by Unknown
"Where did you say you wrangled Mary's little lamb?"
"In the Catalinas."
"Whose outfit?"
Question and answer were tossed back and forth lightly, but both were watching warily.
"Outfit?" he repeated, puzzled.
"Yes. Who were you working for?"
"Don't remember his name. He was a Mexican."
"Must have been one of the camps of Antonio Valdez."
"Yes, that's it. That's the name."
"Only he runs his sheep in the Galiuros," she demurred.
"Is it the Galiuros? Those Spanish names! I can't keep them apart in my mind."
She laughed with hard, young cruelty. "It is hard to remember what you never heard, isn't it?"
The man was on the rack. Tiny beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. But he got a lip smile into working order.
"Just what do you mean, Miss Lee?"
"You had better get your story more pat. I've punched a dozen holes in it already. First you tell me you are from the East, and even while you were telling me I knew you were a Southerner from the drawl. No man ever got lost from Mammoth. You gave a false name. You said you had been herding sheep, but you didn't know what an outfit is. You wobbled between the Galiuros and the Catalinas."
"I'm not a native. I told you I couldn't remember Spanish names."
"It wasn't necessary to tell me," she countered quickly. "A man that can't recall even the name of his boss!"
"I'm not in the witness box, Miss Lee," he told her stiffly.
"Not yet, but you're liable to be soon, I reckon."
"In a cattle rustling case, I suppose you mean."
"No, I don't." She went on with her indictment of his story, though his thrust had brought the color to her cheek. "When I offered you Antonio Valdez for an employer you jumped at him. If you want to know, he happens to be our herder. He doesn't own a sheep and never will."
"You know all about it," he said with obvious sarcasm.
"I know you're not who you say you are."
"Perhaps you know who I am then."
"I don't know or care. It's none of my business. But others may think it is theirs. You can't be so reckless with the truth without folks having notions. If I were you I'd get a story that will hang together."
"You're such a good detective. Maybe I could get you to invent one for me," he suggested maliciously.
Her indignation flashed. "I'm no such thing. But I'm not quite a fool. A babe in arms wouldn't swallow that fairy tale."
Awkward as her knowledge might prove, he could not help admiring the resource and shrewdness of the girl. She had virtually served notice that if she had a secret that needed keeping so had he.
They looked down over a desert green with bajadas, prickly pears, and mesquit. To the right, close to a spur of the hills, were the dwarfed houses of a ranch. The fans of a windmill caught the sun and flashed it back to the travelers.
"The Bar Double G. My father owns it," Miss Lee explained.
"Oh! Your father owns it." He reflected a moment while he studied her. "Let's understand each other, Miss Lee. I'm not what I claim to be, you say. We'll put it that you have guessed right. What do you intend to do about it? I'm willing to be made welcome at the Bar Double G, but I don't want to be too welcome."
"I'm not going to do anything."
"So long as I remember not to remember what I've seen."
The blood burned in her cheeks beneath their Arizona tan. She did not look at him. "If you like to put it that way."
He counted it to her credit that she was ashamed of the bargain in every honest fiber of her.
"No matter what they say I've done. You'll keep faith?"
"I don't care what you've done," she flung back bitterly. "It's none of my affair. I told you that before. Men come out here for all sorts of reasons. We don't ask for a bill of particulars."
"Then I'll be right glad to go down to the Bar Double G with you, and say thanks for the chance."
He had dismounted when they first reached the pass. Now she swung to the saddle and he climbed behind her. They reached presently one of the nomadic trails of the cattle country which wander leisurely around hills and over gulches along the line of least resistance. This brought them to a main traveled road leading to the ranch.
They rode in silence until the pasture fence was passed.
"What am I to tell them your name is?" she asked stiffly.
He took his time to answer. "Tom Morse is a good name, don't you think? How would T. L. Morse do?"
She offered no comment, but sat in front of him, unresponsive as the sphinx. The rigor of her flat back told him that, though she might have to keep his shameful secret for the sake of her own, he could not presume upon it the least in the world.
Melissy turned the horse over to a little Mexican boy and they were just mounting the steps of the porch when a young man cantered up to the house. Lean and muscular and sunbaked, he looked out of cool, gray eyes upon a man's world that had often put him through the acid test. The plain, cactus-torn chaps, flannel shirt open at the sinewy throat, dusty, wide-brimmed hat, revolver peeping from its leather pocket on the thigh: every detail contributed to the impression of efficiency he created. Even the one touch of swagger about him, the blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, lent color to his virile competency.
He dragged his horse to a standstill and leaped off at the same instant. "Evenin', 'Lissie."
She was busy lacing her shoe and did not look up. He guessed that he was being snubbed and into his eyes came a gleam of fun. A day later than he had promised, Jack Flatray was of opinion that he was being punished for tardiness.
Casually he explained. "Couldn't make it any sooner. Burke had a hurry-up job that took us into the hills. Fellow by the name of Bellamy, wanted for murder at Nemo, Arkansas, had been tracked to Mesa. A message came over the wires to arrest him. When Burke sent me to his room he had lit out, taken a swift hike into the hills. Must a-had some warning, for he didn't even wait for a horse."
The dilated eyes of the girl went past the deputy to the man she had rescued. He was leaning against one of the porch posts, tense and rigid, on his face the look of the hunted brought to bay.
"And did you find him?" she asked mechanically of the deputy.
"We found him. He had been trampled to death by a cattle stampede."
Her mind groped blindly for an explanation. Her woman's instinct told her that the man panting on the porch within six feet of the officer was the criminal wanted. There must be a mistake somewhere.
"Did you identify him?"
"I guess there is no doubt about it. His papers and belongings all showed he was our man."
"Oh!" The excitement of his news had for a moment thawed her, but a dignified aloofness showed again in her manner. "If you want to see father you'll find him in the corral, Mr. Flatray."
"Well, I don't know as I'm looking for him awful hard," the blue kerchiefed youth smiled genially. "Anyway, I can wait a few minutes if I have to."
"Yes." She turned away indifferently. "I'll show you your room, Mr. Morse."
The deputy watched them disappear into the house with astonishment printed on his face. He had ridden twenty-seven miles to see Melissy Lee and he had not quite expected this sort of a greeting.
"If that don't beat the Dutch. Looks like I'll do my callin' on the old man after all, maybe," he murmured with a grin.
CHAPTER III
AN ACCUSATION
The rescued man ate, drank, and from sheer fatigue fell asleep within five minutes of the time he was shown his bedroom.
Since he was not of the easily discouraged kind, the deputy stayed to supper on invitation of Lee. He sat opposite the daughter of his host, and that young woman treated him with the most frigid politeness. The owner of the Bar Double G was quite unaware of any change of temperature. Jack and his little girl had always been the best of friends. So now he discoursed on the price of cows, the good
rains, the outrages of the rustlers, and kindred topics without suspecting that the attention of the young man was on more personal matters.
Though born in Arizona, Melissy was of the South. Due westward rolls the tide of settlement, and Beauchamp Lee had migrated from Tennessee after the war, following the line of least resistance to the sunburned territory. Later he had married a woman a good deal younger than himself. She had borne him two children, the elder of whom was now a young man. Melissy was the younger, and while she was still a babe in arms the mother had died of typhoid and left her baby girl to grow up as best she might in a land where women were few and far. This tiny pledge of her mother's love Champ Lee had treasured as a gift from Heaven. He had tended her and nursed her through the ailments of childhood with a devotion the most pure of his reckless life. Given to heady gusts of passion, there had never been a moment when his voice had been other than gentle and tender to her.
Inevitably Melissy had become the product of her inheritance and her environment. If she was the heiress of Beauchamp Lee's courage and generosity, his quick indignation against wrong and injustice, so, too, she was of his passionate lawlessness.
After supper Melissy disappeared. She wanted very much to be alone and have a good cry. Wherefore she slipped out of the back door and ran up the Lone Tree trail in the darkness. Jack thought he saw a white skirt fly a traitorous signal, and at leisure he pursued.
But Melissy was not aware of that. She reached Lone Tree rock and slipped down from boulder to boulder until she came to the pine which gave the place its name. For hours she had been forced to repress her emotions, to make necessary small talk, to arrange for breakfast and other household details. Now she was alone, and the floods of her bitterness were unloosed. She broke down and wept passionately, for she was facing her first great disillusionment. She had lost a friend, one in whom she had put great faith.
The first gust of the storm was past when Melissy heard a step on the rocks above. She knew intuitively that Jack Flatray had come in search of her, and he was the last man on earth she wanted to meet just now.
"'Lissie!" she heard him call softly; and again, "'Lissie!"
Noiselessly she got to her feet, waiting to see what he would do. She knew he must be standing on the edge of the great rock, so directly above her that if he had kicked a pebble it would have landed beside her. Presently he began to clamber down.
She tiptoed along the ledge and slipped into the trough at the farther end that led to the top. It was a climb she had taken several times, but never in the dark. The ascent was almost perpendicular, and it had to be made by clinging to projecting rocks and vegetation. Moreover, if she were to escape undetected it had to be done in silence.
She was a daughter of the hills, as surefooted as a mountain goat. Handily she went up, making the most of the footholds that offered. In spite of the best she could do the rustling of bushes betrayed her.
Jack came to the foot of the trough and looked up.
"So you're there, are you?" he asked.
Her foot loosened a stone and sent it rolling down.
"If I were you I wouldn't try that at night, 'Liss," he advised.
She made sure of the steadiness of her voice before she answered. "You don't need to try it."
"I said if I were you, girl."
"But you are not. Don't let me detain you here, Mr. Flatray," she told him in a manner of icy precision.
The deputy began the climb too. "What's the use of being so hostile, little girl?" he drawled. "Me, I came as soon as I could, burning the wind, too."
She set her teeth, determined to reach the top in time to get away before he could join her. In her eagerness she took a chance that proved her undoing. A rock gave beneath her foot and clattered down. Clinging by one hand and foot, she felt her body swing around. From her throat a little cry leaped. She knew herself slipping.
"Jack!"
In time, and just in time, he reached her, braced himself, and gave her his knee for a foot rest.
"All right?" he asked, and "All right!" she answered promptly.
"We'll go back," he told her.
She made no protest. Indeed, she displayed a caution in lowering herself that surprised him. Every foothold she tested carefully with her weight. Once she asked him to place her shoe in the crevice for her. He had never seen her take so much time in making sure or be so fussy about her personal safety.
Safely on the ledge again, she attempted a second time to dismiss him. "Thank you, Mr. Flatray. I won't take any more of your time."
He looked at her steadily before he spoke. "You're mighty high-heeled, 'Lissie. You know my name ain't Mr. Flatray to you. What's it all about? I've told you twice I couldn't get here any sooner."
She flamed out at him in an upblaze of feminine ferocity. "And I tell you, that I don't care if you had never come. I don't want to see you or have anything to do with you."
"Why not?" He asked it quietly, though he began to know that her charge against him was a serious one.
"Because I know what you are now, because you have made us believe in you while all the time you were living a lie."
"Meaning what?"
"I was gathering poppies on the other side of Antelope Pass this afternoon."
"What has that got to do with me being a liar and a scoundrel," he wanted to know.
"Oh, you pretend," she scoffed. "But you know as well as I do."
"I'm afraid I don't. Let's have the indictment."
"If everybody in Papago County had told me I wouldn't have believed it," she cried. "I had to see it with my own eyes before I could have been convinced."
"Yes, well what is it you saw with your eyes?"
"You needn't keep it up. I tell you I saw it all from the time you fired the shot."
He laughed easily, but without mirth. "Kept tab on me, did you?"
She wheeled from him, gave a catch of her breath, and caught at the rock wall to save herself from falling.
He spoke sharply. "You hurt yourself in the trough."
"I sprained my ankle a little, but it doesn't matter."
He understood now why she had made so slow a descent and he suspected that the wrench was more than she admitted. The moon had come out from under a cloud and showed him a pale, tear-stained face, with a row of even, little teeth set firm against the lower lip. She was in pain and her pride was keeping it from him.
"Let me look at your ankle."
"No."
"I say yes. You've hurt it seriously."
"That is my business, I think," she told him with cold finality.
"I'm going to make it mine. Think I don't know you, proud as Lucifer when you get set. You'll lame yourself for life if you're not careful."
"I don't care to discuss it."
"Fiddlesticks! If you've got anything against me we'll hear what it is afterward. Right now we'll give first aid to the injured. Sit down here."
She had not meant to give way, but she did. Perhaps it was because of the faintness that stole over her, or because the pain was sharper than she could well endure. She found herself seated on the rock shelf, letting him cut the lace out of her shoe and slip it off. Ever so gently he worked, but he could tell by the catches of her breath that it was not pleasant to endure. From his neck he untied the silk kerchief and wrapped it tightly around the ankle.
"That will have to do till I get you home."
"I'll not trouble you, sir. If you'll stop and tell my father that is all I'll ask."
"Different here," he retorted cheerfully. "Just so as to avoid any argument, I'll announce right now that Jack Flatray is going to see you home. It's his say-so."
She rose. None knew better than she that he was a dominating man when he chose to be. She herself carried in her slim body a spirit capable of passion and of obstinacy, but to-night she had not the will to force the fighting.
Setting her teeth, she took a step or two forward, her hand against the rock wall to help bear the weight. With narrow
ed eyes, he watched her closely, noting the catches of pain that shot through her breathing. Half way up the boulder bed he interposed brusquely.
"This is plumb foolishness, girl. You've got no business putting your weight on that foot, and you're not going to do it."
He slipped his arm around her waist in such a way as to support her all he could. With a quick turn of the body she tried to escape.
"No use. I'm going through with this, 'Lissie. Someone has been lying to you about me, and just now you hate the ground I walk on. Good enough. That's got nothing to do with this. You're a woman that needs help, and any old time J. F. meets up with such a one he's on the job. You don't owe me 'Thank you,' but you've got to stand for me till you reach the house."