"Yes, Bucky," she answered softly. "We belong, dear."
"Hello, here's the end of the canon. The ranch lies right behind that spur."
"Does it?" Presently she added: "I'm all a-tremble, Bucky. To think I'm going to meet my father and my mother for the first time really, for I don't count that other time when we didn't know. Suppose they shouldn't like me."
"Impossible. Suppose something reasonable," her lover replied.
"But they might not. You think, you silly boy, that because you do everybody must. But I'm so glad I'm clothed and in my right mind again. I couldn't have borne to meet my mother with that boys suit on. Do you think I look nice in this? I had to take what I could find ready-made, you know."
Unless his eyes were blinded by the glamour of love, he saw the sweetest vision of loveliness he had known. Such a surpassing miracle of soft, dainty curves, such surplusage of beauty in bare throat, speaking eye, sweet mouth, and dimpled cheeks! But Bucky was a lover, and perhaps no fair judge, for in that touch of vagueness, of fairy-land, lent by the moonlight, he found the world almost too beautiful to believe. Did she look NICE? How beggarly words were to express feelings, after all.
The vaquero with them rode forward and pointed to the valley below, where the ranch-house huddled in a pellucid sea of moonlight.
"That's the Rocking Chair, sir."
Presently there came a shout from the ranch, and a man galloped toward them. He passed Bucky with a wave of his hand and made directly for Henderson.
"Dave! Dave, old partner," he cried, leaping from his horse and catching the other's hand. "After all these years you've risen from the dead and come back to me." His voice was broken with emotion.
"Come! Let's canter forward to the ranch," said Bucky to Frances and the vaquero, thinking it best to leave the two old comrades together for a while.
Mrs. Mackenzie and Alice met them at the gate. "Did you bring him? Did you bring Dave?" the older lady asked eagerly.
"Yes, we brought him," answered Bucky, helping Frances to dismount.
He led the girl to her mother. "Mrs. Mackenzie, can you stand good news?"
She caught at the gate. "What news? Who is this lady?"
"Her name is Frances."
"Frances what?"
"Frances Mackenzie. She is your daughter, returned, after all these years, to love and be loved."
The mother gave a little throat cry, steadied herself, and fell into the arms of her daughter. "Oh, my baby! My baby! Found at last."
Quietly Bucky slipped away to the stables with the ponies. As quietly Alice disappeared into the house. This was sacred ground, and not even their feet should rest on it just now.
When Bucky returned to the house, he found his sweetheart sitting between her father and mother, each of whom was holding one of her hands. Henderson had retired to clean himself up. Happy tears were coursing down the cheeks of the mother, and Webb found it necessary to blow his nose frequently. He jumped up at sight of the ranger.
"Young man, you're to blame for this. You've found my friend and you've found my daughter. Brought them both back to us on the same day. What do you want? Name it, and it's yours, if I can give it."
Bucky looked at Frances with a smile in his eyes. He knew very well what he wanted, but he was under bonds not to name it yet.
"I'll set you up in the cattle business, sir. I'll buy you sheep, if you prefer. I'll get you an interest in a mine. Put a name to what you want."
"I'm no robber. You paid the expenses of my trip. That's all I want right now."
"It's not all you'll get. Do you think I'm a cheap piker? No, sir. You've got to let me grub-stake you." Mackenzie thumped a clinched fist down on the table.
"All right, seh. You're the doctor. Give me an interest in that map and I'll prospect the mine this summer, if I can locate it."
"Good enough, and I'll finance the proposition. You and Dave can take half-shares in the property. In the meantime, are you open to an engagement?"
"Depends what it is," replied Bucky cautiously.
"My foreman's quit on me. Gone into business for himself. I'm looking for a good man. Will you be my major-domo?"
Bucky's heart leaped. He had been thinking of how he must report almost immediately to HurryUp Millikan, of the rangers. Now, he could resign from that body and stay near his love. Certainly things were coming his way.
"I'd like to try it, seh," he answered. "I may not make good, but I sure would like to have a chance at it."
"Make good! Of course you'll make good. You're the best man in Arizona, sir," cried Webb extravagantly. He wheeled on his new-found daughter. "Don't you think so, Frankie?"
Frances blushed, but answered bravely: "Yes, sir. He makes everything right when he takes hold of it."
"Good. We're not going to let him get away from us after making us so happy, are we, mother? This young man is going to stay right here. We never had but one son, and we are going to treat him as much like one as we can. Eh, mother?"
"If he will consent, Webb." She went up to the ranger and kissed his tanned cheek. "You must pardon an old woman whom you've made very happy."
Again Bucky's laughing blue eyes met the brown ones of his sweetheart.
"Oh, I'll consent, all right, and I reckon, ma'am, it's mighty good of you to treat me so white. I'll sure try to please you."
Webb thumped him on the back. "Now, you're shouting. We want you to be one of us, young man."
Once more that happy, wireless message of eyes followed by O'Connor's assent. "That's what I want myself, seh."
Bucky found a surprise waiting for him at the stables. A heavy hand descended upon his shoulder. He whirled, and looked up into the face of Sheriff Collins.
"You here, Val?" he cried in surprise.
"That's what. Any luck, Bucky?"
They went out and sat down on the big rocks back of the corral. Here each told the other his story, with certain reservations. Collins had just got back from Epitaph, where he had been to get the fragments of paper which told the secret of the buried treasure. He was expecting to set out in the early morning to meet Leroy.
"I'll go with you," said Bucky immediately.
Val shook his head. "No, I'm to go alone. That's the agreement."
"Of course if that's the agreement." Nevertheless, the ranger formed a private intention not to be far from the scene of action.
CHAPTER 21. THE WOLF PACK
"Good evening, gentlemen. Hope I don't intrude on the festivities."
Leroy smiled down ironically on the four flushed, startled faces that looked up at him. Suspicion was alive in every rustle of the men's clothes. It breathed from the lowering countenances. It itched at the fingers longing for the trigger. The unending terror of a bandit's life is that no man trusts his fellow. Hence one betrays another for fear of betrayal, or stabs him in the back to avoid it.
The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the first inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting voice. Now, as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the back of a chair and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they looked the picture of schoolboys caught by their master in a conspiracy. How long had he been there? How much had he heard? Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they were, his confident contempt still cowed the very men who were planning his destruction. A minute before they had been full of loud threats and boastings; now they could only search each other's faces sullenly for a cue.
"Celebrating Chaves' return from manana land, I reckon. That's the proper ticket. I wonder if we couldn't afford to kill another of Collins' fatted calves."
Mr. Hardman, not enjoying the derisive raillery, took a hand in the game. "I expect the boys hadn't better touch the sheriff's calves, now you and him are so thick."
"We're thick, are we?" Leroy's indolent eyes narrowed slightly as they rested on him.
"Ain't you? It sure seemed that way to me when I looked out of that mesquit wash just above Eldorado Springs an
d seen you and him eating together like brothers and laughing to beat the band. You was so clost to him I couldn't draw a bead on him without risking its hitting you."
"Spying, eh?"
"If that's the word you want to use, cap. And you were enjoying yourselves proper."
"Laughing, were we? That must have been when he told me how funny you looked in the 'altogether' shedding false teeth and information about hidden treasure."
"Told you that, did he?" Mr. Hardman incontinently dropped repartee as a weapon too subtle, and fell back on profanity.
"That's right pat to the minute, cap, what you say about the information he leaks," put in Neil. "How about that information? I'll be plumb tickled to death to know you're carrying it in you vest pocket."
"And if I'm not?"
"Then ye are a bigger fool than I had expected sorr, to come back here at all," said the Irishman truculently.
"I begin to think so myself, Mr. Reilly. Why keep faith with a set of swine like you?"
"Are you giving it to us that you haven't got those papers?"
Leroy nodded, watching them with steady, alert eyes. He knew he stood on the edge of a volcano that might explode at any moment.
"What did I tell yez?" Reilly turned savagely to the other disaffected members of the gang. "Didn't I tell yez he was selling us out?"
Somehow Leroy's revolver seemed to jump to his hand without a motion on his part. It lay loosely in his limp fingers, unaimed and undirected.
"SAY THAT AGAIN, PLEASE."
Beneath the velvet of Leroy's voice ran a note more deadly than any threat could have been. It rang a bell for a silence in which the clock of death seemed to tick. But as the seconds fled Reilly's courage oozed away. He dared not accept the invitation to reach for his weapon and try conclusions with this debonair young daredevil. He mumbled a retraction, and flung, with a curse, out of the room.
Leroy slipped the revolver back in his holster and quoted, with a laugh:
"To every coward safety, And afterward his evil hour."
"What's that?" demanded Neil. "I ain't no coward, even if Jay is. I don't knuckle under to any man. You got a right to ante up with some information. I want to know why you ain't got them papers you promised to bring back with you."
"And I, too, senor. I desire to know what it means," added Chaves, his eyes glittering.
"That's the way to chirp, gentlemen. I haven't got them because Forbes blundered on us, and I had to take a pasear awful sudden. But I made an appointment to meet Collins to-morrow."
"And you think he'll keep it?" scoffed Neil.
"I know he will."
"You seem to know a heap about him," was the significant retort.
"Take care, York."
"I'm not Hardman, cap. I say what I think.
"And you think?" suggested Leroy gently.
"I don't know what to think yet. You're either a fool or a traitor. I ain't quite made up my mind. When I find out you'll ce'tainly hear from me straight. Come on, boys." And Neil vanished through the door.
An hour later there came a knock at Leroy's door. Neil answered his permission to enter, followed by the other trio of flushed beauties. To the outlaw chief it was at once apparent with what Dutch courage they had been fortifying themselves to some resolve. It was characteristic of him, though he knew on how precarious a thread his life was hanging, that disgust at the foul breaths with which they were polluting the atmosphere was his first dominant emotion.
"I wish, Lieutenant Chaves, next time you emigrate you'd bring another brand of poison out to the boys. I can't go this stuff. Just remember that, will you?"
The outlaw chief's hard eye ran over the rebels and read them like a primer They had come to depose him certainly, to kill him perhaps. Though this last he doubted. It wouldn't be like Neil to plan his murder, and it wouldn't be like the others to give him warning and meet him in the open. Warily he stood behind the table, watching their awkward embarrassment with easy assurance. Carefully he placed face downward on the table the Villon he had been reading, but he did it without lifting his eyes from them.
"You have business with me, I presume."
"That's what we have," cried Reilly valiantly, from the rear.
"Then suppose we come to it and get the room aired as soon as possible," Leroy said tartly.
"You're such a slap-up dude you'd ought to be a hotel clerk, cap. You're sure wasted out here. So we boys got together and held a little election. Consequence is, we—fact is, we—"
Neil stuck, but Reilly came to his rescue.
"We elected York captain of this outfit."
"To fill the vacancy created by my resignation. Poor York! You're the sacrifice, are you? On the whole, I think you fellows have made a wise choice. York's game, and he won't squeal on you, which is more than I could say of Reilly, or the play actor, or the gentlemen from Chihuahua. But you want to watch out for a knife in the dark, York. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' you know."
"We didn't come here to listen to a speech, cap, but to notify you we was dissatisfied, and wouldn't have you run the outfit any longer," explained Neil.
"In that event, having heard the report of the committee, if there's no further new business, I declare this meeting adjourned sine die. Kindly remove the perfume tubs, Captain Neil, at your earliest convenience."
The quartette retreated ignominiously. They had come prepared to gloat over Leroy's discomfiture, and he had mocked them with that insolent ease of his that set their teeth in helpless rage.
But the deposed chief knew they had not struck their last blow. Throughout the night he could hear the low-voiced murmur of their plottings, and he knew that if the liquor held out long enough there would be sudden death at Hidden Valley before twenty-four hours were up. He looked carefully to his rifle and his revolvers, testing several shells to make sure they had not been tampered with in his absence. After he had made all necessary preparations, he drew the blinds of his window and moved his easy-chair from its customary place beside the fire. Also he was careful not to sit where an shadow would betray his position. Then back he went to his Villon, a revolver lying on the table within reach.
But the night passed without mishap, and with morning he ventured forth to his meeting with the sheriff. He might have slipped out from the back door of his cabin and gained the canyon, by circling unobserved, up the draw and over the hogback, but he would not show by these precautions any fear of the cutthroats with whom he had to deal. As was his scrupulous custom, he shaved and took his morning bath before appearing outdoors. In all Arizona no trimmer, more graceful figure of jaunty recklessness could be seen than this one stepping lightly forth to knock at the bunk-house door behind which he suspected were at least two men determined on his death by treachery.
Neil came to the door in answer to his knock and within he could see the villainous faces at bloodshot eyes of two of the others peering at him.
"Good mo'ning, Captain Neil. I'm on my way to keep that appointment I mentioned last night I'd ce'tainly be glad to have you go along. Nothing like being on the spot to prevent double-crossing."
"I'm with you in the fling of a cow's tail. Come on, boys."
"I think not. You and I will go alone."
"Just as you say. Reilly, I guess you better saddle Two-step and the Lazy B roan."
"I ain't saddling ponies for Mr. Leroy," returned Reilly, with thick defiance.
Neil was across the room in two strides. "When I tell you to do a thing, jump! Get a move on and saddle those broncs."
"I don't know as—"
"Vamos!"
Reilly sullenly slouched out.
"I see you made them jump," commented the former captain audibly, seating himself comfortably on a rock. "It's the only way you'll get along with them. See that they come to time or pump lead into them. You'll find there's no middle way."
Neil and Leroy had hardly passed beyond the rock-slide before the others, suspicion awake in their sodden brains, dod
ged after them on foot. For three miles they followed the broncos as the latter picked their way up the steep trail that led to the Dalriada Mine.
"If Mr. Collins is here, he's lying almighty low," exclaimed Neil, as he swung from his pony at the foot of the bluff from the brow of which the gray dump of the mine straggled down like a Titan's beard.
"Right you are, Mr. Neil."
York whirled, revolver in hand, but the man who had risen from behind the big boulder beside the trail was resting both hands on the rock before him.
"You're alone, are you?" demanded York.
"I am."
Neil's revolver slid back into its holster. "Mornin', Val. What's new down at Tucson?" he said amiably.
"I understood I was to meet you alone, Mr. Leroy," said the sheriff quickly, his blue-gray eyes on the former chief.
"That was the agreement, Mr. Collins, but it seems the boys are on the anxious seat about these little socials of ours. They've embraced the notion that I'm selling them. I hated to have them harassed with doubts, so I invited the new majordomo of the ranch to come with me. Of cou'se, if you object—"
"I don't object in the least, but I want him to understand the agreement. I've got a posse waiting at Eldorado Springs, and as soon as I get back there we take the trail after you. Bucky O'Connor is at the head of the posse."
York grinned. "We'll be in Sonora then, Val. Think I'm going to wait and let you shoot off my other fingers?"
Collins fished from his vest pocket the papers he had taken from Scott hat and from Webster. "I think I'll be jogging along back to the springs. I reckon these are what you want."
Leroy took them from him and handed them to Neil. "Don't let us detain you any longer, Mr. Collins. I know you're awful busy these days."
The sheriff nodded a good day, cut down the hill on the slant, and disappeared in a mesquit thicket, from the other side of which he presently emerged astride a bay horse.
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