it a phrenologist strung y’u with the notion y’u was a cure for
lonesomeness?”

“Shucks! I don’t make no such claims. The only thing is it’s a comfort
when you’re bored to have company. Miss Nora, she’s so polite. But, y’u
see, if I’m along I can take y’u for a walk when y’u get too bad.”

They reached the little trail that ran up to Lee Ming’s place, and
Denver suggested that Mac run in with the bundle so as to save Nora the
climb.

“I’d like to, honest I would. But since y’u thought of it first I won’t
steal the credit of doing Miss Nora a good turn. We’ll wait right here
for y’u till y’u come back.”

“We’ll all go up together,” decided Nora, and honors were easy.

In the pleasant moonlight they sauntered back, two of them still
engaged in lively badinage, while the third played chorus with
appreciative little giggles and murmurs of “Oh, Mr. Halliday!” and “You
know you’re just flattering me, Mr. McWilliams.”

If they had not been so absorbed in their gay foolishness the two men
might not have walked so innocently into the trap waiting for them at
their journey’s end. As it was, the first intimation they had of
anything unusual was a stern command to surrender.

“Throw up your hands. Quick, you blank fools!”

A masked man covered them, in each hand a six-shooter, and at his
summons the arms of the cow-punchers went instantly into the air.

Nora gave an involuntary little scream of dismay.

“Y’u don’t need to be afraid, lady. Ain’t nobody going to hurt you, I
reckon,” the masked man growled.

“Sure they won’t,” Mac reassured her, adding ironically: “This gun-play
business is just neighborly frolic. Liable to happen any day in
Wyoming.”

A second masked man stepped up. He, too was garnished with an arsenal.

“What’s all this talking about?” he demanded sharply.

“We just been having a little conversation seh?” returned McWilliams,
gently, his vigilant eyes searching through the disguise of the other
“Just been telling the lady that your call is in friendly spirit. No
objections, I suppose?”

The swarthy newcomer, who seemed to be in command, swore sourly.

“Y’u put a knot in your tongue, Mr. Foreman.”

“Ce’tainly, if y’u prefer,” returned the indomitable McWilliams.

“Shut up or I’ll pump lead into you!”

“I’m padlocked, seh.”

Nora Darling interrupted the dialogue by quietly fainting. The foreman
caught her as she fell.

“See what y’u done, y’u blamed chump!” he snapped.




CHAPTER XIII.
THE TWO COUSINS


The sheepman lay at his ease, the strong supple lines of him stretched
lazily on the lounge. Helen was sitting beside him in an easy chair,
and he watched the play of her face in the lamplight as she read from
“The Little White Bird.” She was very good to see, so vitally alive and
full of a sweet charm that half revealed and half concealed her
personality. The imagination with which she threw herself into a
discussion of the child fancies portrayed by the Scotch writer captured
his fancy. It delighted him to tempt her into discussions that told him
by suggestion something of what she thought and was.

They were in animated debate when the door opened to admit somebody
else. He had stepped in so quietly that he stood there a little while
without being observed, smiling down at them with triumphant malice
behind the mask he wore. Perhaps it was the black visor that was
responsible for the Mephisto effect, since it hid all the face but the
leering eyes. These, narrowed to slits, swept the room and came back to
its occupants. He was a tall man and well-knit, dressed incongruously
in up-to-date riding breeches and boots, in combination with the usual
gray shirt, knotted kerchief and wide-brimmed felt hat of the horseman
of the plains. The dust of the desert lay thick on him, without in the
least obscuring a certain ribald elegance, a distinction of wickedness
that rested upon him as his due. To this result his debonair manner
contributed, though it carried with it no suggestion of weakness. To
the girl who looked up and found him there he looked indescribably
sinister.

She half rose to her feet, dilated eyes fixed on him.

“Good evenin’. I came to make sure y’u got safe home, Miss Messiter,”
he said.

The eyes of the two men clashed, the sheepman’s stern and unyielding,
his cousin’s lit with the devil of triumph. But out of the faces of
both men looked the inevitable conflict, the declaration of war that
never ends till death.

“I’ve been a heap anxious about y’u—couldn’t sleep for worrying. So I
saddled up and rode in to find out if y’u were all right and to inquire
how Cousin Ned was getting along.”

The sheepman, not deigning to move an inch from his position, looked in
silence his steady contempt.

“This conversation sounds a whole lot like a monologue up to date,” he
continued. “Now, maybe y’u don’t know y’u have the honor of
entertaining the King of the Bighorn.” The man’s brown hand brushed the
mask from his eyes and he bowed with mocking deference. “Miss Messiter,
allow me to introduce myself again—Ned Bannister, train robber,
rustler, kidnapper and general bad man. But I ain’t told y’u the worst
yet. I’m cousin to a sheepherder’ and that’s the lowest thing that
walks.”

He limped forward a few steps and sat down. “Thank you, I believe I
will stay a while since y’u both ask me so urgent. It isn’t often I
meet with a welcome so hearty and straight from the heart.”

It was not hard to see how the likeness between them contributed to the
mistake that had been current concerning them. Side by side, no man
could have mistaken one for the other. The color of their eyes, the
shade of hair, even the cut of their features, were different. But
beneath all distinctions in detail ran a family resemblance not to be
denied. This man looked like his cousin, the sheepman, as the latter
might have done if all his life he had given a free rein to evil
passions.

The height, the build, the elastic tread of each, made further
contributions to this effect of similarity.

“What are you doing here?” They were the first words spoken by the man
on the lounge and they rang with a curt challenge.

“Come to inquire after the health of my dear cousin,” came the prompt
silken answer.

“You villain!”

“My dear cousin, y’u speak with such conviction that y’u almost
persuade me. But of course if I’m a villain I’ve got to live up to my
reputation. Haven’t I, Miss Messiter?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to live it down?” she asked with a quietness
that belied her terror. For there had been in his manner a threat, not
against her but against the man whom her heart acknowledged as her
lover.

He laughed. “Y’u’re still hoping to make a Sunday school superintendent
out of me, I see. Y’u haven’t forgot all your schoolmarm ways yet, but
I’ll teach y’u to forget them.”

The other cousin watched him with a cool, quiet glance that never
wavered. The outlaw was heavily armed, but his weapons were sheathed,
and, though there was a wary glitter behind the vindictive exultation
in his eyes, his capable hands betrayed no knowledge of the existence
of his revolvers. It was, he knew, to be a moral victory, if one at
all.

“Hope I’m not disturbing any happy family circle,” he remarked, and,
taking two limping steps forward, he lifted the book from the girl’s
unresisting hands. “H’m! Barrie. I don’t go much on him. He’s too sissy
for me. But I could have guessed the other Ned Bannister would be
reading something like that,” he concluded, a flicker of sneering
contempt crossing his face.

“Perhaps y’u’ll learn some time to attend to your own business,” said
the man on the couch quietly.

Hatred gleamed in the narrowed slits from which the soul of the other
cousin looked down at him. “I’m a philanthropist, and my business is
attending to other people’s. They raise sheep, for instance, and I
market them.”

The girl hastily interrupted. She had not feared for herself, but she
knew fear for the indomitable man she had nursed back to life. “Won’t
you sit down, Mr. Bannister? Since you don’t approve our literature,
perhaps we can find some other diversion more to your taste.” She
smiled faintly.

The man turned in smiling divination of her purpose, and sat down to
play with her as a cat does with a mouse.

“Thank y’u, Miss Messiter, I believe I will. I called to thank y’u for
your kindness to my cousin as well as to inquire about you. The word
goes that y’u pulled my dear cousin back when death was reaching mighty
strong for him. Of course I feel grateful to y’u. How is he getting
along now?”

“He’s doing very well, I think.”

“That’s ce’tainly good hearing,” was his ironical response. “How come
he to get hurt, did y’u say?”

His sleek smile was a thing hateful to see.

“A hound bit me,” explained the sheepman.

“Y’u don’t say! I reckon y’u oughtn’t to have got in its way. Did y’u
kill it?”

“Not yet.”

“That was surely a mistake, for it’s liable to bite again.”

The girl felt a sudden sickness at his honeyed cruelty, but immediately
pulled herself together. For whatever fiendish intention might be in
his mind she meant to frustrate it.

“I hear you are of a musical turn, Mr. Bannister. Won’t you play for
us?”

She had by chance found his weak spot. Instantly his eyes lit up. He
stepped across to the piano and began to look over the music, though
not so intently that he forgot to keep under his eye the man on the
lounge.

“H’m! Mozart, Grieg, Chopin, Raff, Beethoven. Y’u ce’tainly have the
music here; I wonder if y’u have the musician.” He looked her over with
a bold, unscrupulous gaze. “It’s an old trick to have classical music
on the rack and ragtime in your soul. Can y’u play these?”

“You will have to be the judge of that,” she said.

He selected two of Grieg’s songs and invited her to the piano. He knew
instantly that the Norwegian’s delicate fancy and lyrical feeling had
found in her no inadequate medium of expression. The peculiar emotional
quality of the song “I Love Thee” seemed to fill the room as she
played. When she swung round on the stool at its conclusion it was to
meet a shining-eyed, musical enthusiast instead of the villain she had
left five minutes earlier.

“Y’u _can_ play,” was all he said, but the manner of it spoke volumes.

For nearly an hour he kept her at the piano, and when at last he let
her stop playing he seemed a man transformed.

“You have given me a great pleasure, a very great pleasure, Miss
Messiter,” he thanked her warmly, his Western idiom sloughed with his
villainy for the moment. “It has been a good many months since I have
heard any decent music. With your permission I shall come again.”

Her hesitation was imperceptible. “Surely, if you wish.” She felt it
would be worse than idle to deny the permission she might not be able
to refuse.

With perfect grace he bowed, and as he wheeled away met with a little
shock of remembrance the gaze of his cousin. For a long moment their
eyes bored into each other. Neither yielded the beat of an eyelid, but
it was the outlaw that spoke.

“I had forgotten y’u. That’s strange, too because it was for y’u I
came. I’m going to take y’u home with me.

“Alive or dead?” asked the other serenely.

“Alive, dear Ned.”

“Same old traits cropping out again. There was always something feline
about y’u. I remember when y’u were a boy y’u liked to torment wild
animals y’u had trapped.”

“I play with larger game now—and find it more interesting.”

“Just so. Miss Messiter, I shall have to borrow a pony from y’u,
unless—” He broke off and turned indifferently to the bandit.

“Yes, I brought a hawss along with me for y’u,” replied the other to
the unvoiced question. “I thought maybe y’u might want to ride with
us.”

“But he can’t ride. He couldn’t possibly. It would kill him,” the girl
broke out.

“I reckon not.” The man from the Shoshones glanced at his victim as he
drew on his gauntlets. “He’s a heap tougher than y’u think.”

“But it will. If he should ride now, why—It would be the same as
murder,” she gasped. “You wouldn’t make him ride now?”

“Didn’t y’u hear him order his hawss, ma’am? He’s keen on this ride. Of
course he don’t have to go unless he wants to.” The man turned his
villainous smile on his cousin, and the latter interpreted it to mean
that if he preferred, the point of attack might be shifted to the girl.
He might go or he might stay. But if he stayed the mistress of the Lazy
D would have to pay for his decision.

“No, I’ll ride,” he said at once.

Helen Messiter had missed the meaning of that Marconied message that
flashed between them. She set her jaw with decision. “Well, you’ll not.
It’s perfectly ridiculous. I won’t hear of such a thing.”

“Y’u seem right welcome. Hadn’t y’u better stay, Ned?” murmured the
outlaw, with smiling eyes that mocked.

“Of course he had. He couldn’t ride a mile—not half a mile. The idea is
utterly preposterous.”

The sheepman got to his feet unsteadily. “I’ll do famously.”

“I won’t have it. Why are you so foolish about going? He said you
didn’t need to go. You can’t ride any more than a baby could chop down
that pine in the yard.”

“I’m a heap stronger than y’u think.”

“Yes, you are!” she derided. “It’s nothing but obstinacy. Make him
stay,” she appealed to the outlaw.

“Am I my cousin’s keeper?” he drawled. “I can advise him to stay, but I
can’t make him.”

“Well, _I_ can. I’m his nurse, and I say he sha’n’t stir a foot out of
this house—not a foot.”

The wounded man smiled quietly, admiring the splendid energy of her.
“I’m right sorry to leave y’u so unceremoniously.”

“You’re not going.” She wheeled on the outlaw “I don’t understand this
at all. But if you want him you can find him here when you come again.
Put him on parole and leave him here. I’ll not be a party to murder by
letting him go.”

“Y’u think I’m going to murder him?” he smiled.

“I think he cannot stand the riding. It would kill him.”

“A haidstrong man is bound to have his way. He seems hell-bent on
riding. All the docs say the outside of a hawss is good for the inside
of a man. Mebbe it’ll be the making of him.”

“I won’t have it. I’ll rouse the whole countryside against you. Why
don’t you parole him till he is better?”

“All right. We’ll leave it that way,” announced the man. “I’d hate to
hurt your tender feelings after such a pleasant evening. Let him give
his parole to come to me whenever I send for him, no matter where he
may be, to quit whatever he is doing right that instant, and come on
the jump. If he wants to leave it that way, we’ll call it a bargain.”

Again the rapier-thrust of their eyes crossed. The sheepman was
satisfied with what he saw in the face of his foe.

“All right. It’s a deal,” he agreed, and sank weakly back to the couch.

There are men whose looks are a profanation to any good woman. Ned
Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin,
and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman’s
charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a
flush of shame coursing through her rich blood. No man had ever looked
at her like that before.

“Take awful good care of him,” he sneered, with so plain an implication
of evil that her clean blood boiled. “But I know y’u will, and don’t
let him go before he’s real strong.”

“No,” she murmured, hating herself for the flush that bathed her.

He bowed like a Chesterfield, and went out with elastic heels, spurs
clicking.

Helen turned fiercely on her guest. “Why did you make me insist on your
staying? As if I want you here, as if—” She stopped, choking with
anger; presently flamed out, “I hate you,” and ran from the room to
hide herself alone with her tears and her shame.




CHAPTER XIV.
FOR THE WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP


The scene on which Helen Messiter’s eyes rested that mellow Fourth of
July was vivid enough to have interested a far more jaded mind than
hers. Nowhere outside of Cattleland could it have been duplicated.
Wyoming is sparsely populated, but the riders of the plains think
nothing of traveling a hundred miles in the saddle to be present at a
“broncobusting” contest. Large delegations, too, had come in by
railroad from Caspar, Billings, Sheridan, Cheyenne and a score of other
points, so that the amphitheatre that looked down on the arena was
filled to its capacity.

All night the little town had rioted with its guests. Everything was
wide open at Gimlet Butte. Saloons were doing a land-office business
and gambling-houses coining money. Great piles of gold had passed to
and fro during the night at the roulette wheel and the faro table. But
with the coming of day interest had centered on the rough-riding
contest for the world’s championship. Saloons and dance halls were
deserted, and the universal trend of travel had been toward the big
grand stands, from which the sport could be best viewed.

It was afternoon now. The preliminaries had been ridden, and half a
dozen of the best riders had been chosen by the judges to ride again
for the finals. Helen was wonderfully interested, because in the six
who were to ride again were included the two Bannister cousins, her
foreman, McWilliams, the young man “Texas,” whom she had met the day of
her arrival at Gimlet Butte, and Tom Sanford, who had last year won the
championship.

She looked down on the arena, and her heart throbbed with the pure joy
of life. Already she loved her West and its picturesque, chap-clad
population. Their jingling spurs and their colored kerchiefs knotted
round sunburned necks, their frank, whole-hearted abandon to the
interest of the moment, led her to regard these youths as schoolboys.
Yet they were a hard-bitten lot, as one could see, burned to a
brick-red by the untempered sun of the Rockies; with muscles knit like
steel, and hearts toughened to endure any blizzard they might meet.
Only the humorous wrinkles about the corners of their eyes gave them
away for the cheerful sons of mirth that they were.

“Bob Austin on Two-Step,” announced the megaphone man, and a little
stir eddied through the group gathered at the lane between the arena
and the corral.

A meek-looking buckskin was driven into the arena. The embodiment of
listlessness, it apparently had not ambition enough to flick a fly from
its flank with its tail. Suddenly the bronco’s ears pricked, its sharp
eyes dilated. A man was riding forward, the loop of a lariat circling
about his head. The rope fell true, but the wily pony side-stepped, and
the loop slithered to the ground. Again the rope shot forward, dropped
over the pony’s head and tightened. The roper’s mustang braced its
forefeet, and brought the buckskin up short. Another rope swept over
its head. It stood trembling, unable to move without strangling itself.

A picturesque youth in flannel shirt and chaps came forward, dragging
blanket, saddle and bridle. At sight of him the horse gave a spasmodic
fling, then trembled again violently. A blind was coaxed over its eyes
and the bridle slipped on. Quickly and warily, with deft fingers, the
young man saddled and cinched. He waved a hand jauntily to the ropers.
The lariats were thrown off as the puncher swung to the saddle. For an
instant the buckskin stood bewildered, motionless as a statue. There
was a sudden leap forward high in air, and Bob Austin, alias “Texas,”
swung his sombrero with a joyous whoop.

“Fan him! Fan him!” screamed the spectators, and the rider’s quirt went
up and down like a piston-rod.

Round and round went Two-Step in a vicious circle, “swapping ends” with
dizzying rapidity. Suddenly he went forward as from a catapult, and
came to sudden halt in about five seconds. But Texas’s knees still
clung, viselike, to the sides of the pony. A series of quick bucks
followed, the buckskin coming down with back humped, all four legs
stiff as iron posts. The jar on the rider would have been like a
pile-driver falling on his head had he not let himself grow limp. The
buckskin plunged forward again in frenzied leaps, ending in an
unexpected jump to one side. Alas for Texas! One moment he was
jubilantly plying quirt and spurs, the next he found himself pitching
sideways. To save himself he caught at the saddle-horn.

“He’s hunting leather,” shouted a hundred voices.

One of the judges rode out and waved a hand. Texas slipped to the
ground disqualified, and made his dejected way back to his deriding
comrades. Some of them had endured similar misfortunes earlier in the
day. Therefore they found much pleasure in condoling with him.

“If he’d only recollected to saw off the horn of his saddle, then he
couldn’t ’a’ found it when he went to hunt leather,” mournfully
commented one puncher in a shirt of robin’s egg blue.

“’Twould have been most as good as to take the dust, wouldn’t it?”
retorted Texas gently, and the laugh was on the gentleman in blue,
because he had been thrown earlier in the day.

“A fellow’s hands sure get in his way sometimes. I reckon if you’d tied
your hands, Tex, you’d been riding that rocking-hawss yet,” suggested
Denver amiably.

“Sometimes it’s his foot he puts in it. There was onct a gent
disqualified for riding on his spurs,” said Texas reminiscently.

At which hit Denver retired, for not three hours before he had been
detected digging his spurs into the cinch to help him stick to the
saddle.

“Jim McWilliams will ride Dead Easy,” came the announcement through the
megaphone, and a burst of cheering passed along the grand stand, for
the sunny smile of the foreman of the Lazy D made him a general
favorite. Helen leaned forward and whispered something gaily to Nora,
who sat in the seat in front of her. The Irish girl laughed and
blushed, but when her mistress looked up it was her turn to feel the
mounting color creep into her cheeks. For Ned Bannister, arrayed in all
his riding finery, was making his way along the aisle to her.

She had not seen him since he had ridden away from the Lazy D ten days
before, quite sufficiently recovered from his wounds to take up the
routine of life again. They had parted not the best of friends, for she
had not yet forgiven him for his determination to leave with his cousin
on the night that she had been forced to insist on his remaining. He
had put her in a false position, and he had never explained to her why.
Nor could she guess the reason—for he was not a man to harvest credit
for himself by explaining his own chivalry.

Since her heart told her how glad she was he had come to her box to see
her, she greeted him with the coolest little nod in the world.

“Good morning, Miss Messiter. May I sit beside y’u?” he asked.

“Oh, certainly!” She swept her skirts aside carelessly and made room
for him. “I thought you were going to ride soon.”

“No, I ride last except for Sanford, the champion. My cousin rides just
before me. He’s entered under the name of Jack Holloway.”

She was thinking that he had no business to be riding, that his wounds
were still too fresh, but she did not intend again to show interest
enough in his affairs to interfere even by suggestion. Her heart had
been in her mouth every moment of the time this morning while he had
been tossed hither and thither on the back of his mount. In his
delirium he had said he loved her. If he did, why should he torture her
so? It was well enough for sound men to risk their lives, but—

A cheer swelled in the grand stand and died breathlessly away.
McWilliams was setting a pace it would take a rare expert to equal. He
was a trick rider, and all the spectacular feats that appealed to the
onlooker were his. While his horse was wildly pitching, he drank a
bottle of pop and tossed the bottle away. With the reins in his teeth
he slipped off his coat and vest, and concluded a splendid exhibition
of skill by riding with his feet out of the stirrups. He had been
smoking a cigar when he mounted. Except while he had been drinking the
pop it had been in his mouth from beginning to end, and, after he had
vaulted from the pony’s back, he deliberately puffed a long
smoke-spiral into the air, to show that his cigar was still alight. No
previous rider had earned so spontaneous a burst of applause. “He’s
ce’tainly a pure when it comes to riding,” acknowledged Bannister. “I
look to see him get either first or second.”

“Whom do you think is his most dangerous rival?” Helen asked.

“My cousin is a straight-up rider, too. He’s more graceful than Mac, I
think, but not quite so good on tricks. It will be nip and tuck.”

“How about your cousin’s cousin?” she asked, with bold irony.

“He hopes he won’t have to take the dust,” was his laughing answer.

The next rider suffered defeat irrevocably before he had been thirty
seconds in the saddle. His mount was one of the most cunning of the
outlaw ponies of the Northwest, and it brought him to grief by jamming
his leg hard against the fence. He tried in vain to spur the bronco
into the middle of the arena, but after it drove at a post for the
third time and ground his limb against it, he gave up to the pain and
slipped off.

“That isn’t fair, is it?” Helen asked of the young man sitting beside
her.

He shrugged his lean, broad shoulders. “He should have known how to
keep the horse in the open. Mac would never have been caught that way.”

“Jack Holloway on Rocking Horse,” the announcer shouted.

It took four men and two lariats to subdue this horse to a condition
sufficiently tame to permit of a saddle being slipped on. Even then
this could not be accomplished without throwing the bronco first. The
result was that all the spirit was taken out of the animal by the
preliminary ordeal, so that when the man from the Shoshone country
mounted, his steed was too jaded to attempt resistance.

“Thumb him! Thumb him!” the audience cried, referring to the cowboy
trick of running the thumbs along a certain place in the shoulder to
stir the anger of the bucker.

But the rider slipped off with disgust. “Give me another horse,” he
demanded, and after a minute’s consultation among the judges a second
pony was driven out from the corral. This one proved to be a Tartar. It
went off in a frenzy of pitching the moment its rider dropped into the
saddle.

“Y’u’ll go a long way before you see better ridin’ than his and Mac’s.
Notice how he gives to its pitching,” said Bannister, as he watched his
cousin’s perfect ease in the cyclone of which he was the center.

“I expect it depends on the kind of a ‘hawss,’” she mocked. “He’s
riding well, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know any that ride better.”

The horse put up a superb fight, trying everything it knew to unseat
this demon clamped to its back. It possessed in combination all the
worst vices, was a weaver, a sunfisher and a fence-rower, and never had
it tried so desperately to maintain its record of never having been
ridden. But the outlaw in the saddle was too much for the outlaw
underneath. He was master, just as he was first among the ruffians whom
he led, because there was in him a red-hot devil of wickedness that
would brook no rival.

The furious bronco surrendered without an instant’s warning, and its
rider slipped at once to the ground. As he sauntered through the dust
toward the grand stand, Helen could not fail to see how his vanity
sunned itself in the applause that met his performance. His equipment
was perfect to the least detail. The reflection from a lady’s
looking-glass was no brighter than the silver spurs he jingled on his
sprightly heels. Strikingly handsome in a dark, sinister way, one would
say at first sight, and later would chafe at the justice of a verdict
not to be denied.

Ned Bannister rose from his seat beside Helen. “Wish me luck,” he said,
with his gay smile.

“I wish you all the luck you deserve,” she answered.

“Oh, wish me more than that if y’u want me to win.”

“I didn’t say I wanted you to win. You take the most unaccountable
things for granted.”

“I’ve a good mind to win, then, just to spite y’u,” he laughed.

“As if you could,” she mocked; but her voice took a softer intonation
as she called after him in a low murmur: “Be careful, please.”

His white teeth flashed a smile of reassurance at her. “I’ve never been
killed yet.”

“Ned Bannister on Steamboat,” sang out the megaphone man.

“I’m ce’tainly in luck. Steamboat’s the worst hawss on the range,” he
told himself, as he strode down the grand stand to enter the arena.

The announcement of his name created for the second time that day a
stir of unusual interest. Everybody in that large audience had heard of
Ned Bannister; knew of his record as a “bad man” and his prowess as the
king of the Shoshone country; suspected him of being a train and bank
robber as well as a rustler. That he should have the boldness to enter
the contest in his own name seemed to show how defiant he was of the
public sentiment against him, and how secure he counted himself in
flaunting this contempt. As for the sheepman, the notoriety that his
cousin’s odorous reputation had thrust upon him was extremely
distasteful as well as dangerous, but he had done nothing to disgrace
his name, and he meant to use it openly. He could almost catch the low
whispers that passed from mouth to mouth about him.

“Ain’t it a shame that a fellow like that, leader of all the criminals
that hide in the mountains, can show himself openly before ten thousand
honest folks?” That he knew to be the purport of their whispering, and
along with it went a recital of the crimes he had committed. How he was
a noted “waddy,” or cattle-rustler; how he and his gang had held up
three trains in eighteen months; how he had killed Tom Mooney, Bob
Carney and several others—these were the sorts of things that were
being said about him, and from the bottom of his soul he resented his
impotency to clear his name.

There was something in Bannister’s riding that caught Helen’s fancy at
once. It was the unconscious grace of the man, the ease with which he
seemed to make himself a very part of the horse. He attempted no
tricks, rode without any flourishes. But the perfect poise of his lithe
body as it gave with the motions of the horse, proclaimed him a born
rider; so finished, indeed, that his very ease seemed to discount the
performance. Steamboat had a malevolent red eye that glared hatred at
the oppressor man, and to-day it lived up to its reputation of being
the most vicious and untamed animal on the frontier. But, though it did
its best to unseat the rider and trample him underfoot, there was no
moment when the issue seemed in doubt save once. The horse flung itself
backward in a somersault, risking its own neck in order to break its
master’s. But he was equal to the occasion; and when Steamboat
staggered again to its feet Bannister was still in the saddle. It was a
daring and magnificent piece of horsemanship, and, though he was
supposed to be a desperado and a ruffian, his achievement met with a
breathless gasp, followed by thunderous applause.

The battle between horse and man was on again, for the animal was as
strong almost in courage as the rider. But Steamboat’s confidence had
been shaken as well as its strength. Its efforts grew less cyclonic.
Foam covered its mouth and flecked its sides. The pitches were easy to
foresee and meet. Presently they ceased altogether.

Bannister slid from the saddle and swayed unsteadily across the arena.
The emergency past, he had scarce an ounce of force left in him. Jim
McWilliams ran out and slipped an arm around his shoulders, regardless
of what his friends might think of him for it.

“You’re all in, old man. Y’u hadn’t ought to have ridden, even though
y’u did skin us all to a finish.”

“Nonsense, Mac. First place goes to y’u or—or Jack Holloway.”

“Not unless the judges are blind.”

But Bannister’s prediction proved true. The champion, Sanford, had been
traveling with a Wild West show, and was far too soft to compete with
these lusty cowboys, who had kept hard from their daily life on the
plains. Before he had ridden three minutes it was apparent that he
stood no chance of retaining his title, so that the decision narrowed
itself to an issue between the two Bannisters and McWilliams. First
place was awarded to the latter, the second prize to Jack Holloway and
the third to Ned Bannister.

But nearly everybody in the grand stand knew that Bannister had been
discriminated against because of his unpopularity. The judges were not
local men, and had nothing to fear from the outlaw. Therefore they
penalized him on account of his reputation. It would never do for the
Associated Press dispatches to send word all over the East that a
murderous desperado was permitted, unmolested, to walk away with the
championship belt.

“It ain’t a square deal,” declared McWilliams promptly.

He was sitting beside Nora, and he turned round to express his opinion
to the two sitting behind him in the box.

“We’ll not go behind the returns. Y’u won fairly. I congratulate y’u,
Mr. Champion-of-the-world,” replied the sheepman, shaking hands
cordially.

“I told you to bring that belt to the Lazy D,” smiled his mistress, as
she shook hands.

But in her heart she was crying out that it was an outrage.




CHAPTER XV.
JUDD MORGAN PASSES


Gimlet Butte devoted the night of the Fourth to a high old time. The
roping and the other sports were to be on the morrow, and meanwhile the
night hours were filled with exuberance. The cowboy’s spree comes only
once in several months, but when it does come he enters into the
occasion with such whole-hearted enthusiasm as to make up swiftly for
lost time. A traveling midway had cast its tents in a vacant square in
competition with the regular attractions of the town, and everywhere
the hard-riding punchers were “night herding” in full regalia.

There was a big masked ball in the street, and another in the Masonic
Hall, while here and there flared the lights of the faker with
something to sell. Among these last was “Soapy” Sothern, doing a
thriving business in selling suckers and bars wrapped with greenbacks.
Crowds tramped the streets blowing horns and throwing confetti, and
everywhere was a large sprinkling of men in high-heeled boots, swinging
along with the awkward, stiff-legged gait of the cowboy. Sometimes a
girl was hanging on his arm, and again he was “whooping it up with the
boys”; but in either case the range-rider’s savings were burning a hole
through his pockets with extreme rapidity.

Jim McWilliams and the sheepman Bannister had that day sealed a
friendship that was to be as enduring as life. The owner of the sheep
ranch was already under heavy obligation to the foreman of the Lazy D,
but debt alone is not enough on which to found soul brotherhood. There
must be qualities of kinship in the primeval elements of character.
Both men had suspected that this kinship existed, but to-day they had
proved it in the way that one had lost and the other had won the
coveted championship. They had made no vows and no professions. The
subject had not even been touched in words; a meeting of the eyes,
followed by the handshake with which Bannister had congratulated the
winner. That had been all. But it was enough.

With the casual democracy of the frontier they had together escorted
Helen Messiter and Nora Darling through a riotous three hours of
carnival, taking care to get them back to their hotel before the night
really began “to howl.”

But after they had left the young women, neither of them cared to sleep
yet. They were still in costume, Mac dressed as a monk, and his friend
as a Stuart cavalier, and the spirit of frolic was yet strong in them.

“I expaict, mebbe, we better hunt in couples if we’re going to help
paint the town,” smiled Mac, and his friend had immediately agreed.

It must have been well after midnight that they found themselves
“bucking the tiger” in a combination saloon and gambling-house, whose
patrons were decidedly cosmopolitan in character. Here white and red
and yellow men played side by side, the Orient and the Occident and the
aboriginal alike intent on the falling cards and the little rolling
ball. A good many of them were still in their masks and dominos, though
these, for the most part, removed their vizors before playing.

Neither McWilliams nor his friend were betting high, and the luck had
been so even that at the end of two hours’ play neither of them had at
any time either won or lost more than fifteen dollars. In point of
fact, they were playing not so much to win as just to keep in touch
with the gay, youthful humor of the night.

They were getting tired of the game when two men jingled in for a
drink. They were talking loudly together, and it was impossible to miss
the subject of their conversation.

McWilliams gave a little jerk of his head toward one of them. “Judd
Morgan,” his lips framed without making a sound.

Bannister nodded.

“Been tanking up all day,” Mac added. “Otherwise his tongue would not
be shooting off so reckless.”

A silence had fallen over the assembly save for the braggarts at the
bar. Men looked at each other, and then furtively at Bannister. For
Morgan, ignorant of who was sitting quietly with his back to him at the
faro-table, was venting his hate of Bannister and McWilliams.

“Both in the same boat. Did y’u see how Mac ran to help him to-day?
Both waddies. Both rustlers. Both train robbers. Sho! I got through
putting a padlock on me mouth. Man to man, I’m as good as either of
them—damn sight better. I wisht they was here, one or both; I wisht
they would step up here and fight it out. Bannister’s a false alarm,
and that foreman of the Lazy D—” His tongue stumbled over a blur of
vilification that ended with a foul mention of Miss Messiter.

Instantly two chairs crashed to the floor. Two pair of gray eyes met
quietly.

“My quarrel, Bann,” said Jim, in a low, even voice.

The other nodded. “I’ll see y’u have a clear field.”

The man who was with Morgan suddenly whispered in his ear, and the
latter slewed his head in startled fear. Almost instantly a bullet
clipped past McWilliams’s shoulder. Morgan had fired without waiting
for the challenge he felt sure was at hand. Once—twice the foreman’s
revolver made answer. Morgan staggered, slipped down to the floor, a
bullet crashing through the chandelier as he fell. For a moment his
body jerked. Then he rolled over and lay still.

The foreman’s weapon covered him unwaveringly, but no more steadily
than Bannister’s gaze the man who had come in with him who lay lifeless
on the floor. The man looked at the lifeless thing, shuddered, and
backed out of the saloon.

“I call y’u all to witness that my friend killed him in self-defense,”
said Bannister evenly. “Y’u all saw him fire first. Mac did not even
have his gun out.”

“That’s right,” agreed one, and another added: “He got what was coming
to him.”

“He sure did,” was the barkeeper’s indorsement. “He came in hunting
trouble, but I reckon he didn’t want to be accommodated so prompt.”

“Y’u’ll find us at the Gimlet Butte House if we’re wanted for this,”
said Bannister. “We’ll be there till morning.”

But once out of the gambling-house McWilliams drew his friend to one
side. “Do y’u know who that was I killed?”

“Judd Morgan, foreman before y’u at the Lazy D.”

“Yes, but what else?”

“What do y’u mean?”

“I mean that next to your cousin Judd was leader of that Shoshone-Teton
bunch.”

“How do y’u know?”

“I suspected it a long time, but I knew for sure the day that your
cousin held up the ranch. The man that was in charge of the crowd
outside was Morgan. I could swear to it. I knew him soon as I clapped
eyes to him, but I was awful careful to forget to tell him I recognized
him.”

“That means we are in more serious trouble than I had supposed.”

“Y’u bet it does. We’re in a hell of a hole, figure it out any way y’u
like. Instead of having shot up a casual idiot, I’ve killed Ned
Bannister’s right-hand man. That will be the excuse—shooting Morgan.
But the real trouble is that I won the championship belt from your
cousin. He already hated y’u like poison, and he don’t love me any too
hard. He will have us arrested by his sheriff here. Catch the point.
_Y’u’re Ned Bannister, the outlaw, and I’m his right-bower_. That’s the
play he’s going to make, and he’s going to make it right soon.”

“I don’t care if he does. We’ll fight him on his own ground. We’ll
prove that he’s the miscreant and not us.”

“Prove nothing,” snarled McWilliams. “Do y’u reckon he’ll give us a
chance to prove a thing? Not on your life. He’ll have us jailed first
thing; then he’ll stir up a sentiment against us, and before morning
there will be a lynchingbee, and y’u and I will wear the neckties. How
do y’u like the looks of it?”

“But y’u have a lot of friends. They won’t stand for anything like
that.”

“Not if they had time to stop it. Trouble is, fellow’s friends think
awful slow. They’ll arrive in time to cut us down and be the mourners.
No, sir! It’s a hike for Jimmie Mac on the back of the first bronc he
can slap a saddle on.”

Bannister frowned. “I don’t like to run before the scurvy scoundrels.”

“Do y’u suppose I’m enjoying it? Not to any extent, I allow. But that
sweet relative of yours holds every ace in the deck, and he’ll play
them, too. He owns the law in this man’s town, and he owns the lawless.
But the best card he holds is that he can get a thousand of the best
people here to join him in hanging the ‘king’ of the Shoshone outlaws.
Explanations nothing! Y’u _rode_ under the name of Bannister, didn’t
y’u? He’s Jack Holloway.”

“It does make a strong combination,” admitted the sheepman.

“Strong! It’s invincible. I can see him playing it, laughing up his
sleeve all the time at the honest fools he is working. No, sir! I draw
out of a game like that. Y’u don’t get a run for your money.”

“Of course he knows already what has happened,” mused Bannister.

“Sure he knows. That fellow with Morgan made a bee-line for him. Just
about now he’s routing the sheriff out of his bed. We got no time to
lose. Thing is, to burn the wind out of this town while we have the
chance.”

“I see. It won’t help us any to be spilling lead into a sheriff’s
posse. That would ce’tainly put us in the wrong.”

“Now y’u’re shouting. If we’re honest men why don’t we surrender
peaceable? That’s the play the ‘king’ is going to make in this town.
Now if we should spoil a posse and bump off one or two of them, we
couldn’t pile up evidence enough to get a jury to acquit. No, sir! We
can’t surrender and we can’t fight. Consequence is, we got to roll our
tails immediate.”

“We have an appointment with Miss Messiter and Nora for to-morrow
morning. We’ll have to leave word we can’t keep it.”

“Sure. Denver and Missou are playing the wheel down at the Silver
Dollar. I reckon we better make those boys jump and run errands for us
while we lie low. I’ll drop in casual and give them the word. Meet y’u
here in ten minutes. Whatever y’u do, keep that mask on your face.”

“Better meet farther from the scene of trouble. Suppose we say the
north gate of the grand stand?”

“Good enough. So-long.”

The first faint streaks of day were beginning to show on the horizon
when Bannister reached the grand stand. He knew that inside of another
half-hour the little frontier town would be blinking in the early
morning sunlight that falls so brilliantly through the limpid
atmosphere. If they were going to leave without fighting their way out
there was no time to lose.

Ten minutes slowly ticked away.

He glanced at his watch. “Five minutes after four. I wish I had gone
with Mac. He may have been recognized.”

But even as the thought flitted through his mind, the semi-darkness
opened to let a figure out of it.

“All quiet along the Potomac, seh?” asked the foreman’s blithe voice.
“Good. I found the boys and got them started.” He flung down a Mexican
vaquero’s gaily trimmed costume.

“Get into these, seh. Denver shucked them for me. That coyote must have
noticed what we wore before he slid out. Y’u can bet the orders are to
watch for us as we were dressed then.”

“What are y u going to do?”

“Me? I’m scheduled to be Aaron Burr, seh. Missou swaps with me when he
gets back here. They’re going to rustle us some white men’s clothes,
too, but we cayn’t wear them till we get out of town on account of
showing our handsome faces.”

“What about horses?”

“Denver is rustling some for us. Y’u better be scribbling your
billy-doo to the girl y’u leave behind y’u, seh.”

“Haven’t y’u got one to scribble?” Bannister retorted. “Seems to me y’u
better get busy, too.”

So it happened that when Missou arrived a few minutes later he found
this pair of gentlemen, who were about to flee for their lives, busily
inditing what McWilliams had termed facetiously _billets-doux_. Each of
them was trying to make his letter a little warmer than friendship
allowed without committing himself to any chance of a rebuff. Mac got
as far as Nora Darling, absentmindedly inserted a comma between the
words, and there stuck hopelessly. He looked enviously across at
Bannister, whose pencil was traveling rapidly down his note-book.

“My, what a swift trail your pencil leaves on that paper. That’s going
some. Mine’s bogged down before it got started. I wisht y’u would start
me off.”

“Well, if you ain’t up and started a business college already. I had
ought to have brought a typewriter along with me,” murmured Missou
ironically.

“How are things stacking? Our friends the enemy getting busy yet?”
asked Bannister, folding and addressing his note.

“That’s what. Orders gone out to guard every road so as not to let you
pass. What’s the matter with me rustling up the boys and us holding
down a corner of this town ourselves?”

The sheepman shook his head. “We’re not going to start a little private
war of our own. We couldn’t do that without spilling a lot of blood.
No, we’ll make a run for it.”

“That y’u, Denver?” the foreman called softly, as the sound of
approaching horses reached him.

“Bet your life. Got your own broncs, too. Sheriff Burns called up
Daniels not to let any horses go out from his corral to anybody without
his O.K. I happened to be cinching at the time the ’phone message came,
so I concluded that order wasn’t for me, and lit out kinder
unceremonious.”

Hastily the fugitives donned the new costumes and dominos, turned their
notes over to Denver, and swung to their saddles.

“Good luck!” the punchers called after them, and Denver added an
ironical promise that the foreman had no doubt he would keep. “I’ll
look out for Nora—Darling.” There was a drawling pause between the
first and second names. “I’ll ce’tainly see that she don’t have any
time to worry about y’u, Mac.”

“Y’u go to Halifax,” returned Mac genially over his shoulder as he
loped away.

“I doubt if we can get out by the roads. Soon as we reach the end of
the street we better cut across that hayfield,” suggested Ned.

“That’s whatever. Then we’ll slip past the sentries without being seen.
I’d hate to spoil any of them if we can help it. We’re liable to get
ourselves disliked if our guns spatter too much.”

They rode through the main street, still noisy with the shouts of late
revelers returning to their quarters. Masked men were yet in evidence
occasionally, so that their habits caused neither remark nor suspicion.
A good many of the punchers, unable to stay longer, were slipping out
of town after having made a night of it. In the general exodus the two
friends hoped to escape unobserved.

They dropped into a side street, galloped down it for two hundred
yards, and dismounted at a barb-wire fence which ran parallel with the
road. The foreman’s wire-clippers severed the strands one by one, and
they led their horses through the gap. They crossed an alfalfa-field,
jumped an irrigation ditch, used the clippers again, and found
themselves in a large pasture. It was getting lighter every moment, and
while they were still in the pasture a voice hailed them from the road
in an unmistakable command to halt.

They bent low over the backs of their ponies and gave them the spur.
The shot they had expected rang out, passing harmlessly over them.
Another followed, and still another.

“That’s right. Shoot up the scenery. Y’u don’t hurt us none,” the
foreman said, apostrophizing the man behind the gun.

The next clipped fence brought them to the open country. For half an
hour they rode swiftly without halt. Then McWilliams drew up.

“Where are we making for?”

“How about the Wind River country?”

“Won’t do. First off, they’ll strike right down that way after us.
What’s the matter with running up Sweetwater Creek and lying out in the
bad lands around the Roubideaux?”

“Good. I have a sheep-camp up that way. I can arrange to have grub sent
there for us by a man I can trust.”

“All right. The Roubideaux goes.”

While they were nooning at a cow-spring, Bannister, lying on his back,
with his face to the turquoise sky, became aware that a vagrant impulse
had crystallized to a fixed determination. He broached it at once to
his companion.

“One thing is a cinch, Mac. Neither y’u nor I will be safe in this
country now until we have broken up the gang of desperadoes that is
terrorizing this country. If we don’t get them they will get us. There
isn’t any doubt about that. I’m not willing to lie down before these
miscreants. What do y’u say?”

“I’m with y’u, old man. But put a name to it. What are y’u proposing?”

“I’m proposing that y’u and I make it our business not to have any
other business until we clean out this nest of wolves. Let’s go right
after them, and see if we can’t wipe out the Shoshone-Teton outfit.”

“How? They own the law, don’t they?”

“They don’t own the United States Government. When they held up a
mail-train they did a fool thing, for they bucked up against Uncle Sam.
What I propose is that we get hold of one of the gang and make him
weaken. Then, after we have got hold of some evidence that will
convict, we’ll go out and run down my namesake Ned Bannister. If people
once get the idea that his hold isn’t so strong there’s a hundred
people that will testify against him. We’ll have him in a Government
prison inside of six months.”

“Or else he’ll have us in a hole in the ground,” added the foreman,
dryly.

“One or the other,” admitted Bannister. “Are y’u in on this thing?”

“I surely am. Y’u’re the best man I’ve met up with in a month of
Sundays, seh. Y’u ain’t got but one fault; and that is y’u don’t smoke
cigareets. Feed yourself about a dozen a day and y’u won’t have a
blamed trouble left. Match, seh?” The foreman of the Lazy D, already
following his own advice, rolled deftly his smoke, moistened it and
proceeded to blow away his troubles.

Bannister looked at his debonair insouciance and laughed. “Water off a
duck’s back,” he quoted. “I know some folks that would be sweating fear
right now. It’s ce’tainly an aggravating situation, that of being an
honest man hunted as a villain by a villain. But I expaict my cousin’s
enjoying it.”

“He ain’t enjoying it so much as he would if his plans had worked out a
little smoother. He’s holding the sack right now and cussing right
smaht over it being empty, I reckon.”

“He _did_ lock the stable door a little too late,” chuckled the
sheepman. But even as he spoke a shadow fell over his face. “My God! I
had forgotten. Y’u don’t suppose he would take it out of Miss
Messiter.”

“Not unless he’s tired of living,” returned her foreman, darkly. “One
thing, this country won’t stand for is that. He’s got to keep his hands
off women or he loses out. He dassent lay a hand on them if they don’t
want him to. That’s the law of the plains, isn’t it?”

“That’s the unwritten law for the bad man, but I notice it doesn’t seem
to satisfy y’u, my friend. Y’u and I know that my cousin, Ned
Bannister, doesn’t acknowledge any law, written or unwritten. He’s a
devil and he has no fear. Didn’t he kidnap her before?”

“He surely would never dare touch those young ladies. But—I don’t know.
Bann, I guess we better roll along toward the Lazy D country, after
all.”

“I think so.” Ned looked at his friend with smiling drollery. “I
thought y’u smoked your troubles away, Jim. This one seems to worry
y’u.”

McWilliams grinned sheepishly. “There’s one trouble won’t be smoked
away. It kinder dwells.” Then, apparently apropos of nothing, he added,
irrelevantly: “Wonder what Denver’s doing right now?”

“Probably keeping that appointment y’u ran away from,” bantered his
friend.

“I’ll bet he is. Funny how some men have all the luck,” murmured the
despondent foreman.




CHAPTER XVI.
HUNTING BIG GAME


In point of fact, Denver’s occupation at that moment was precisely what
they had guessed it to be. He was sitting beside Nora Darling in the
grand stand, explaining to her the fine points of “roping.” Mr. Bob
Austin, commonly known as “Texas,” was meanwhile trying to make himself
agreeable to Helen Messiter. Truth to tell, both young women listened
with divided interest to their admirers. Both of them had heard the
story of the night, and each of them had tucked away in her corsage a
scribbled note she wanted to get back to her room and read again. That
the pursuit was still on everybody knew, and those on the inside were
aware that the “King,” masquerading under the name of Jack Holloway,
was the active power behind the sheriff stimulating the chase.

It was after the roping had begun, and Austin had been called away to
take his turn, that the outlaw chief sauntered along the aisle of the
grand stand to the box in which was seated the mistress of the Lazy D.

“Beautiful mo’ning, isn’t it? Delightfully crisp and clear,” he said by
way of introduction, stopping at her box.

She understood the subtle jeer in his manner, and her fine courage rose
to meet it. There was a daring light in her eye, a buoyant challenge in
her voice as she answered:

“It is a splendid morning. I’m not surprised you are enjoying it.”

“Did I say I was enjoying it?” He laughed as he lifted the bar, came
into her box and took a seat.

“Of course not. How careless of me! I had forgotten you were in
mourning for a deceased friend.”

His dark eyes flashed. “I’ll not mourn for him long. He was a mighty
trifling fellow, anyhow. Soon as I catch and hang his murderers I’ll
quit wearing black.”

“You may wear out several suits before then,” she hit back.

“Don’t y’u believe it; when I want a thing I don’t quit till it’s
done.”

She met his gaze, and the impact of eyes seemed to shock her
physically. The wickedness in him threatened, gloated, dominated. She
shivered in the warm sunlight, and would not have had him know it for
worlds.

“Dear me! How confident you talk. Aren’t you sometimes disappointed?”

“Temporarily. But when I want a thing I take it in the end.”

She knew he was serving notice on her that he meant to win her; and
again the little spinal shiver raced over her. She could not look at
his sardonic, evil face without fear, and she could not look away
without being aware of his eyes possessing her. What was the use of
courage against such a creature as this?

“Yes, I understand you take a good deal that isn’t yours,” she retorted
carelessly, her eyes on the arena.

“I make it mine when I take it,” he answered coolly, admiring the
gameness which she wore as a suit of chain armor against his thrusts.

“Isn’t it a little dangerous sometimes?” her even voice countered.
“When you take what belongs to others you run a risk, don’t you?”

“That’s part of the rules. Except for that I shouldn’t like it so well.
I hunt big game, and the bigger the game the more risk. That’s why y’u
guessed right when y’u said I was enjoying the mo’ning.”

“Meaning—your cousin?”

“Well, no. I wasn’t thinking of him, though he’s some sizable. But I’m
hunting bigger game than he is, and I expect to bag it.”

She let her scornful eyes drift slowly over him. “I might pretend to
misunderstand you. But I won’t. You may have your answer now. I am not
afraid of you, for since you are a bully you must be a coward. I saw a
rattlesnake last week in the hills. It reminded me of some one I have
seen. I’ll leave you to guess who.”

Her answer drew blood. The black tide raced under the swarthy tan of
his face. He leaned forward till his beady eyes were close to her
defiant ones. “Y’u have forgotten one thing, Miss Messiter. A
rattlesnake can sting. I ask nothing of you. Can’t I break your heart
without your loving me? You’re only a woman—and not the first I have
broken, by God—”

His slim, lithe body was leaning forward so that it cut off others, and
left them to all intents alone. At a touch of her fingers the handbag
in her lap flew open and a little ivory-hilted revolver lay in her
hand.

“You may break me, but you’ll never bend me an inch.”

He looked at the little gun and laughed ironically. “Sho! If y’u should
hit me with that and I should find it out I might get mad at y’u.”

“Did I say it was for you?” she said coldly; and again the shock of
joined eyes ended in drawn battle.

“Have y’u the nerve?” He looked her over, so dainty and so resolute, so
silken strong; and he knew he had his answer.

His smoldering eyes burned with desire to snatch her to him and ride
away into the hills. For he was a man who lived in his sensations. He
had won many women to their hurt, but it was the joy of conflict that
made the pursuit worth while to him; and this young woman, who could so
delightfully bubble with little laughs ready to spill over and was yet
possessed of a spirit so finely superior to the tenderness of her soft,
round, maidenly curves, allured him mightily to the attack.

She dropped the revolver back into the bag and shut the clasp with a
click, “And now I think, Mr. Bannister, that I’ll not detain you any
longer. We understand each other sufficiently.”

He rose with a laugh that mocked. “I expaict to spend quite a bit of
time understanding y’u one of these days. In the meantime this is to
our better acquaintance.”

Deliberately, without the least haste, he stooped and kissed her before
she could rally from the staggering surprise of the intention she read
in his eyes too late to elude. Then, with the coolest bravado in the
world, he turned on his heel and strolled away.

Angry sapphires gleamed at him from under the long, brown lashes. She
was furious, aghast, daunted. By the merest chance she was sitting in a
corner of the box, so screened from observation that none could see.
But the insolence of him, the reckless defiance of all standards of
society, shook her even while it enraged her. He had put forth his
claim like a braggart, but he had made good with an audacity superb in
its effrontery. How she hated him! How she feared him! The thoughts
were woven inseparably in her mind. Mephisto himself could not have
impressed himself more imperatively than this strutting, heartless
master artist in vice.

She saw him again presently down in the arena, for it was his turn to
show his skill at roping. Texas had done well; very well, indeed. He
had made the throw and tie in thirty-seven seconds, which was two
seconds faster than the record of the previous year. But she knew
instinctively, as her fascinated eyes watched the outlaw preparing for
the feat, that he was going to win. He would use his success as a
weapon against her; as a means of showing her that he always succeeded
in whatever he undertook. So she interpreted he look he flung her as he
waited at the chute for the wild hill steer to be driven into the
arena. It takes a good man physically to make a successful roper. He
must be possessed of nerve, skill and endurance far out of the
ordinary. He must be quick-eyed, strong-handed, nimble of foot, expert
of hand and built like a wildcat. So Denver explained to the two young
women in the box, and the one behind him admitted reluctantly that she
long, lean, supple Centaur waiting impassively at the gateway fitted
the specifications.

Out flashed the rough-coated hill steer, wild and fleet as a hare, thin
and leggy, with muscles of whipcord. Down went the flag, and the
stopwatches began to tick off the seconds. Like an arrow the outlaw’s
pony shot forward, a lariat circling round and round the rider’s head.
At every leap the cow pony lessened the gap as it pounded forward on
the heels of the flying steer.

The loop swept forward and dropped over the horns of the animal. The
pony, with the perfect craft of long practice, swerved to one side with
a rush. The dragging rope swung up against the running steer’s legs,
grew suddenly taut. Down went the steer’s head, and next moment its
feet were swept from under it as it went heavily to the ground. Man and
horse were perfect in their team work. As the supple rider slid from
the back of the pony it ran to the end of the rope and braced itself to
keep the animal from rising. Bannister leaped on the steer, tie-rope in
hand. Swiftly his deft hands passed to and fro, making the necessary
loops and knots. Then his hands went into the air. The steer was
hog-tied.

For a few seconds the judges consulted together. “Twenty-nine seconds,”
announced their spokesman, and at the words a great cheer went up.
Bannister had made his tie in record time.

Impudently the scoundrel sauntered up to the grand stand, bowed
elaborately to Miss Messiter, and perched himself on the fence, where
he might be the observed of all observers. It was curious, she thought,
how his vanity walked hand in hand with so much power and force. He was
really extraordinarily strong, but no debutante’s self-sufficiency
could have excelled his. He was so frankly an egotist that it ceased to
be a weakness.

Back in her room at the hotel an hour later Helen paced up and down
under a nervous strain foreign to her temperament. She was afraid; for
the first time in her life definitely afraid. This man pitted against
her had deliberately divorced his life from morality. In him lay no
appeal to any conscience court of last resort. But the terror of this
was not for herself principally, but for her flying lover. With his
indubitable power, backed by the unpopularity of the sheepman in this
cattle country, the King of the Bighorn could destroy his cousin if he
set himself to do so. Of this she was convinced, and her conviction
carried a certainty that he had the will as well as the means. If he
had lacked anything in motive she herself had supplied one. For she was
afraid that this villain had read her heart.

And as her hand went fluttering to her heart she found small comfort in
the paper lying next it that only a few hours before had brought her
joy. For at any moment a messenger might come in to tell her that the
writer of it had been captured and was to be dealt with summarily in
frontier fashion. At best her lover and her friend were but fugitives
from justice. Against them were arrayed not only the ruffian followers
of their enemy, but also the lawfully constituted authorities of the
county. Even if they should escape to-day the net would tighten on
them, and they would eventually be captured.

For the third time since coming to Wyoming Helen found refuge in tears.




CHAPTER XVII.
RUN TO EARTH


When word came to Denver and the other punchers of the Lazy D that
Reddy had been pressed into service as a guide for the posse that was
pursuing the fugitives they gave vent to their feelings in choice
profanity.

“Now, ain’t that like him? Had to run around like a locoed calf telling
all he knowed and more till Burns ropes him in,” commented the
disgusted Missou.

“Trouble with Reddy is he sets his mouth to working and then goes away
and leaves it,” mourned Jim Henson.

“I’d hate to feel as sore as Reddy will when the boys get through
playing with him after he gets back to the ranch,” Denver contributed,
when he had exhausted his vocabulary.

Meanwhile Reddy, unaware of being a cause of offense, was cheerfully
happy in the unexpected honor that had been thrust upon him. His will
was of putty, molded into the opinion of whomever he happened at the
moment to be with. Just now, with the ironic eye of Sheriff Burns upon
him, he was strong for law enforcement.

“A feller hadn’t ought to be so promiscuous with his hardware. This
here thing of shooting up citizens don’t do Wyoming no good these days.
Capital ain’t a-going to come in when such goings-on occur,” he sagely
opined, unconsciously parroting the sentiment Burns had just been
instilling into him.

“That’s right, sir. If that ain’t horse sense I don’t know any. You got
a head on you, all right,” answered the admiring sheriff.

The flattered Reddy pleaded guilty to being wiser than most men. “Jest
because I punch cows ain’t any reason why I’m anybody’s fool. I’ll show
them smart boys at the Lazy D I don’t have to take the dust of any of
the bunch when it comes to using my think tank.”

“I would,” sympathized Burns. “You bet they’ll all be almighty jealous
when they learn how you was chosen out of the whole outfit on this
job.”

All day they rode, and that night camped a few miles from the Lazy D.
Early next morning they hailed a solitary rider as he passed. The man
turned out to be a cowman, with a small ranch not far from the one
owned by Miss Messiter.

“Hello, Henderson! y’u seen anything of Jim McWilliams and another
fellow riding acrost this way?” asked Reddy.

“Nope,” answered the cowman promptly. But immediately he modified his
statement to add that he had seen two men riding toward Dry Creek a
couple of hours ago. “They was going kinder slow. Looked to me sorter
like one of them was hurt and the other was helping him out,” he
volunteered.

The sheriff looked significantly at one of his men and nodded.

“You didn’t recognize the horses, I reckon?”

“Come to think of it, one of the ponies did look like Jim’s roan.
What’s up, boys? Anything doing?”

“Nothing particular. We want to see Jim, that’s all. So long.”

What Henderson had guessed was the truth. The continuous hard riding
had been too much for Bannister and his wound had opened anew. They
were at the time only a few miles from a shack on Dry Creek, where the
Lazy D punchers sometimes put up. McWilliams had attended the wound as
best he could, and after a few hours’ rest had headed for the cabin in
the hills. They were compelled to travel very slowly, since the motion
kept the sheepman’s wound continually bleeding. But about noon they
reached the refuge they had been seeking and Bannister lay down on the
bunk with their saddle blankets under him. He soon fell asleep, and Mac
took advantage of this to set out on a foraging expedition to a ranch
not far distant. Here he got some bread, bacon, milk and eggs from a
man he could trust and returned to his friend.

It was dark by the time he reached the cabin. He dismounted, and with
his arms full of provisions pushed into the hut.

“Awake, Bann?” he asked in a low voice.

The answer was unexpected. Something heavy struck his chest and flung
him back against the wall. Before he could recover his balance he was
pinioned fast. Four men had hurled themselves upon him.

“We’ve got you, Jim. Not a mite o’ use resisting,” counseled the
sheriff.

“Think I don’t savez that? I can take a hint when a whole Methodist
church falls on me. Who are y’u, anyhow?”

“Somebody light a lantern,” ordered Burns.

By the dim light it cast Mac made them out, and saw Ned Bannister
gagged and handcuffed on the bed. He knew a moment of surprise when his
eyes fell on Reddy.

“So it was y’u brought them here, Red?” he said quietly.

Contrary to his own expectations, the gentleman named was embarrassed
“The sheriff, he summoned me to serve,” was his lame defense.

“And so y’u threw down your friends. Good boy!”

“A man’s got to back the law up, ain’t he?”

Mac turned his shoulder on him rather pointedly. “There isn’t any need
of keeping that gag in my friend’s mouth any longer,” he suggested to
Burns.

“That’s right, too. Take it out, boys. I got to do my duty, but I don’t
aim to make any gentleman more uncomfortable than I can help. I want
everything to be pleasant all round.”

“I’m right glad to hear that, Burns, because my friend isn’t fit to
travel. Y’u can take me back and leave him out here with a guard,” the
foreman replied quickly.

“Sorry I can’t accommodate you, Jim, but I got to take y’u both with
me.”

“Those are the orders of the King, are they?”

Burns flushed darkly. “It ain’t going to do you any good to talk that
way. You know mighty well this here man with you is Bannister. I ain’t
going to take no chances on losing him now I’ve got my hand on him.”

“Y’u ce’tainly deserve a re-election, and I’ll bet y’u get it all
right. Any man so given over to duty, so plumb loaded down to the hocks
with conscience as y’u, will surely come back with a big majority next
November.”

“I ain’t askin’ for _your_ vote, Mac.”

“Oh, y’u don’t need votes. Just get the King to O. K. your nomination
and y’u’ll win in a walk.”

“My friend, y’u better mind your own business. Far as I can make out
y’u got troubles enough of your own,” retorted the nettled sheriff.

“Y’u don’t need to tell me that, Tom Burns’ Y’u ain’t a man—nothing but
a stuffed skin worked by a string. When that miscreant Bannister pulls
the string y’u jump. He’s jerked it now, so y’u’re taking us back to
him. I can prove that coyote Morgan shot at me first, but that doesn’t
cut any ice with you.”

“What made you light out so sudden, then?” demanded the aggrieved Burns
triumphantly.

“Because I knew _you_. That’s a plenty good reason. I’m not asking
anything for myself. All I say is that my friend isn’t fit to travel
yet. Let him stay here under a guard till he is.”

“He was fit enough to get here. By thunder, he’s fit to go back!”

“Y’u’ve said enough, Mac,” broke in Bannister. “It’s awfully good of
y’u to speak for me, but I would rather see it out with you to a
finish. I don’t want any favors from this yellow dog of my cousin.”

The “yellow dog” set his teeth and swore vindictively behind them. He
was already imagining an hour when these insolent prisoners of his
would sing another tune.




CHAPTER XVIII.
PLAYING FOR TIME


“They’ve got ’em. Caught them on Dry Creek, just below Green Forks.”

Helen Messiter, just finishing her breakfast at the hotel preparatory
to leaving in her machine for the ranch, laid down her knife and fork
and looked with dilated eyes at Denver, who had broken in with the
news.

“Are you sure?” The color had washed from her face and left her very
white, but she fronted the situation quietly without hysterics or fuss
of any kind.

“Yes, ma’am. They’re bringing them in now to jail. Watch out and y’u’ll
see them pass here in a few minutes. Seems that Bannister’s wound
opened up on him and he couldn’t go any farther. Course Mac wouldn’t
leave him. Sheriff Burns and his posse dropped in on them and had them
covered before Mac could chirp.”

“You are sure this man—this desperado Bannister—will do nothing till
night?”

“Not the way I figure it. He’ll have the jail watched all day. But he’s
got to work the town up to a lynching. I expect the bars will be free
for all to-day. By night the worst part of this town will be ready for
anything. The rest of the citizens are going to sit down and do nothing
just because it is Bannister.”

“But it isn’t Bannister—not the Bannister they think it is.”

He shook his head. “No use, ma’am. I’ve talked till my throat aches,
but it don’t do a mite of good. Nobody believes a word of what I say.
Y’u see, we ain’t got any proof.”

“Proof! We have enough, God knows! didn’t this villain—this outlaw that
calls himself Jack Holloway—attack and try to murder him?”

“That’s what we believe, but the report out is that one of us punchers
shot him up for crossing the dead-line.”

“Didn’t this fellow hold up the ranch and try to take Ned Bannister
away with him?”

“Yes, ma’am. But that doesn’t look good to most people. They say he had
his friends come to take him away so y’u wouldn’t hold him and let us
boys get him. This cousin business is a fairy tale the way they size it
up. How come this cousin to let him go if he held up the ranch to put
the sick man out of business? No, miss. This country has made up its
mind that your friend is the original Ned Bannister. My opinion is that
nothing on earth can save him.”

“I don’t want your opinion. I’m going to save him, I tell you; and you
are going to help. Are his friends nothing but a bunch of quitters?”
she cried, with sparkling eyes.

“I didn’t know I was such a great friend of his,” answered the cowboy
sulkily.

“You’re a friend of Jim McWilliams, aren’t you? Are you going to sneak
away and let these curs hang him?”

Denver flushed. “Y’u’re dead right, Miss Helen. I guess I’ll see it out
with you. What’s the orders?”

“I want you to help me organize a defense. Get all Mac’s friends
stirred up to make a fight for him. Bring as many of them in to see me
during the day as you can. If you see any of the rest of the Lazy D
boys send them in to me for instructions. Report yourself every hour to
me. And make sure that at least three of your friends that you can
trust are hanging round the jail all day so as to be ready in case any
attempt is made to storm it before dark.”

“I’ll see to it.” Denver hung on his heel a moment before leaving.
“It’s only square to tell y’u, Miss Helen, that this means war here
tonight. These streets are going to run with blood if we try to save
them.”

“I’m taking that responsibility,” she told him curtly; but a moment
later she added gently: “I have a plan, my friend, that may stop this
outrage yet. But you must do your best for me.” She smiled sadly at
him. “You’re my foreman, to-day, you know.”

“I’m going to do my level best, y’u may tie to that,” he told her
earnestly.

“I know you will.” And their fingers touched for an instant.

Through a window the girl could see a crowd pouring down the street
toward the hotel. She flew up the stairs and out upon the second-story
piazza that looked down upon the road.

From her point of vantage she easily picked them out—the two unarmed
men riding with their hands tied behind their backs, encircled by a
dozen riders armed to the teeth. Bannister’s hat had apparently fallen
off farther down the street, for the man beside him was dusting it. The
wounded prisoner looked about him without fear, but it was plain he was
near the limit of endurance. He was pale as a sheet, and his fair curls
clung moistly to his damp forehead.

McWilliams caught sight of her first, and she could see him turn and
say a word to his comrade. Bannister looked up, caught sight of her,
and smiled. That smile, so pale and wan, went to her heart like a
knife. But the message of her eyes was hope. They told the prisoners
silently to be of good cheer, that at least they were not deserted to
their fate.

“What is it about—the crowd?” Nora asked of her mistress as the latter
was returning to the head of the stairs.

In as few words as she could Helen told her, repressing sharply the
tears the girl began to shed. “This is not the time to weep—not yet. We
must save them. You can do your part. Mr. Bannister is wounded. Get a
doctor over the telephone and see that he attends him at the prison.
Don’t leave the ’phone until you have got one to promise to go
immediately.”

“Yes, miss. Is there anything else?”

“Ask the doctor to call you up from the prison and tell you how Mr.
Bannister is. Make it plain to him that he is to give up his other
practice, if necessary, and is to keep us informed through the day
about his patient’s condition. I will be responsible for his bill.”

Helen herself hurried to the telegraph office at the depot. She wrote
out a long dispatch and handed it to the operator. “Send this at once
please.”

He was one of those supercilious young idiots that make the most of
such small power as ever drifts down to them. Taking the message, he
tossed it on the table. “I’ll send it when I get time.”

“You’ll send it now.”

“What—what’s that?”

Her steady eyes caught and held his shifting ones. “I say you are going
to send it now—this very minute.”

“I guess not. The line’s busy,” he bluffed.

“If you don’t begin sending that message this minute I’ll make it my
business to see that you lose your position,” she told him calmly.

He snatched up the paper from the place where he had tossed it. “Oh,
well, if it’s so darned important,” he conceded ungraciously.

She stood quietly above him while he sent the telegram, even though he
contrived to make every moment of her stay an unvoiced insult. Her wire
was to the wife of the Governor of the State. They had been close
friends at school, and the latter had been urging Helen to pay a visit
to Cheyenne. The message she sent was as follows:

Battle imminent between outlaws and cattlemen here. Bloodshed certain
to-night. My foreman last night killed in self-defense a desperado.
Bannister’s gang, in league with town authorities, mean to lynch him
and one of my other friends after dark this evening. Sheriff will do
nothing. Can your husband send soldiers immediately? Wire answer.


The operator looked up sullenly after his fingers had finished the last
tap. “Well?”

“Just one thing more,” Helen told him. “You understand the rules of the
company about secrecy. Nobody but you knows I am sending this message.
If by any chance it should leak out, I shall know through whom. If you
want to hold your position, you will keep quiet.”

“I know my business,” he growled. Nevertheless, she had spoken in
season, for he had had it in his mind to give a tip where he knew it
would be understood to hasten the jail delivery and accompanying
lynching.

When she returned to the hotel, Helen found Missou waiting for her. She
immediately sent him back to the office, and told him to wait there
until the answer was received. “I’ll send one of the boys up to relieve
you so that you may come with the telegram as soon as it arrives. I
want the operator watched all day. Oh, here’s Jim Henson! Denver has
explained the situation to you, I presume. I want you to go up to the
telegraph office and stay there all day. Go to lunch with the operator
when he goes. Don’t let him talk privately to anybody, not even for a
few seconds. I don’t want you to seem to have him under guard before
outsiders, but let him know it very plainly. He is not to mention a
wire I sent or the answer to it—not to anybody, Jim. Is that plain?”

“Y’u bet! He’s a clam, all right, till the order is countermanded.” And
the young man departed with a cheerful grin that assured Helen she had
nothing to fear from official leaks.

Nora, from answering a telephone call, came to report to the general in
charge. “The doctor says that he has looked after Mr. Bannister, and
there is no immediate danger. If he keeps quiet for a few days he ought
to do well. Mr. McWilliams sent a message by him to say that we aren’t
to worry about him. He said he would—would—rope a heap of cows on the
Lazy D yet.”

Nora, bursting into tears, flung herself into Helen’s arms. “They are
going to kill him. I know they are, and—and ’twas only yesterday,
ma’am, I told him not to—to get gay, the poor boy. When he tried
to—to—” She broke down and sobbed.

Her mistress smiled in spite of herself, though she was bitterly aware
that even Nora’s grief was only superficially ludicrous.

“We’re going to save him, Nora, if we can. There’s hope while there’s
life. You see, Mac himself is full of courage. _He_ hasn’t given up. We
must keep up our courage, too.”

“Yes, ma’am, but this is the first gentleman friend I ever had hanged,
and—” She broke off, sobbing, leaving the rest as a guess.

Helen filled it out aloud. “And you were going to say that you care
more for him than any of the others. Well, you must stop coquetting and
tell him so when we have saved him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Nora, very repentant for the moment of the fact
that it was her nature to play with the hearts of those of the male
persuasion. Immediately she added: “He was _that_ kind, ma’am,
tender-hearted.”

Helen, whose own heart was breaking, continued to soothe her. “Don’t
say _was_, child. You are to be brave, and not think of him that way.”

“Yes, ma’am. He told me he was going to buy cows with the thousand
dollars he won yesterday. I knew he meant—”

“Yes, of course. It’s a cowboy’s way of saying that he means to start
housekeeping. Have you the telegram, Missou?” For that young man was
standing in the doorway.

He handed her the yellow slip. She ripped open the envelope and read:

Company B en route. Railroad connections uncertain. Postpone crisis
long as possible. May reach Gimlet Butte by ten-thirty.


Her first thought was of unspeakable relief. The militia was going to
take a hand. The boys in khaki would come marching down the street, and
everything would be all right. But hard on the heels of her instinctive
gladness trod the sober second thought. Ten-thirty at best, and perhaps
later! Would they wait that long, or would they do their cowardly work
as soon as night fell. She must contrive to delay them till the train
drew in. She must play for those two lives with all her woman’s wit;
must match the outlaw’s sinister cunning and fool him into delay. She
knew he would come if she sent for him. But how long could she keep
him? As long as he was amused at her agony, as long as his pleasure in
tormenting her was greater than his impatience to be at his ruffianly
work. Oh, if she ever needed all her power it would be to-night.

Throughout the day she continued to receive hourly reports from Denver,
who always brought with him four or five honest cowpunchers from
up-country to listen to the strange tale she unfolded to them. It was,
of course, in part, the spell of her sweet personality, of that shy
appeal she made to the manhood in them; but of those who came, nearly
all believed, for the time at least, and aligned themselves on her side
in the struggle that was impending. Some of these were swayed from
their allegiance in the course of the day, but a few she knew would
remain true.

Meanwhile, all through the day, the enemy was busily at work. As Denver
had predicted, free liquor was served to all who would drink. The town
and its guests were started on a grand debauch that was to end in
violence that might shock their sober intelligence. Everywhere poisoned
whispers were being flung broadcast against the two men waiting in the
jail for what the night would bring forth.

Dusk fell on a town crazed by bad whiskey and evil report. The deeds of
Bannister were hashed and rehashed at every bar, and nobody related
them with more ironic gusto than the man who called himself Jack
Holloway. There were people in town who knew his real name and
character, but of these the majority were either in alliance with him
or dared not voice their knowledge. Only Miss Messiter and her punchers
told the truth, and their words were blown away like chaff.

From the first moment of darkness Helen had the outlaw leader dogged by
two of her men. Since neither of these were her own riders this was
done without suspicion. At intervals of every quarter of an hour they
reported to her in turn. Bannister was beginning to drink heavily, and
she did not want to cut short his dissipation by a single minute. Yet
she had to make sure of getting his attention before he went too far.

It was close to nine when she sent him a note, not daring to delay a
minute longer. For the reports of her men were all to the same effect,
that the crisis would not now be long postponed. Bannister, or
Holloway, as he chose to call himself, was at the bar with his
lieutenants in evil when the note reached him. He read it with a
satisfaction he could not conceal. So! He had brought her already to
her knees. Before he was through with her she should grovel in the dust
before him.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Do nothing till I return,” he ordered,
and went jingling away to the Elk House.

The young woman’s anxiety was pitiable, but she repressed it sternly
when she went to meet the man she feared; and never had it been more in
evidence than in this hour of her greatest torture. Blithely she came
forward to meet him, eye challenging eye gayly. No hint of her anguish
escaped into her manner. He read there only coquetry, the eternal sex
conflict, the winsome defiance of a woman hitherto the virgin mistress
of all assaults upon her heart’s citadel. It was the last thing he had
expected to see, but it was infinitely more piquant, more intoxicating,
than desperation. She seemed to give the lie to his impression of her
love for his cousin; and that, too, delighted his pride.

“You will sit down?”

Carelessly, almost indolently, she put the question, her raised
eyebrows indicating a chair with perfunctory hospitality. He had not
meant to sit, had expected only to gloat a few minutes over her
despair; but this situation called for more deliberation. He had yet to
establish the mastery his vanity demanded. Therefore he took a chair.

“This is ce’tainly an unexpected honor. Did y’u send for me to explain
some more about that sufficient understanding between us?” he sneered.

It was a great relief to her to see that, though he had been drinking,
as she had heard, he was entirely master of himself. Her efforts might
still be directed to Philip sober.

“I sent for you to congratulate you,” she answered, with a smile. “You
are a bigger man than I thought. You have done what you said you would
do, and I presume you can very shortly go out of mourning.”

He radiated vanity, seemed to visibly expand “Do y’u go in when I go
out?” he asked brutally.

She laughed lightly. “Hardly. But it does seem as if I’m unlucky in my
foremen. They all seem to have engagements across the divide.”

“I’ll get y u another.”

“Thank you. I was going to ask as much of you. Can you suggest one
now?”

“I’m a right good cattle man myself.”

“And—can you stay with me a reasonable time?”

He laughed. “I have no engagements across the Styx, ma’am.”

“My other foremen thought _they_ were permanent fixtures here, too.”

“We’re all liable to mistakes.”

“Even you, I suppose.”

“I’ll sign a lease to give y’u possession of my skill for as long as
y’u like.”

She settled herself comfortably back in an easy chair, as alluring a
picture of buoyant, radiant youth as he had seen in many a day. “But
the terms. I am afraid I can’t offer you as much as you make at your
present occupation.”

“I could keep that up as a side-line.”

“So you could. But if you use my time for your own profit, you ought to
pay me a royalty on your intake.”

His eyes lit with laughter. “I reckon that can be arranged. Any
percentage you think fair It will all be in the family, anyway.”

“I think that is one of the things about which we don’t agree,” she
made answer softly, flashing him the proper look of inviting disdain
from under her silken lashes.

He leaned forward, elbow on the chair-arm and chin in hand. “We’ll
agree about it one of these days.”

“Think so?” she returned airily.

“I don’t think. I know.”

Just an eyebeat her gaze met his, with that hint of shy questioning, of
puzzled doubt that showed a growing interest. “I wonder,” she murmured,
and recovered herself with a hurried little laugh.

How she hated her task, and him! She was a singularly honest woman, but
she must play the siren; must allure this scoundrel to forgetfulness,
and yet elude the very familiarity her manner invited. She knew her
part, the heartless enticing coquette, compounded half of passion and
half of selfishness. It was a hateful thing to do, this sacrifice of
her personal reticence, of the individual abstraction in which she
wrapped herself as a cloak, in order to hint at a possibility of some
intimacy of feeling between them. She shrank from it with a repugnance
hardly to be overcome, but she held herself with an iron will and
consummate art to the role she had undertaken. Two lives hung on her
success. She must not forget that. She would not let herself forget
that—and one of them that of the man she loved.

So, bravely she played her part, repelling always with a hint of
invitation, denying with the promise in her fascinated eyes of ultimate
surrender to his ardor. In the zest of the pursuit the minutes slipped
away unnoticed. Never had a woman seemed to him more subtly elusive,
and never had he felt more sure of himself. Her charm grew on him,
stirred his pulses to a faster beat. For it was his favorite sport, and
this warm, supple young creature, who was to be the victim of his bow
and arrow, showed herself worthy of his mettle.

The clock downstairs struck the half-hour, and Bannister, reminded of
what lay before him outside, made a move to go. Her alert eyes had been
expecting it, and she forestalled him by a change of tactics. Moved
apparently by impulse, she seated herself on the piano-stool, swept the
keys for an instant with her fingers, and plunged into the brilliant
“Carmen” overture. Susceptible as this man was to the influence of
music, he could not fail to be arrested by so perfect an interpretation
of his mood. He stood rooted, was carried back again in imagination to
a great artiste’s rendering of that story of fierce passion and aching
desire so brilliantly enacted under the white sunbeat of a country of
cloudless skies. Imperceptibly she drifted into other parts of the
opera. Was it the wild, gypsy seductiveness of _Carmen_ that he felt,
or, rather, this American girl’s allurement? From “Love will like a
birdling fly” she slipped into the exquisitely graceful snatches of
song with which _Carmen_ answers the officer’s questions. Their rare
buoyancy marched with his mood, and from them she carried him into the
song “Over the hill,” that is so perfect and romantic an expression of
the _wanderlust._

How long she could have held him she will never know, for at that
inopportune time came blundering one of his men into the room with a
call for his presence to take charge of the situation outside.

“What do y’u want, Bostwick?” he demanded, with curt peremptoriness.

The man whispered in his ear.

“Can’t wait any longer, can’t they?” snapped his chief. “Y’u tell them
they’ll wait till I give the word. Understand?”

He almost flung the man out of the room, but Helen noticed that she had
lost him. His interest was perfunctory, and, though he remained a
little time longer, it was to establish his authority with the men
rather than to listen to her. Twice he looked at his watch within five
minutes.

He rose to go. “There is a little piece of business I have to put
through. So I’ll have to ask y’u to excuse me. I have had a delightful
hour, and I hate to go.” He smiled, and quoted with mock
sentimentality:

“The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
    Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one apart,
    My rosary! My rosary!”


“Dear me! One certainly lives and learns. How could I have guessed
that, with your reputation, you could afford to indulge in a rosary?”
she mocked.

“Good night.” He offered his hand.

“Don’t go yet,” she coaxed.

He shook his head. “Duty, y’u know.”

“Stay only a little longer. Just ten minutes more.”

His vanity purred, so softly she stroked it. “Can’t. Wish I could. Y’u
hear how noisy things are getting. I’ve got to take charge. So-long.”

She stood close, looking up at him with a face of seductive appeal.

“Don’t go yet. Please!”

The triumph of victory mounted to his head. “I’ll come back when I’ve
done what I’ve got to do.”

“No, no. Stay a little longer just a little.”

“Not a minute, sweetheart.”

He bent to kiss her, and a little clenched fist struck his face.

“Don’t you dare!” she cried.

The outraged woman in her, curbed all evening with an iron bit, escaped
from control. Delightedly he laughed. The hot spirit in her pleased him
mightily. He took her little hands and held them in one of his while he
smiled down at her. “I guess that kiss will keep, my girl, till I come
back.”

“My God! Are you going to kill your own cousin?”

All her terror, all her detestation and hatred of him, looked haggardly
out of her unmasked face. His narrowed eyes searched her heart, and his
countenance grew every second more sinister,

“Y’u have been fooling me all evening, then?”

“Yes, and hating you every minute of the time.”

“Y’u dared?” His face was black with rage.

“You would like to kill me. Why don’t you?”

“Because I know a better revenge. I’m going out to take it now. After
your lover is dead, I’ll come back and make love to y’u again,” he
sneered.

“Never!” She stood before him like a queen in her lissom, brave,
defiant youth. “And as for your cousin, you may kill him, but you can’t
destroy his contempt for you. He will die despising you for a coward
and a scoundrel.”

It was true, and he knew it. In his heart he cursed her, while he
vainly sought some weapon that would strike home through her impervious
armor.

“Y’u love him. I’ll remember that when I see him kick,” he taunted.

“I make you a present of the information. I love him, and I despise
you. Nothing can change those facts,” she retorted whitely.

“Mebbe, but some day y’u’ll crawl on your knees to beg my pardon for
having told me so.”

“There is your overweening vanity again,” she commented.

“I’m going to break y’u, my beauty, so that y’u’ll come running when I
snap my fingers.”

“We’ll see.”

“And in the meantime I’ll go hang your lover.” He bowed ironically,
swung on his jingling heel, and strode out of the room.

She stood there listening to his dying footfalls, then covered her face
with her hands, as if to press back the dreadful vision her mind
conjured.




CHAPTER XIX.
WEST POINT TO THE RESCUE


It was understood that the sheriff should make a perfunctory defense
against the mob in order to “square” him with the voters at the
election soon to be held. But the word had been quietly passed that the
bullets of the prison guards would be fired over the heads of the
attackers. This assurance lent an added braggadocio to the Dutch
courage of the lynchers. Many of them who would otherwise have hung
back distinguished themselves by the enthusiasm which they displayed.

Bannister himself generaled the affair, detailing squads to batter down
the outer door, to guard every side of the prison, and to overpower the
sheriff’s guard. That official, according to programme, appeared at a
window and made a little speech, declaring his intention of performing
his duty at whatever cost. He was hooted down with jeers and laughter,
and immediately the attack commenced.

The yells of the attackers mingled with the sound of the axe-blows and
the report of revolvers from inside the building. Among those nearest
to the door being battered down were Denver and the few men he had with
him. His plan offered merely a forlorn hope. It was that in the first
scramble to get in after the way was opened he and his friends might
push up the stairs in the van, and hold the corridor for as long as
they could against the furious mob.

It took less than a quarter of an hour to batter down the door, and
among the first of those who sprang across the threshold were Denver,
Missou, Frisco and their allies. While others stopped to overpower the
struggling deputies according to the arranged farce, they hurried
upstairs and discovered the cell in which their friends were fastened.

Frisco passed a revolver through the grating to McWilliams, and another
to Bannister. “Haven’t got the keys, so I can’t let y’u out, old hoss,”
he told the foreman. “But mebbe y’u won’t feel so lonesome with these
little toys to play with.”

Meanwhile Denver, a young giant of seventy-six inches, held the head of
the stairs, with four stalwart plainsmen back of him. The rush of many
feet came up pell-mell, and he flung the leaders back on those behind.

“Hold on there. This isn’t a free-lunch counter. Don’t you see we’re
crowded up here already?”

“What’s eating you? Whyfor, can’t we come?” growled one of the foremost
nursing an injured nose.

“I’ve just explained to you, son, that it’s crowded. Folks are
prevalent enough up here right now. Send up that bunch of keys and
we’ll bring your meat to you fast enough.”

“What’s that? What’s that?” The outlaw chief pushed his way through the
dense mob at the door and reached the stairway.

“He won’t let us up,” growled one of them.

“Who won’t?” demanded Bannister sharply, and at once came leaping up
the stairs.

“Nothing doing,” drawled Frisco, and tossed him over the railing on to
the heads of his followers below.

They carried Bannister into the open air, for his head had struck the
newel-post in his descent. This gave the defense a few minutes respite.

“They’re going to come a-shooting next time,” remarked Denver. “Just as
soon as he comes back from bye-low land you’ll see things hum.”

“Y’u bet,” agreed Missou. “We’ll last about three minutes when the
stampede begins.”

The scream of an engine pierced the night.

Denver’s face lit. “Make it five minutes, Missou, and Mac is safe. At
least, I’m hoping so awful hard. Miss Helen wired for the militia from
Sheridan this mo’ning. Chances are they’re on that train. I couldn’t
tell you earlier because she made me promise not to. She was afraid it
might leak out and get things started sooner.”

Weak but furious, the miscreant from the Shoshones returned to the
attack. “Break in the back door and sneak up behind on those fellows.
We’ll have the men we want inside of fifteen minutes,” he promised the
mob.

“We’ll rush them from both sides, and show those guys on the landing
whether they can stop us,” added Bostwick.

Suddenly some one raised the cry, “The soldiers!” Bannister looked up
the street and swore a vicious oath. Swinging down the road at double
time came a company of militia in khaki. He was mad with baffled fury,
but he made good his retreat at once and disappeared promptly into the
nearest dark alley.

The mob scattered by universal impulse; disintegrated so promptly that
within five minutes the soldiers held the ground alone, save for the
officials of the prison and Denver’s little band.

A boyish lieutenant lately out of the Point, and just come in to a
lieutenancy in the militia, was in command. “In time?” he asked
anxiously, for this was his first independent expedition.

“Y’u bet,” chuckled Denver. “We’re right glad to see you, and I’ll bet
those boys in the cage ain’t regretting your arrival any. Fifteen
minutes later and you would have been in time to hold the funeral
services, I reckon.”

“Where is Miss Messiter?” asked the young officer.

“She’s at the Elk House, colonel. I expect some of us better drift over
there and tell her it’s all right. She’s the gamest little woman that
ever crossed the Wyoming line. Hadn’t been for her these boys would
have been across the divide hours ago. She’s a plumb thoroughbred.
Wouldn’t give up an inch. All day she has generaled this thing; played
a mighty weak hand for a heap more than it was worth. Sand? Seh: she’s
grit clear through, if anybody asks you.” And Denver told the story of
the day, making much of her unflinching courage and nothing of her
men’s readiness to back whatever steps she decided upon.

It was ten minutes past eleven when a smooth young, apple-cheeked lad
in khaki presented himself before Helen Messiter with a bow never
invented outside of West Point.

“I am Lieutenant Beecher. Governor Raleigh presents his compliments by
me, Miss Messiter, and is very glad to be able to put at your service
such forces as are needed to quiet the town.”

“You were in time?” she breathed.

“With about five minutes to spare. I am having the prisoners brought
here for the night if you do not object. In the morning I shall
investigate the affair, and take such steps as are necessary. In the
meantime you may rest assured that there will be no further
disturbance.”

“Thank you I am sure that with you in command everything will now be
all right, and I am quite of your opinion that the prisoners had better
stay here for the night. One of them is wounded, and ought to be given
the best attention. But, of course, you will see to that, lieutenant.”

The young man blushed. This was the right kind of appreciation. He
wished his old classmates at the Point could hear how implicitly this
sweet girl relied on him.

“Certainly. And now, Miss Messiter, if there is nothing you wish, I
shall retire for the night. You may sleep with perfect confidence.”

“I am sure I may, lieutenant.” She gave him a broadside of trusting
eyes full of admiration. “But perhaps you would like me to see my
foreman first, just to relieve my mind. And, as you were about to say,
his friend might be brought in, too, since they are together.”

The young man promptly assented, though he had not been aware that he
was about to say anything of the kind.

They came in together, Bannister supported by McWilliams’s arm. The
eyes of both mistress and maid brimmed over with tears when they saw
them. Helen dragged forward a chair for the sheepman, and he sank into
it. From its depths he looked up with his rare, sweet smile.

“I’ve heard about it,” he told her, in a low voice. “I’ve heard how y’u
fought for my life all day. There’s nothing I can say. I owed y’u
everything already twice, and now I owe it all over again. Give me a
lifetime and I couldn’t get even.”

Helen’s swift glance swept over Nora and the foreman. They were in a
dark alcove, oblivious of anybody else. Also they were in each other’s
arms frankly. For some reason wine flowed into the cream of Helen’s
cheeks.

“Do you have to ‘get even’? Among friends is that necessary?” she asked
shyly.

“I hope not. If it is, I’m sure bankrupt. Even my thanks seem to stay
at home. If y’u hadn’t done so much for me, perhaps I could tell y’u
how much y’u had done. But I have no words to say it.”

“Then don’t,” she advised.

“Y’u’re the best friend a man ever had. That’s all I can say.”

“It’s enough, since you mean it, even though it isn’t true,” she
answered gently.

Their eyes met, fastened for an instant, and by common consent looked
away.

As it chanced they were close to the window, their shadows reflected on
the blind. A man, slipping past in the street on horseback, stopped at
sight of that lighted window, with the moving shadows, in an
uncontrollable white fury. He slid from the saddle, threw the reins
over the horse’s head to the ground, and slipped his revolver from its
holster and back to make sure that he could draw it easily. Then he
passed springily across the road to the hotel and up the stairs. He
trod lightly, stealthily, and by his very wariness defeated his purpose
of eluding observation. For a pair of keen eyes from the hotel office
glimpsed the figure stealing past so noiselessly, and promptly followed
up the stairway.

“Hope I don’t intrude at this happy family gathering.”

Helen, who had been pouring a glass of cordial for the spent and
wounded sheepman, put the glass down on the table and turned at sound
of the silken, sinister voice. After one glance at the vindictive face,
from the cold eyes of which hate seemed to smolder, she took an
instinctive step toward her lover. The cold wave that drenched her
heart accompanied an assurance that the man in the doorway meant
trouble.

His sleek smile arrested her. He was standing with his feet apart, his
hands clasped lightly behind his back, as natty and as well groomed as
was his wont.

“Ah, make the most of what ye yet may spend,
Before ye, too, into the Dust descend;
    Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!”


he misquoted, with a sneer; and immediately interrupted his irony to
give way to one of his sudden blind rages.

With incredible swiftness his right hand moved forward and up, catching
revolver from scabbard as it rose. But by a fraction of a second his
purpose had been anticipated. A closed fist shot forward to the salient
jaw in time to fling the bullets into the ceiling. An arm encircled the
outlaw’s neck, and flung him backward down the stairs. The railing
broke his fall, and on it his body slid downward, the weapon falling
from his hand. He pulled himself together at the foot of the stairs,
crouched for an upward rush, but changed his mind instantly. The young
officer who had flung him down had him covered with his own
six-shooter. He could hear footsteps running toward him, and he knew
that in a few seconds he would be in the hands of the soldiers.
Plunging out of the doorway, the desperado vaulted to the saddle and
drove his spurs home. For a minute hoofs pounded on the hard, white
road. Then the night swallowed him and the echo of his disappearance.

“That was Bannister of the Shoshones and the Tetons,” the girl’s white
lips pronounced to Lieutenant Beecher.

“And I let him get away from me,” the disappointed lad groaned. “Why, I
had him right in my hands. I could have throttled him as easy. But how
was I to know he would have nerve enough to come rushing into a hotel
full of soldiers hunting him?”

“Y’u have a very persistent cousin, Mr. Bannister,” said McWilliams,
coming forward from the alcove with shining eyes. “And I must say he’s
game. Did y’u ever hear the like? Come butting in here as cool as if he
hadn’t a thing to do but sing out orders like he was in his own home.
He was that easy.”

“It seems to me that a little of the praise is due Lieutenant Beecher.
If he hadn’t dealt so competently with the situation murder would have
been done. Did you learn your boxing at the Academy, Lieutenant?” Helen
asked, trying to treat the situation lightly in spite of her hammering
heart.

“I was the champion middleweight of our class,” Beecher could not help
saying boyishly, with another of his blushes.

“I can easily believe it,” returned Helen.

“I wish y’u would teach me how to double up a man so prompt and
immediate,” said the admiring foreman.

“I expect I’m under particular obligations to that straight right to
the chin, Lieutenant,” chimed in the sheepman. “The fact is that I
don’t seem to be able to get out anything except thanks these days. I
ought to send my cousin a letter thanking _him_ for giving me a chance
to owe so much kindness to so many people.”

“Your cousin?” repeated the uncomprehending officer.

“This desperado, Bannister, is my cousin,” answered the sheepman
gravely.

“But if he was your cousin, why should he want—to kill you?”

“That’s a long story, Lieutenant. Will y’u hear it now?”

“If you feel strong enough to tell it.”

“Oh, I’m strong enough.” He glanced at Helen. “Perhaps we had better
not tire Miss Messiter with it. If y’u’ll come to my room—”

“I should like, above all things, to hear it again,” interrupted that
young woman promptly.

For the man she loved had just come back to her from the brink of the
grave and she was still reluctant to let him out of her sight.

So Ned Bannister told his story once more, and out of the alcove came
the happy foreman and Nora to listen to the tale. While he told it his
sweetheart’s contented eyes were on him. The excitement of the night
burnt pleasantly in her veins, for out of the nettle danger she had
plucked safety for her sheepman.




CHAPTER XX.
TWO CASES OF DISCIPLINE


The Fourth of July celebration at Gimlet Butte had been a thing of the
past for four days and the Lazy D had fallen back into the routine of
ranch life. The riders were discussing supper and the continued absence
of Reddy when that young man drew back the flap and joined them.

He stood near the doorway and grinned with embarrassed guilt at the
assembled company.

“I reckon I got too much Fourth of July at Gimlet Butte, boys. That’s
how come I to be onpunctual getting back.”

There was a long silence, during which those at the table looked at him
with an expressionless gravity that did not seem to veil an unduly warm
welcome.

“Hello, Mac! Hello, boys! I just got back,” he further contributed.

Without comment the Lazy D resumed supper. Apparently it had not missed
Reddy or noticed his return. Casual conversation was picked up
cheerfully. The return of the prodigal was quite ignored.

“Then that blamed cow gits its back up and makes a bee-line for Rogers.
The old man hikes for his pony and—”

“Seems good to git my legs under the old table again,” interrupted
Reddy with cheerful unease.

“—loses by about half a second,” continued Missou. “If Doc hadn’t roped
its hind laig—”

“Have some cigars, boys. I brought a box back with me.” Reddy tossed a
handful on the table, where they continued to lie unnoticed.

“—there’s no telling what would have happened. As ’twas the old man got
off with a—”

“Y’u bet, they’re good cigars all right,” broke in the propitiatory
Reddy.

The interrupted anecdote went on to a finish and the men trooped out
and left the prodigal alone with his hash. When that young man reached
the bunkhouse Frisco was indulging in a reminiscence. Reddy got only
the last of it, but that did not contribute to his serenity.

“Yep! When I was working on the Silver Dollar. Must a-been three years
ago, I reckon, when Jerry Miller got that chapping.”

“Threw down the outfit in a row they had with the Lafferty crowd,
didn’t he?” asked Denver.

Frisco nodded.

Mac got up, glanced round, and reached for his hat. “I reckon I’ll have
to be going,” he said, and forthright departed.

Reddy reached for _his_ hat and rose. “I got to go and have a talk with
Mac,” he explained.

Denver got to the door first and his big frame filled it.

“Don’t hurry, Reddy. It ain’t polite to rush away right after dinner.
Besides, Mac will be here all day. He ain’t starting for New York.”

“Y’u’re gittin’ blamed particular. Mac he went right out.”

“But Mac didn’t have a most particular engagement with the boys.
There’s a difference.”

“Why, I ain’t got—” Reddy paused and looked around helplessly.

“Gents, I move y’u that it be the horse sense of the Lazy D that our
friend Mr. Reddy Reeves be given gratis one chapping immediately if not
sooner. The reason for which same being that he played a lowdown trick
on the outfit whose bread he was eating.”

“Oh, quit your foolin’, boys,” besought the victim anxiously.

“And that Denver, being some able-bodied and having a good reach, be
requested to deliver same to the gent needing it,” concluded Missou.

Reddy backed in alarm to the wall. “Y’u boys don’t want to get gay with
me. Y’u can’t monkey with—”

Motion carried unanimously.

Just as Reddy whipped out his revolver Denver’s long leg shot out and
his foot caught the wrist behind the weapon. When Reddy next took
cognizance of his surroundings he was serving as a mattress for the
anatomy of three stalwart riders. He was gently deposited face down on
his bunk with a one-hundred-eighty-pound live peg at the end of each
arm and leg.

“All ready, Denver,” announced Frisco from the end of the left foot.

Denver selected a pair of plain leather chaps with care and proceeded
to business. What he had to do he did with energy. It is safe to say
that at least one of those present can still vividly remember this and
testify to his thoroughness.

Mac drifted in after the disciplining. As foreman it was fitting that
he should be discreetly ignorant of what had occurred, but he could not
help saying:

“That y’u I heard singing, Reddy? Seems to me y’u had ought to take
that voice into grand opera. The way y’u straddle them high notes is a
caution for fair. What was it y’u was singing? Sounded like ‘Would I
were far from here, love.’”

“Y’u go to hell,” choked Reddy, rushing past him from the bunkhouse.

McWilliams looked round innocently. “I judge some of y’u boys must
a-been teasing Reddy from his manner. Seemed like he didn’t want to sit
down and talk.”

“I shouldn’t wonder but he’ll hold his conversations standing for a day
or two,” returned Missou gravely.

At the end of the laugh that greeted this Mac replied:

“Well, y’u boys want to be gentle with him.” “He’s so plumb tender now
that I reckon he’ll get along without any more treatment in that line
from us,” drawled Frisco.

Mac departed laughing. He had an engagement that recurred daily in the
dusk of the evening, and he was always careful to be on time. The other
party to the engagement met him at the kitchen door and fell with him
into the trail that led to Lee Ming’s laundry.

“What made you late?” she asked.

“I’m not late, honey. I seem late because you’re so anxious,” he
explained.

“I’m not,” protested Nora indignantly. “If you think you’re the only
man on the place, Jim McWilliams.”

“Sho! Hold your hawsses a minute, Nora, darling. A spinster like y’u—”

“You think you’re awful funny—writing in my autograph album that a
spinster’s best friend is her powder box. I like Mr. Halliday’s ways
better. He’s a perfect gentleman.”

“I ain’t got a word to say against Denver, even if he did write in your
book,

“‘Sugar is sweet,
    The sky is blue,
Grass is green
    And so are you.’


I reckon, being a perfect gentleman, he meant—”

“You know very well you wrote that in yourself and pretended it was Mr.
Halliday, signing his name and everything. It wasn’t a bit nice of
you.”

“Now do I look like a forger?” he wanted to know with innocence on his
cherubic face.

“Anyway you know it was mean. Mr. Halliday wouldn’t do such a thing.
You take your arm down and keep it where it belongs, Mr. McWilliams.”

“That ain’t my name, Nora, darling, and I’d like to know where my arm
belongs if it isn’t round the prettiest girl in Wyoming. What’s the use
of being engaged if—”

“I’m not sure I’m going to stay engaged to you,” announced the young
woman coolly, walking at the opposite edge of the path from him.

“Now that ain’t any way to talk.”

“You needn’t lecture me. I’m not your wife and I don’t think I’m going
to be,” cut in Nora, whose temper was ruffled on account of having had
to wait for him as well as for other reasons.

“Y’u surely wouldn’t make me sue y’u for breach of promise, would y’u?”
he demanded, with a burlesque of anxiety that was the final straw.

Nora turned on her heel and headed for the house.

“Now don’t y’u get mad at me, honey. I was only joking,” he explained
as he pursued her.

“You think you can laugh at me all you please. I’ll show you that you
can’t,” she informed him icily.

“Sho! I wasn’t laughing at y’u. What tickled me—”

“I’m not interested in your amusement, Mr. McWilliams.”

“What’s the use of flying out about a little thing like that? Honest, I
don’t even know what you’re mad at me for,” the perplexed foreman
averred.

“I’m not mad at you, as you call it. I’m simply disgusted.”

And with a final “Good night” flung haughtily over her shoulder Miss
Nora Darling disappeared into the house.

Mac took off his hat and gazed at the door that had been closed in his
face. He scratched his puzzled poll in vain.

“I ce’tainly got mine good and straight just like Reddy got his. But
what in time was it all about? And me thinkin’ I was a graduate in the
study of the ladies. I reckon I never did get jarred up so. It’s plumb
discouraging.”

If he could have caught a glimpse of Nora at that moment, lying on her
bed and crying as if her heart would break, Mac might have found the
situation less hopeless.




CHAPTER XXI.
THE SIGNAL LIGHTS


In a little hill-rift about a mile back of the Lazy D Ranch was a
deserted miner’s cabin.

The hut sat on the edge of a bluff that commanded a view of the
buildings below, while at the same time the pines that surrounded it
screened the shack from any casual observation. A thin curl of smoke
was rising from the mud chimney, and inside the cabin two men lounged
before the open fire.

“It’s his move, and he is going to make it soon. Every night I look for
him to drop down on the ranch. His hate’s kind of volcanic, Mr. Ned
Bannister’s is, and it’s bound to bubble over mighty sudden one of
these days,” said the younger of the two, rising and stretching
himself.

“It did bubble over some when he drove two thousand of my sheep over
the bluff and killed the whole outfit,” suggested the namesake of the
man mentioned.

“Yes, I reckon that’s some irritating,” agreed McWilliams. “But if I
know him, he isn’t going to be content with sheep so long as he can
take it out of a real live man.”

“Or woman,” suggested the sheepman.

“Or woman,” agreed the other. “Especially when he thinks he can cut y’u
deeper by striking at her. If he doesn’t raid the Lazy D one of these
nights, I’m a blamed poor prophet.”

Bannister nodded agreement. “He’s near the end of his rope. He could
see that if he were blind. When we captured Bostwick and they got a
confession out of him, that started the landslide against him. It began
to be noised abroad that the government was going to wipe him out.
Folks began to lose their terror of him, and after that his whole
outfit began to want to turn State’s evidence. He isn’t sure of one of
them now; can’t tell when he will be shot in the back by one of his own
scoundrels for that two thousand dollars reward.”

The foreman strolled negligently to the door. His eyes drifted
indolently down into the valley, and immediately sparkled with
excitement.

“The signal’s out, Bann,” he exclaimed. “It’s in your window.”

The sheepman leaped to his feet and strode to the door. Down in the
valley a light was gleaming in a window. Even while he looked another
light appeared in a second window.

“She wants us both,” cried the foreman, running to the little corral
back of the house.

He presently reappeared with two horses, both saddled, and they took
the downward trail at once.

“If Miss Helen can keep him in play till we arrive,” murmured Mac
anxiously.

“She can if he gives her a chance, and I think he will. There’s a kind
of cat instinct in him to play with his prey.”

“Yes, but he missed his kill last time by letting her fool him. That’s
what I’m afraid of’ that he won’t wait.”

They had reached lower ground now, and could put their ponies at a
pounding gallop that ate up the trail fast. As they approached the
houses, both men drew rein and looked carefully to their weapons. Then
they slid from the saddles and slipped noiselessly forward.

What the foreman had said was exactly true. Helen Messiter did want
them both, and she wanted them very much indeed.

After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of
Chopin’s waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was
not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir
to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she
knew, and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the
intruder.

Without turning she called over her shoulder: “Shall I finish the
waltz?” No faintest tremor in the clear, sweet voice betrayed the
racing heart.

“Y’u’re a cool hand, my friend,” came his ready answer. “But I think
we’ll dispense with the music. I had enough last time to serve me for
twice.”

She laughed as she swung on the stool, with that musical scorn which
both allured and maddened. “I did rather do you that time,” she
allowed.

“This is the return match. You won then. I win now,” he told her, with
a look that chilled.

“Indeed! But isn’t that rather discounting the future?”

“Only the immediate future. Y’u’re mine, my beauty, and I mean to take
y’u with me.”

Just a disdainful sweep of her eyes she gave him as she rose from the
piano-stool and rearranged the lamps. “You mean so much that never
comes to pass, Mr. Bannister. The road to the nether regions is paved
with good intentions, we are given to understand. Not that yours can by
any stretch of imagination be called ‘good intentions.’”

“Contrariwise, then, perhaps the road to heaven may be paved with evil
intentions. Since y’u travel the road with me, wherever it may lead, it
were but gallant to hope so.”

He took three sharp steps toward her and stood looking down in her
face, her sweet slenderness so close to him that the perfume mounted to
his brain. Surely no maiden had ever been more desirable than this one,
who held him in such contemptuous estimation that only her steady eyes
moved at his approach. These held to his and defied him, while she
stood leaning motionless against the table with such strong and supple
grace. She knew what he meant to do, hated him for it, and would not
give him the satisfaction of flying an inch from him or struggling with
him.

“Your eyes are pools of splendor. That’s right. Make them flash fire. I
love to see such spirit, since it offers a more enticing pleasure in
breaking,” he told her, with an admiration half ironic but wholly
genuine. “Pools of splendor, my beauty! Therefore I salute them.”

At the touch of his lips upon her eyelids a shiver ran through her, but
still she made no movement, was cold to him as marble. “You coward!”
she said softly, with an infinite contempt.

“Your lips,” he continued to catalogue, “are ripe as fresh flesh of
Southern fruit. No cupid ever possessed so adorable a mouth. A
worshiper of Eros I, as now I prove.”

This time it was the mouth he kissed, the while her unconquered spirit
looked out of the brave eyes, and fain would have murdered him. In turn
he kissed her cold cheeks, the tip of one of her little ears, the
small, clenched fist with which she longed to strike him.

“Are you quite through?”

“For the present, and now, having put the seal of my ownership on her
more obvious charms, I’ll take my bride home.”

“I would die first.”

“Nay, you’ll die later, Madam Bannister, but not for many years, I
hope,” he told her, with a theatrical bow.

“Do you think me so weak a thing as your words imply?”

“Rather so strong that the glory of overcoming y’u fills me with joy.
Believe me, madam, though your master I am not less your slave,” he
mocked.

“You are neither my master nor my slave, but a thing I detest,” she
said, in a low voice that carried extraordinary intensity.

“And obey,” he added, suavely. “Come, madam, to horse, for our
honeymoon.”

“I tell you I shall not go.”

“Then, in faith, we’ll re-enact a modern edition of ‘The Taming of the
Shrew.’ Y’u’ll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old _Petruchio_.”
He paced complacently up the room and back, and quoted glibly:

“And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor.
He that knows better how to tame a shrew,
Now let him, speak; ’tis charity to show.”


“Would you take me against my will?”

“Y’u have said it. What’s your will to me? What I want I take. And I
sure want my beautiful shrew.” His half-shuttered eyes gloated on her
as he rattled off a couple more lines from the play he had mentioned.

“Kate, like the hazel-twig,
Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue
As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels.”


She let a swift glance travel anxiously to the door. “You are in a very
poetical mood to-day.”

“As befits a bridegroom, my own.” He stepped lightly to the window and
tapped twice on the pane. “A signal to bring the horses round. If y’u
have any preparations to make, any trousseau to prepare, y’u better set
that girl of yours to work.”

“I have no preparations to make.”

“Coming to me simply as y’u are? Good! We’ll lead the simple life.”

Nora, as it chanced, knocked and entered at his moment. The sight of
her vivid good looks struck him for the first time. At sight of him she
stopped, gazing with parted lips, a double row of pearls shining
through.

He turned swiftly to the mistress. “Y’u ought not to be alone there
among so many men. It wouldn’t be proper. We’ll take the girl along
with us.”

“Where?” Nora’s parted lips emitted.

“To Arden, my dear.” He interrupted himself to look at his watch. “I
wonder why that fellow doesn’t come with the horses. They should pass
this window.”

Bannister, standing jauntily with his feet astride as he looked out of
the window, heard someone enter the room. “Did y’u bring round the
horses?” he snapped, without looking round.

“_No, we allowed they wouldn’t be needed_.”

At sound of the slow drawl the outlaw wheeled like a flash, his hand
traveling to the hilt of the revolver that hung on his hip. But he was
too late. Already two revolvers covered him, and he knew that both his
cousin and McWilliams were dead shots. He flashed one venomous look at
the mistress of the ranch.

“Y’u fooled me again. That lamp business was a signal, and I was too
thick-haided to see it. My compliments to y’u, Miss Messiter.”

“Y’u are under arrest,” announced his cousin.

“Y’u don’t say.” His voice was full of sarcastic admiration. “And you
done it with your little gun! My, what a wonder y’u are!”

“Take your hand from the butt of that gun. Y’u better relieve him of
it, Mac. He’s got such a restless disposition he might commit suicide
by reaching for it.”

“What do y’u think you’re going to do with me now y’u have got me,
Cousin Ned?”

“We’re going to turn y’u over to the United States Government.”

“Guess again. I have a thing, or two to say to that.”

“You’re going to Gimlet Butte with us, alive or dead.”

The outlaw intentionally misunderstood. “If I’ve got to take y’u, then
we’ll say y’u go dead rather than alive.”

“He was going to take Nora and me with him,” Helen explained to her
friends.

Instantly the man swung round on her. “But now I’ve changed my mind,
ma’am. I’m going to take my cousin with me instead of y’u ladies.”

Helen caught his meaning first, and flashed it whitely to her lover. It
dawned on him more slowly.

“I see y’u remember, Miss Messiter,” he continued, with a cruel, silken
laugh. “He gave me his parole to go with me whenever I said the word.
I’m saying it now.” He sat down astride a chair, put his chin on the
back cross-bar, and grinned malevolently from one to another.

“What’s come over this happy family? It don’t look so joyous all of a
sudden. Y’u don’t need to worry, ma’am, I’ll send him back to y’u all
right—alive or dead. With his shield or on it, y’u know. Ha! ha!”

“You will not go with him?” It was wrung from Helen as a low cry, and
struck her lover’s heart.

“I must,” he answered. “I gave him my word, y’u remember.”

“But why keep it? You know what he is, how absolutely devoid of honor.”

“That is not quite the question, is it?” he smiled.

“Would he keep his word to you?”

“Not if a lie would do as well. But that isn’t the point, either.”

“It’s quixotic—foolish—worse than that—ridiculous,” she implored.

“Perhaps, but the fact remains that I am pledged.”

“‘I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honor more,’”


murmured the villain in the chair, apparently to the ceiling. “Dear
Ned, he always was the soul of honor. I’ll have those lines carved on
his tombstone.”

“You see! He is already bragging that he means to kill you,” said the
girl.

“I shall go armed,” the sheepman answered.

“Yes, but he will take you into the mountain fastnesses, where the men
that serve him will do his bidding. What is one man among so many?”

“Two men, ma’am,” corrected the foreman.

“What’s that?” The outlaw broke off the snatch of opera he was singing
to slew his head round at McWilliams.

“I said two. Any objections, seh?”

“Yes. That wasn’t in the contract.”

“We’re giving y’u surplusage, that’s all. Y’u wanted one of us, and y’u
get two. We don’t charge anything for the extra weight,” grinned Mac.

“Oh, Mac, will you go with him?” cried Helen, with shining eyes.

“Those are my present intentions, Miss Helen,” laughed her foreman.

Whereat Nora emerged from the background and flung herself on him. “Y’u
can’t go, Jim! I won’t have you go!” she cried.

The young man blushed a beautiful pink, and accepted gladly this overt
evidence of a reconciliation. “It’s all right, honey. Don’t y’u think
two big, grown-up men are good to handle that scalawag? Sho! Don’t y’u
worry.”

“Miss Nora can come, too, if she likes,” suggested he of the Shoshones.
“Looks like we would have quite a party. Won’t y’u join us, too, Miss
Messiter, according to the original plan?” he said, extending an
ironical invitation.

“I think we had better cut it down to me alone. We’ll not burden your
hospitality, sir,” said the sheepman.

“No, sir, I’m in on this. Whyfor can’t I go?” demanded Jim.

Bannister, the outlaw, eyed him unpleasantly. “Y’u certainly can so far
as I am concerned. I owe y’u one, too, Mr. McWilliams. Only if y’u come
of your own free will, as y’u are surely welcome to do, don’t holler if
y’u’re not so welcome to leave whenever y’u take a notion.”

“I’ll try and look out for that. It’s settled, then, that we ride
together. When do y’u want to start?”

“We can’t go any sooner than right now. I hate to take these young men
from y’u, lady, but, as I said, I’ll send them back in good shape.
_Adios, señorita_. Don’t forget to whom y’u belong.” He swaggered to
the door and turned, leaning against the jamb with one hand again it.
“I expect y’u can say those lovey-dov good-byes without my help. I’m
going into the yard. If y’u want to y’u can plug me in the back through
the window,” he suggested, with a sneer.

“As y’u would us under similar circumstances,” retorted his cousin.

“Be with y’u in five minutes,” said the foreman.

“Don’t hurry. It’s a long good-bye y’u’re saying,” returned his enemy
placidly.

Nora and the young man who belonged to her followed him from the room,
leaving Bannister and his hostess alone.

“Shall I ever see you again?” Helen murmured.

“I think so,” the sheepman answered. “The truth is that this
opportunity falls pat. Jim and have been wanting to meet those men who
are under my cousin’s influence and have a talk with them. There is no
question but that the gang is disintegrating, and I believe that if we
offer to mediate between its members and the Government something might
be done to stop the outrages that have been terrorizing this country.
My cousin can’t be reached, but I believe the rest of them, or, at
least a part, can be induced either to surrender or to flee the
country. Anyhow, we want to try it.”

“But the danger?” she breathed.

“Is less than y’u think. Their leader has not anywhere nearly the
absolute power he had a few months ago. They would hardly dare do
violence to a peace envoy.”

“Your cousin would. I don’t believe he has any scruples.”

“We shall keep an eye on him. Both of us will not sleep at the same
time. Y’u may depend on me to bring your foreman safely back to y’u,”
he smiled.

“Oh, my foreman!”

“And your foreman’s friend,” he added. “I have the best of reasons for
wanting to return alive. I think y’u know them. They have to do with
y’u, Miss Helen.”

It had come at last, but, womanlike, she evaded the issue her heart had
sought. “Yes, I know. You think it would not be fair to throw away your
life in this foolish manner after I have saved it for you—how many
times was it you said?” The blue eyes lifted with deceptive frankness
to the gray ones.

“No, that isn’t my reason. I have a better one than that. I love y’u,
girl, more than anything in this world.”

“And so you try to prove it to me by running into a trap set for you to
take your life. That’s a selfish kind of love, isn’t it? Or it would be
if I loved you.”

“_Do_ y’u love me, Helen?”

“Why should I tell you, since you don’t love me enough to give up this
quixotic madness?”

“Don’t y’u see, dear, I _can’t_ give it up?”

“I see you won’t. You care more for your pride than for me.”

“No, it isn’t that. I’ve _got_ to go. It isn’t that I want to leave
y’u, God knows. But I’ve given my word, and I must keep it. Do y’u want
me to be a quitter, and y’u so game yourself? Do y’u want it to go all
over this cattle country that I gave my word and took it back because I
lost my nerve?”

“The boy that takes a dare isn’t a hero, is he! There’s a higher
courage that refuses to be drawn into such foolishness, that doesn’t
give way to the jeers of the empty headed.”

“I don’t think that is a parallel case. I’m sorry, we can’t see this
alike, but I’ve got to go ahead the way that seems to me right.”

“You’re going to leave me, then, to go with that man?”

“Yes, if that’s the way y’u have to put it.” He looked at her
sorrowfully, and added gently: “I thought you would see it. I thought
sure you would.”

But she could not bear that he should leave her so, and she cried out
after him. “Oh, I see it. I know you must go; but I can’t bear it.” Her
head buried itself in his coat. “It isn’t right—it isn’t a—a square
deal that you should go away now, the very minute you belong to me.”

A happy smile shone in his eyes. “I belong to you, do I? That’s good
hearing, girl o’ mine.” His arm went round her and he stroked the black
head softly. “I’ll not be gone long, dear. Don’t y’u worry about me.
I’ll be back with y’u soon; just as soon as I have finished this piece
of work I have to do.”

“But if you should get—if anything should happen to you?”

“Nothing is going to happen to me. There is a special providence looks
after lovers, y’u know.”

“Be careful, Ned, of yourself. For my sake, dear.”

“I’ll dry my socks every time I get my feet wet for fear of taking
cold,” he laughed.

“But you will, won’t you?”

“I’ll be very careful, Helen,” he promised more gravely.

Even then she could hardly let him go, clinging to him with a
reluctance to separate that was a new experience to her independent,
vigorous youth. In the end he unloosened her arm, kissed her once, and
hurried out of the room. In the hallway he met McWilliams, also hurryin
out from a tearful farewell on the part of Nora.

Bannister, the outlaw, already mounted, was waiting for them. “Y’u
_did_ get through at last,” he drawled insolently. “Well, if y’u’ll
kindly give orders to your seven-foot dwarf to point the Winchester
another way I’ll collect my men an we’ll be moving.”

For, though the outlaw had left his men in command of the ranch when he
went into the house, he found the situation reversed on his return.
With the arrival of reinforcements, in the persons of McWilliams and
his friend, it had been the turn of the raiders to turn over their
weapons.

“All right, Denver,” nodded the foreman.

The outlaw chief whistled for his men, and with their guests they rode
into the silent, desert night.




CHAPTER XXII.
EXIT THE “KING”


They bedded that night under the great vault-roof where twinkle a
million stars.

There were three of the outlaw’s men with him, and both Mcwilliams and
his friend noticed that they slept a little apart from their chief.
There were other indications among the rustlers of a camp divided
against itself. Bannister’s orders to them he contrived to make an
insult, and their obedience was as surly as possible compatible with
safety. For all of the men knew that he would not hesitate to shoot
them down in one of his violent rages should they anger him
sufficiently.

Throughout the night there was no time that at least two men were not
awake in the camp. The foreman and the sheepman took turns keeping
vigil; and on the other side of the fire sat one of the rustlers in
silent watchfulness. To the man opposite him each of the sentinels were
outposts of the enemy, but they fraternized after the manner of army
sentries, exchanging tobacco and occasional casual conversation.

The foreman took the first turn, and opposite him sat a one-eyed old
scoundrel who had rustled calves from big outfits ever since Wyoming
was a territory and long before. Chalkeye Dave, he was called, and
sometimes merely Chalkeye. What his real name was no man knew. Nor was
his past a subject for conversation in his presence. It was known that
he had been in the Nevada penitentiary, and that he had killed a man in
Arizona, but these details of an active life were rarely resurrected.
For Chalkeye was deadly on the shoot, and was ready for it at the drop
of the hat, though he had his good points too. One of these was a
remarkable fondness for another member of the party, a mere lad, called
by his companions Hughie. Generally surly and morose, to such a degree
that even his chief was careful to humor him as a rule, when with
Hughie all the softer elements of his character came to the surface. In
his rough way he was ever humorous and genial.

Jim McWilliams found him neither, however. He declined to engage in
conversation, accepted a proffer of tobacco with a silent, hostile
grunt and relapsed into a long silence that lasted till his shift was
ended.

“Hate to have y’u leave, old man. Y’u’re so darned good company I’ll
ce’tainly pine for you,” the foreman suggested, with sarcasm, when the
old man rolled up in his blankets preparatory to falling asleep
immediately.

Chalkeye’s successor was a blatant youth much impressed with his own
importance. He was both foul-mouthed and foul-minded, so that Jim was
constrained to interrupt his evil boastings by pretending to fall
asleep.

It was nearly two o’clock when the foreman aroused his friend to take
his turn. Shortly after this the lad Hughie relieved the bragging,
would-be bad man.

Hughie was a flaxen-haired, rather good-looking boy of nineteen. In his
small, wistful face was not a line of wickedness, though it was plain
that he was weak. He seemed so unfit for the life he was leading that
the sheepman’s interest was aroused. For on the frontier it takes a
strong, competent miscreant to be a bad man and survive. Ineffectives
and weaklings are quickly weeded out to their graves or the
penitentiaries.

The boy was manifestly under great fear of his chief, but the curly
haired young Hermes who kept watch with him had a very winning smile
and a charming manner when he cared to exert it. Almost in spite of
himself the youngster was led to talk. It seemed that he had but lately
joined the Teton-Shoshones outfit of desperadoes, and between the lines
Bannister easily read that his cousin’s masterful compulsion had
coerced the young fellow. All he wanted was an opportunity to withdraw
in safety, but he knew he could never do this so long as the “King” was
alive and at liberty.

Under the star-roof in the chill, breaking day Ned Bannister talked to
him long and gently. It was easy to bring the boy to tears, but it was
harder thing to stiffen a will that was of putty and to hearten a soul
in mortal fear. But he set himself with all the power in him to combat
the influence of his cousin over this boy; and before the camp stirred
to life again he knew that he had measurably succeeded.

They ate breakfast in the gray dawn under the stars, and after they had
finished their coffee and bacon horses were saddled and the trail taken
up again. It led in and out among the foot-hills sloping upward
gradually toward the first long blue line of the Shoshones that
stretched before them in the distance. Their nooning was at a running
stream called Smith’s Creek, and by nightfall the party was well up in
the higher foot hills.

In the course of the day and the second night both the sheepman and his
friend made attempt to establish a more cordial relationship with
Chalkeye, but so far as any apparent results went their efforts were
vain. He refused grimly to meet their overtures half way, even though
it was plain from his manner that a break between him and his chief
could not long be avoided.

All day by crooked trails they pushed forward, and as the party
advanced into the mountains the gloom of the mournful pines and
frowning peaks invaded its spirits. Suspicion and distrust went with
it, camped at night by the rushing mountain stream, lay down to sleep
in the shadows at every man’s shoulder. For each man looked with an
ominous eye on his neighbor, watchful of every sudden move, of every
careless word that might convey a sudden meaning.

Along a narrow rock-rim trail far above a steep cañon, whose walls shot
precipitously down, they were riding in single file, when the outlaw
chief pushed his horse forward between the road wall and his cousin’s
bronco. The sheepman immediately fell back.

“I reckon this trail isn’t wide enough for two—unless y’u take the
outside,” he explained quietly.

The outlaw, who had been drinking steadily ever since leaving the Lazy
D, laughed his low, sinister cackle. “Afraid of me, are y’u? Afraid
I’ll push y’u off?”

“Not when I’m inside and you don’t have chance.”

“’Twas a place about like this I drove four thousand of your sheep over
last week. With sheep worth what they are I’m afraid it must have cost
y’u quite a bit. Not that y’u’ll miss it where you are going,” he
hastened to add.

“It was very like you to revenge yourself on dumb animals.”

“Think so?” The “King’s” black gaze rested on him. “Y’u’ll sing a
different song soon Mr. Bannister. It’s humans I’ll drive next time and
don’t y’u forget it.”

“If you get the chance,” amended his cousin gently.

“I’ll get the chance. I’m not worrying about that. And about those
sheep—any man that hasn’t got more sense than to run sheep in a cow
country ought to lose them for his pig-headedness.

“Those sheep were on the right side of the dead-line. You had to cross
it to reach them.” Their owner’s steady eyes challenged a denial.

“Is that so? Now how do y’u know that? We didn’t leave the herder alive
to explain that to y’u, did we?”

“You admit murdering him?”

“To y’u, dear cousin. Y’u see, I have a hunch that maybe y’u’ll go join
your herder right soon. Y’u’ll not do much talking.”

The sheepman fell back. “I think I’ll ride alone.”

Rage flared in the other’s eye. “Too good for me, are y’u, my
mealy-mouthed cousin? Y’u always thought yourself better than me. When
y’u were a boy you used to go sneaking to that old hypocrite, your
grandfather—”

“You have said enough,” interrupted the other sternly. “I’ll not hear
another word. Keep your foul tongue off him.”

Their eyes silently measured strength.

“Y’u’ll not hear a word!” sneered the chief of the rustlers. “What will
y’u do, dear cousin?

“Stand up and fight like a man and settle this thing once for all.”

Still their steely eyes crossed as with the thrust of rapiers. The
challenged man crouched tensely with a mighty longing for the test, but
he had planned a more elaborate revenge and a surer one than this.
Reluctantly he shook his head.

“Why should I? Y’u’re mine. We’re four to two, and soon we’ll be a
dozen to two. I’d like a heap to oblige y’u, but I reckon I can’t
afford to just now. Y’u will have to wait a little for that bumping off
that’s coming to y’u.”

“In that event I’ll trouble you not to inflict your society on me any
more than is necessary.”

“That’s all right, too. If y’u think I enjoy your conversation y’u have
got another guess coming.”

So by mutual consent the sheepman fell in behind the blatant youth who
had wearied McWilliams so and rode in silence.

It was again getting close to nightfall. The slant sun was throwing its
rays on less and less of the trail. They could see the shadows grow and
the coolness of night sift into the air. They were pushing on to pass
the rim of a great valley basin that lay like a saucer in the mountains
in order that they might camp in the valley by a stream all of them
knew. Dusk was beginning to fall when they at last reached the saucer
edge and only the opposite peaks were still tipped with the sun rays.
This, too, disappeared before they had descended far, and the gloom of
the great mountains that girt the valley was on all their spirits, even
McWilliams being affected by it.

They were tired with travel, and the long night watches did not improve
tempers already overstrained with the expectation of a crisis too long
dragged out. Rain fell during the night, and continued gently in a
misty drizzle after day broke. It was a situation and an atmosphere
ripe for tragedy, and it fell on them like a clap of thunder out of a
sodden sky.

Hughie was cook for the day, and he came chill and stiff-fingered to
his task. Summer as it was, there lay a thin coating of ice round the
edges of the stream, for they had camped in an altitude of about nine
thousand feet. The “King” had wakened in a vile humor. He had a
splitting headache, as was natural under the circumstances and he had
not left in his bottle a single drink to tide him over it. He came
cursing to the struggling fire, which was making only fitful headway
against the rain which beat down upon it.

“Why didn’t y’u build your fire on the side of the tree?” he growled at
Hughie.

Now, Hughie was a tenderfoot, and in his knowledge of outdoor life he
was still an infant. “I didn’t know—” he was beginning, when his master
cut him short with a furious tongue lashing out of all proportion to
the offense.

The lad’s face blanched with fear, and his terror was so manifest that
the bully, who was threatening him with all manner of evils, began to
enjoy himself. Chalkeye, returning from watering the horses, got back
in time to hear the intemperate fag-end of the scolding. He glanced at
Hughie, whose hands were trembling in spite of him, and then darkly at
the brute who was attacking him. But he said not a word.

The meal proceeded in silence except for jeers and taunts of the
“King.” For nobody cared to venture conversation which might prove a
match to a powder magazine. Whatever thoughts might be each man kept
them to himself.

“Coffee,” snapped the single talker, toward end of breakfast.

Hughie jumped up, filled the cup that was handed him and set the coffee
pot back on fire. As he handed the tin cup with the coffee to the
outlaw the lad’s foot slipped on a piece wet wood, and the hot liquid
splashed over his chief’s leg. The man jumped to his feet in a rage and
struck the boy across the face with his whip once, and then again.

“By God, that’ll do for you!” cried Chalkeye from the other side of the
fire, springing revolver in hand. “Draw, you coyote! I come
a-shooting.”

The “King” wheeled, finding his weapon he turned. Two shots rang out
almost simultaneously, and Chalkeye pitched forward. The outlaw chief
sank to his knees, and, with one hand resting on the ground to steady
himself fired two more shots into the twitching body on the other side
of the fire. Then he, too, lurched forward and rolled over.

It had come to climax so swiftly that not one of them had moved except
the combatants. Bannister rose and walked over to the place where the
body of his cousin lay. He knelt down and examined him. When he rose it
was with a very grave face.

“He is dead,” he said quietly.

McWilliams, who had been bending over Chalkeye, looked up. “Here, too.
Any one of the shots would have finished him.”

Bannister nodded. “Yes. That first exchange killed them both.” He
looked down at the limp body of his cousin, but a minute before so full
of supple, virile life. “But his hate had to reach out and make sure,
even though he was as good as dead himself. He was game.” Then sharply
to the young braggart, who had risen and was edging away with a face of
chalk: “Sit down, y’u! What do y’u take us for? Think this is to be a
massacre?”

The man came back with palpable hesitancy. “I was aiming to go and get
the boys to bury them. My God, did you ever see anything so quick? They
drilled through each other like lightning.”

Mac looked him over with dry contempt. “My friend, y’u’re too tender
for a genuwine A1 bad man. If I was handing y’u a bunch of advice it
would be to get back to the prosaic paths of peace right prompt. And
while we’re on the subject I’ll borrow your guns. Y’u’re scared stiff
and it might get into your fool coconut to plug one of us and light
out. I’d hate to see y’u commit suicide right before us, so I’ll just
natcherally unload y’u.”

He was talking to lift the strain, and it was for the same purpose that
Bannister moved over to Hughie, who sat with his face in his hands,
trying to shut out the horror of what he had seen.

The sheepman dropped a hand on his shoulder gently. “Brace up, boy!
Don’t you see that the very best thing that could have happened is
this. It’s best for y’u, best for the rest of the gang and best for the
whole cattle country. We’ll have peace here at last. Now he’s gone,
honest men are going to breathe easy. I’ll take y’u in hand and set y’u
at work on one of my stations, if y’u like. Anyhow, you’ll have a
chance to begin life again in a better way.”

“That’s right,” agreed the blatant youth. “I’m sick of rustling the
mails and other folks’ calves. I’m glad he got what was coming to him,”
he concluded vindictively, with a glance at his dead chief and a sudden
raucous oath.

McWilliams’s cold blue eye transfixed him “Hadn’t you better be a
little careful how your mouth goes off? For one thing, he’s daid now;
and for another, he happens to be Mr. Bannister’s cousin.”

“But—weren’t they enemies?”

“That’s how I understand it. But this man’s passed over the range. A
_man_ doesn’t unload his hatred on dead folks—and I expect if y’u’ll
study him, even y’u will be able to figure out that my friend measures
up to the size of a real man.”

“I don’t see why if—”

“No, I don’t suppose y’u do,” interrupted the foreman, turning on his
heel. Then to Bannister, who was looking down at his cousin with a
stony face: “I reckon, Bann, we better make arrangements to have the
bodies buried right here in the valley,” he said gently.

Bannister was thinking of early days, of the time when this miscreant,
whose light had just been put out so instantaneously, had played with
him day in and day out. They had attended their first school together,
had played marbles and prisoners’ base a hundred times against each
other. He could remember how they used to get up early in the morning
to go fishing with each other. And later, when each began,
unconsciously, to choose the path he would follow in already beginning
to settle into an established fact. He could see now, by looking back
on trifles of their childhood, that his cousin had been badly
handicapped in his fight with himself against the evil in him. He had
inherited depraved instincts and tastes, and with them somewhere in him
a strand of weakness that prevented him from slaying the giants he had
to oppose in the making of a good character. From bad to worse he had
gone, and here he lay with the drizzling rain on his white face, a
warning and a lesson to wayward youths just setting their feet in the
wrong direction. Surely it was kismet.

Ned Bannister untied the handkerchief from his neck and laid it across
the face of his kinsman. A moment longer he looked down, then passed
his hands across his eyes and seemed to brush away the memories that
thronged him. He stepped forward to the fire and warmed his hands.

“We’ll go on, Mac, to the rendezvous he had appointed with his outfit.
We ought to reach there by noon, and the boys can send a wagon back to
get the bodies.”




CHAPTER XXIII.
JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS’ MEETING


It had been six days since the two Ned Bannisters had ridden away
together into the mountains, and every waking hour since that time had
been for Helen one of harassing anxiety. No word had yet reached her of
the issue of that dubious undertaking, and she both longed and dreaded
to hear. He had promised to send a messenger as soon as he had anything
definite to tell, but she knew it would be like his cousin, too, to
send her some triumphant word should he prove the victor in the
struggle between them. So that every stranger she glimpsed brought to
her a sudden beating of the heart.

But it was not the nature of Helen Messiter to sit down and give
herself up a prey to foreboding. Her active nature cried out for work
to occupy her and distract her attention. Fortunately this was to be
had in abundance just now. For the autumn round-up was on, and since
her foreman was away the mistress of the Lazy D found plenty of work
ready to her hand.

The meeting place for the round-up riders was at Boom Creek, five miles
from the ranch, and Helen rode out there to take charge of her own
interests in person. With her were six riders, and for the use of each
of them in addition to his present mount three extra ponies were
brought in the remuda. For the riding is so hard during the round-up
that a horse can stand only one day in four of it. At the appointed
rendezvous a score of other cowboys and owners met them. Without any
delay they proceeded to business. Mr. Bob Austin, better known as
“Texas,” was elected boss of the round-up, and he immediately assigned
the men to their places and announced that they would work Squaw Creek.
They moved camp at once, Helen returning to the ranch.

It was three o’clock in the morning when the men were roused by the
cook’s triangle calling them to the “chuck wagon” for breakfast. It was
still cold and dark as the boys crawled from under their blankets and
squatted round the fire to eat jerky, biscuits and gravy, and to drink
cupfuls of hot, black coffee. Before sun rose every man was at his post
far up on the Squaw Creek ridges ready to begin the drive.

Later in the day Helen rode to the _parada_ grounds, toward which a
stream of cattle was pouring down the cañon of the creek. Every gulch
tributary to the creek contributed its quota of wild cows and calves.
These came romping down the cañon mouth, where four picked men, with a
bunch of tame cows in front of them, stopped the rush of flying cattle.
Lunch was omitted, and branding began at once. Every calf belonging to
a Lazy D cow, after being roped and tied, was flanked with the great D
which indicated its ownership by Miss Messiter, and on account of the
recumbent position of which letter the ranch had its name.

It was during the branding that a boyish young fellow rode up and
handed Helen a note. Her heart pumped rapidly with relief, for one
glance told her that it was in the handwriting of the Ned Bannister she
loved. She tore it open and glanced swiftly through it.


DEAR FRIEND: Two hours ago my cousin was killed by one of his own men.
I am sending back to you a boy who had been led astray by him, and it
would be a great service to me if you would give him something to do
till I return. His name is Hugh Rogers. I think if you trust him he
will prove worthy of it.

Jim and I are going to stay here a few days longer to finish the work
that is begun. We hope to meet and talk with as many of the men
implicated in my cousin’s lawlessness as is possible. What the result
will be I cannot say. We do not consider ourselves in any danger
whatever, though we are not taking chances. If all goes well we shall
be back within a few days.

I hope you are not missing Jim too much at the roundup. Sincerely,


NED BANNISTER


She liked the letter because there was not a hint of the relationship
between them to be read in it. He had guarded her against the chance of
its falling into the wrong hands and creating talk about them.

She turned to Hughie. “Can you ride?”

“In a way, ma’am. I can’t ride like these men.” His glance indicated a
cow-puncher pounding past after a wild steer that had broken through
the cordon of riders and was trying to get away.

“Do you want to learn?”

“I’d like to if I had a chance,” he answered wistfully.

“All right. You have your chance. I’ll see that Mr. Austin finds
something for you to do. From to-day you are in my employ.”

She rode back to the ranch in the late afternoon, while the sun was
setting in a great splash of crimson. The round-up boss had hinted that
if she were nervous about riding alone he could find it convenient to
accompany her. But the girl wanted to be alone with her own thoughts,
and she had slipped away while he was busy cutting out calves from the
herd. It had been a wonderful relief to her to find that _her_ Ned
Bannister was the one that had survived in the conflict, and her heart
sang a paean of joy as she rode into the golden glow of the westering
sun. He was alive—to love and be loved. The unlived years of her future
seemed to unroll before her as a vision. She glowed with a resurgent
happiness that was almost an ecstasy. The words of a bit of verse she
had once seen—a mere scrap from a magazine that had stuck in an obscure
corner of her memory—sang again and again in her heart:

Life and love
    And a bright sky o’er us,
And—God take care
    Of the way before us!


Ah, the way before them, before her and her romance-radiating hero! It
might be rough and hilly, but if they trod it together—Her tangled
thoughts were off again in another glad leap of imagination.

The days passed somehow. She busied herself with the affairs of the
ranch, rode out often to the scenes of the cattle drives and watched
the round-up, and every twenty-four hours brought her one day nearer to
his return, she told herself. Nora, too, was on the lookout under her
longlashed, roguish eyelids; and the two young women discussed the
subject of their lovers’ return in that elusive, elliptical way common
to their sex.

No doubt each of these young women had conjectured as to the manner of
that homecoming and the meeting that would accompany it; but it is safe
to say that neither of them guessed in her day-dreams how it actually
was to occur.

Nora had been eager to see something of the round-up, and as she was no
horsewoman her mistress took her out one day in her motor. The drive
had been that day on Bronco Mesa, and had finished in the natural
corral made by Bear Cañon, fenced with a cordon of riders at the end
opening to the plains below. After watching for two hours the busy
scenes of cutting out, roping and branding, Helen wheeled her car and
started down the cañon on their return.

Now, a herd of wild cattle is uncertain as an April day’s behavior.
Under the influence of the tame valley cattle among which they are
driven, after a little milling around, the whole bunch may gentle
almost immediately, or, on the other hand, it may break through and go
crashing away on a wild stampede at a moment’s notice. Every
experienced cowman knows enough to expect the unexpected.

At Bronco Mesa the round-up had proceeded with unusual facility. Scores
of wiry, long-legged steers had drifted down the ridges or gulches that
led to the cañon; and many a cow, followed by its calf, had stumbled
forward to the herd and apparently accepted the inevitable. But before
Helen Messiter had well started out of the cañon’s mouth the situation
changed absolutely.

A big hill steer, which had not seen a man for a year, broke through
the human corral with a bellow near a point where Reddy kept guard. The
puncher wheeled and gave chase, Before the other men could close the
opening a couple of two-year-olds seized the opportunity and followed
its lead. A second rider gave chase, and at once, as if some imp of
mischief had stirred them, fifty tails went up in wild flight. Another
minute and the whole herd was in stampede.

Down the gulch the five hundred cattle thundered toward the motor car,
which lay directly in their path. Helen turned, appreciated the danger,
and put the machine at its full speed. The road branched for a space of
about fifty yards, and in her excitement she made the mistake of
choosing the lower, more level, one. Into a deep sand bed they plowed,
the wheels sinking at every turn. Slower and slower went the car;
finally came to a full stop.

Nora glanced back in affright at the two hundred and fifty tons of beef
that was charging wildly toward them. “What shall we do?” she gasped,
and clambered to the ground.

“Run!” cried Helen, following her example and scudding for the sides of
the cañon, which here sloped down less precipitately than at other
points. But before they had run a dozen steps each of them was aware
that they could not reach safety in time to escape the hoofs rushing
toward them so heavily that the ground quaked.

“Look out!” A resonant cry rang out above the dull thud of the
stampeding cattle that were almost upon them. Down the steep sides of
the gorge two riders were galloping recklessly. It was a race for life
between them and the first of the herd, and they won by scarce more
than a length. Across the sand the horses plowed, and as they swept
past the two trembling young women each rider bent from the saddle
without slackening speed, and snatched one almost from under the very
hoofs of the leaders.

The danger was not past. As the horses swerved and went forward with
the rush Helen knew that a stumble would fling not only her and the man
who had saved her, but also the horse down to death. They must contrive
to hold their own in that deadly rush until a way could be found of
escaping from the path of the living cyclone that trod at their heels,
galloped beside them, in front, behind.

For it came to her that the horse was tiring in that rush through the
sand with double weight upon its back.

“Courage!” cried the man behind her as her fearful eyes met his.

As he spoke they reached the end of the cañon and firm ground
simultaneously. Helen saw that her rescuer had now a revolver in his
hand, and that he was firing in such a way as to deflect the leaders to
the left. At first the change in course was hardly perceptible, but
presently she noticed that they were getting closer to the outskirts of
the herd, working gradually to the extreme right, edging inch by inch,
ever so warily, toward safety. Going parallel to their course, running
neck and neck with the cow pony, lumbered a great dun steer.
Unconsciously it blocked every effort of the horseman to escape. He had
one shot left in his revolver, and this time he did not fire into the
air. It was a mighty risk, for the animal in falling might stagger
against the horse and hunt them all down to death. But the man took it
without apparent hesitation. Into the ear of the bullock he sent the
lead crashing. The brute stumbled and went down head over heels. Its
flying hoofs struck the flanks of the pony, but the bronco stuck to its
feet, and next moment staggered out from among the herd stragglers and
came to halt.

The man slid from its back and lifted down the half-fainting girl. She
clung to him, white a trembling. “Oh, it was horrible, Ned!” She could
still look down in imagination upon the sea of dun backs that swayed
and surged about them like storm-tossed waves.

“It was a near thing, but we made it, girl. So did Jim. He got out
before we did. It’s all past now. You can remember it as the most
exciting experience of your life.”

She shuddered. “I don’t want to remember it at all.” And so shaken was
she that she did not realize that his arm was about her the while she
sobbed on his shoulder.

“A cattle stampede _is_ a nasty thing to get in front of. Never mind.
It’s done with now and everybody’s safe.”

She drew a long breath. “Yes, everybody’s safe and you are back home.
Why didn’t you come after your cousin was killed?”

“I had to finish my work.”

“And _did_ you finish it?”

“I think we did. There will be no more Shoshone gang. It’s members have
scatted in all directions.”

“I’m glad you stayed, then. We can live at peace now.” And presently
she added: “I knew you would not come back until you had done what you
set out to do. You’re very obstinate, sir. Do you know that?”

“Perseverance, I call it,” he smiled, glad to see that she was
recovering her lightness of tone.

“You don’t always insist on putting your actions in the most favorable
light. Do you remember the first day I ever saw you?”

“Am I likely ever to forget it?” he smiled fondly.

“I didn’t mean _that_. What I was getting at was that you let me go
away from you thinking you were ‘the king.’ I haven’t forgiven you
entirely for that.”

“I expect y’u’ll always have to be forgiving me things.”

“If you valued my good opinion I don’t see how you could let me go
without telling me. Was it fair or kind?”

“If y’u come to that, was it so fair and kind to convict me so promptly
on suspicion?” he retaliated with a smile.

“No, it wasn’t. But—” She flushed with a divine shyness. “But I loved
you all the time, even when they said you were a villain.”

“Even while y’u believed me one?”

“I didn’t. I never would believe you one—not deep in my heart. I
wouldn’t let myself. I made excuses for you—explained everything to
myself.”

“Yet your reason told y’u I was guilty.”

“Yes, I think my mind hated you and my heart loved you.”

He adored her for the frank simplicity of her confession, that out of
the greatness of her love she dared to make no secret of it to him.
Direct as a boy, she was yet as wholly sweet as the most retiring girl
could be.

“Y’u always swamp my vocabulary, sweetheart. I can’t ever tell y’u—life
wouldn’t be long enough—how much I care for you.”

“I’m glad,” she said simply.

They stood looking at each other, palms pressed to palms in meeting
hands, supremely happy in this miracle of love that had befallen them.
They were alone—for Nora and Jim had gone into temporary eclipse behind
a hill and seemed in no hurry to emerge—alone in the sunshine with this
wonder that flowed from one to another by shining eyes, by finger
touch, and then by meeting lips. He held her close, knew the sweet
delight of contact with the supple, surrendered figure, then released
her as she drew away in maidenly reserve.

“When shall we be married, Helen? Is the early part of next week too
late?” he asked.

Still blushing, she straightened her hat. “That’s ridiculous, sir. I
haven’t got used to the thought of you yet.”

“Plenty of time for that afterward. Then we’ll say next week if that
suits y’u.”

“But it doesn’t. Don’t you know that it is the lady’s privilege to name
the day? Besides, I want time to change my mind if I should decide to.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he laughed joyfully. “So I have to insist
on an early marriage.”

“Insist?” she demurred.

“I’ve been told on the best of authority that I’m very obstinate,” he
gayly answered.

“I have a mind of my own myself. If I ever marry you be sure I shall
name the day, sir.”

“Will y’u marry me the day Nora does Jim?”

“We’ll see.” The eyes slanted at him under the curved lashes, teased
him delightfully. “Did Nora tell you she was going to marry Jim?”

Bannister looked mildly hurt. “My common sense has been telling it to
me a month.”

“How long has your common sense been telling you about us?”

“I didn’t use it when I fell in love with y’u,” he boldly laughed.

“Of all things to say!”

“Because it would have told me y’u couldn’t possibly care for me.”

“Oh, that’s different!”

“Not being able to help myself, I just went ahead.”

“Isn’t it good? Isn’t it too good to be true—Ned?”

Tears brimmed in her happy eyes, and unconsciously she leaned toward
him. In an instant she was in his arms again, both of them compelled by
the imperative impulse of true lovers.

Out of the hollow presently appeared Nora and McWilliams, very much
oblivious of the outside world. Presently they condescended to
recognize the existence of Bannister and Helen.

“We’re allowin’ to be married in September,” said Mac sheepishly, by
way of explanation.

The two girls flew into each other’s arms. Over Nora’s shoulder Ned
caught his sweetheart’s eye and read there a blushing consent to a
public announcement.

“That’s ce’tainly a strange coincidence, Jim. So are we,” he answered
immediately.

The two friends shook hands.

THE END.