by Unknown
Phyllis stood straight as an arrow, but white to the lips. "What are you going to do to him?" she asked.
"How would a good chapping do, to start with? That is always good for an unlicked cub."
"Don't!" she implored.
"But, my dear, why not--since it's for his good?"
Passion unleashed leaped from her. "You coward!"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm right desolated to have your bad opinion. But you say it almost as if you did hate me. That's a compliment, you know. You didn't hate the coyote, you mentioned."
Her eyes flamed. "Hate you! If wishes could kill, you would be a thousand times dead!"
"You disappoint me, my dear. I expected more than wishes from you. There's a loaded revolver in that table drawer. It's yours, any time you want it," he derided.
"Don't tempt me!" she cried wildly. "If you lay a hand on Phil, I'll use it--I surely will."
His eyes shone with delight. "I wonder. By Jove, I've a mind to flog the colt and see. I'll do it."
The passion sank in her as suddenly as it had risen. "No--you mustn't! You don't know him--or us. We are from the South."
"That settles it. I will," he exulted. "You have called me a coward. Would a coward do this, and defy your whole crew to its revenge?"
"Would a brave man break the pride of a high-spirited boy for such a mean motive?" she countered.
"His pride will have to look out for itself. He took his chance of it when he tried to assault me. What he'll get is only what's coming to him."
"Please don't! I'll--I'll be different to you. Take it out on me," she begged.
He laughed harshly. "Do you suppose I'm such a fool as not to know that the way to take it out on you is to take it out of him?"
She had come nearer, a step at a time. Now she threw her hand out in a gesture of abandon.
"Be generous! Don't punish me that way. Something dreadful will come of it."
She broke down and struggled with her tears. He watched her for a moment without speaking.
"Good enough. I'll be generous and let you pay his debt for him, if you want to do it."
Her eyes were glad with the swift joy that leaped into them.
"That is good of you! And how shall I pay?" she cried.
"With a kiss."
She drew back as if he had struck her, all the sparkling eagerness driven from her face.
"Oh!" she moaned.
"Just one kiss--I don't ask anything more. Give me that, and I'll turn him loose. Honor bright."
He held her startled gaze as a snake holds that of a fascinated bird.
"Choose," he told her, in his masterful way.
Her imagination conceived a vision of her young brother being tortured by this man. She had not the least doubt that he would do what he said, and probably would think the boy got only what he deserved.
"Take it," she told him, and waited.
Perhaps he might have spared her had it not been for the look of deep contempt that bit into his vanity.
He kissed her full on the lips.
Instantly she woke to life, struck him on the cheek with her little, brown fist, and, with a sob of woe, turned and ran from the room.
Weaver cursed himself in a fury of anger. He felt himself to be a hound because of the thing he had done, and he hated the instinct in him that drove him to master her. He had insulted and trampled on her. Yet he knew in his heart that he would have killed another man for doing it.
[Illustration: SHE DREW BACK AS IF HE HAD STRUCK HER, ALL THE SPARKLING EAGERNESS DRIVEN FROM HER FACE. _Page 116_]
CHAPTER IX
PUNISHMENT
The cattleman strode into the bunk house, where young Sanderson sat sulkily on a bed under the persuasion of Curly's rifle.
"Have this boy's horse saddled and brought around, Curly."
"You're the doctor," answered the cowboy promptly, and forthwith vanished outdoors to obey instructions.
Phil looked sullenly at his captor, and waited for him to begin. One of his hands was under the pillow of the cot upon which he sat. His fingers circled the butt of a revolver he had found there, where one of the riders had chanced to leave it that morning.
"I'm going to turn you loose to go home to the hills," Weaver told him.
"And my sister?"
"She stays here."
"Then so do I."
"That's up to you. There's no law against camping on the plains--that is, out of range of the Twin Star."
"What are you going to do with her?" the boy demanded ominously.
"If you ask no questions, I'll tell you no lies."
"You'll let her go home with me--that's what you'll do," cried Phil.
"I reckon not. You've got a license to feel lucky you're going yourself."
"By God, I say you shall!"
The cattleman's eyes took on their stony, snake-like look. His hand did not move by so much as an inch toward the scabbarded revolver at his side.
"All right. Come a-shooting. I see you've got a gun under that pillow."
The weapon leaped into sight. "You're right I have! I'll drill you full of holes as soon as wink."
Weaver laughed contemptuously. "Begin pumping, son."
"I'm going to take my sister home with me. You'll give orders to your men to that effect."
"Guess again."
"I tell you I'll shoot your hide full of holes if you don't!" cried the excited boy.
"Oh, no, you won't."
Buck Weaver was flirting with death, and he knew it. The very breath of it fanned his cheek. During that moment he lived gloriously; for he was a man who revelled in his sensations. He laughed into the very muzzle of the six-shooter that covered him.
"Quit your play acting, boy," he jeered.
"I give you one more chance before I blow out your brains."
The cattleman put his unwounded hand into his trousers pocket and lounged forward, thrusting his smiling face against the cold rim of the blue barrel.
"I reckon you'll scatter proper what few brains I've got."
With a curse, the boy flung the weapon down on the bed. He could not possibly kill a man so willing as this. To draw guns with him, and chance the issue, would have suited young Sanderson exactly. But this way would be no less than murder.
"You devil!" he cried, with a boyish sob.
Weaver picked up the revolver, and examined it. "Mighty careless of Ned to leave it lying around this way," he commented absently, as if unaware of the other's rage. "You never can tell when a gun is going to get into the wrong hands."
"What are you letting me go for? You've got a reason. What is it?" Phil demanded.
Weaver looked at him through narrowed, daredevil eyes. "The ransom price has been paid," he explained.
"Paid! Who paid it?"
"Miss Phyllis Sanderson."
"Phyllis?" repeated the boy incredulously. "But she had no money."
"Did I say she paid it in money?"
"What do you mean?"
"She asked me to set you free. I named my price, and she agreed."
"What was your price?" the boy asked hoarsely.
"A kiss."
At that, Phil struck him full in the sardonic, mocking face. Blood crimsoned the lips that had been crushed against the strong, white teeth.
"Again," said Weaver.
The brown fist went back and shot forward like a piston rod. This time it left an ugly gash over the cheek bone.
"Much obliged. Once more."
The young man balanced himself carefully, and struck hard and true between the eyes.
A third, a fourth, and a fifth time Phil lashed out at the disfigured, grinning face.
"Let's make it an even half dozen," the cattleman suggested.
But Phil had had enough of it. This was too much like butchery. His passion had spent itself. He struck, but with no force behind the blow.
Weaver went to the washstand, dashed some water on his face, and pressed a towel against the raw wound
s. He flung the red-soaked towel aside just as Curly cantered up on Sanderson's horse. The cow-puncher stared at his boss in amazement, opened his lips to speak, and thought better of it. He looked at Phil, whose knuckles were badly barked and bleeding.
Curly had seen his master marked up before, but on such occasions the other man was a sight for the gods to wonder at. Now Weaver was the spectacle, and the other was untouched. In view of Buck's reputation as a rough-and-tumble fighter, this seemed no less than a miracle. Curly departed with the wonder unexplained, for Weaver dismissed him with a nod.
"Like to see your sister before you go?" the cattleman asked curtly of Phil, over his shoulder.
"Yes."
Buck led the way across the plaza to the house, and clapped his hands in the hall. Josephine answered the summons.
"Tell Miss Sanderson that her brother would like to see her."
The woman vanished up the stairway, and the two men waited in silence. Presently Phyllis stood in the door. Her eyes ignored Weaver, and were only for her brother. Her first glance told her that all was well so far as he was concerned, even though it also let her know that the boy was anxious.
"Phil!" she breathed.
"So you bought my freedom for me, did you?" the boy said, his voice trembling.
Phyllis answered in the clearest of low voices. "Yes. Did he tell you?"
"You oughtn't to have done it. I'll have no such bargains made. Understand that!" cried her brother, emotion in his high tones.
"I couldn't help it, Phil. I did it for the best. You don't know."
"I know that you're to keep out of this. I'll fight my own battles. In our family the girls don't sell kisses. Remember that."
Phyl hung her head. She felt herself disgraced, but she knew that she would do it again in like circumstances.
Weaver broke in roughly: "You young fool! She's worth a dozen of you, who haven't sense enough to sabe her kind."
The girl glanced at him involuntarily. At sight of his swollen and beaten face, she started. Her gaze clung to him, eyes wild and fluttering with apprehension.
"I've been taking a massage treatment," he explained.
Phyllis looked at her brother, then back at the ranchman. The thing was beyond comprehension. Ten minutes ago, this ferocious Hercules had left her, sound and unscratched. Now he returned with a face beaten and almost beyond recognition from bloodstains.
"What--what is it?" The appeal was to her brother.
"He let me beat him," Phil explained.
"Let you beat him! Why?"
"I don't know."
What the boy said was true, yet it was something less than the truth. He was dimly aware that this man knew himself to have violated the code, and that he had submitted to punishment because of the violation.
"Tell me," Phyllis commanded.
Phil told her in three sentences. She looked at Weaver with eyes that saw him in a new light. He still sneered, but behind the mask she got for the first time a glimpse of another man. Only dimly she divined him; but what she visioned was half devil and half hero, capable of things great as well as of deeds despicable.
"I'm not going to leave you here in this house," young Sanderson told her. "I'll not go. If you stay, I stay."
She shook her head. "No, Phil--you must go. I'm all right here--as safe as I would be at home. You know, he has a right to send me to prison if he wants to. I suppose he is holding me as a hostage against our friends in the hills."
The boy accepted her decree under protest. He did not know what else to do. Decision comes only with age, and he could hit on no policy that would answer. Reluctantly he gave way.
"If you so much as touch her, you'll die for it," he gulped at Weaver, in a sudden boyish passion. "We'll shoot you down like a dog."
"Or a coyote," suggested Buck, with a swift glance at Phyllis. "It seems to be a family habit. I'm much obliged to you."
Phyl was in her brother's arms, frankly in tears.
It was all very well to tell him to go; it was quite another thing to let him go without a good cry at losing him.
"Just say the word, and I'll see it out with you, sis," he told her.
"No, no! I want you to go. I wouldn't have you stay. Tell the boys it's all right, and don't let them do anything rash."
Sanderson clenched his teeth, and looked at Weaver. "Oh, they'll do nothing rash. Now they know you're here, they won't do a thing but sit down and be happy, I expect."
The twins whispered together for a minute, then the boy kissed her, put her from him suddenly, and strode away. From the door he called back two words at the cattleman.
"Don't forget."
With that, he was gone. Yet a moment, and they heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs.
"Why did you tell him?" Phyllis asked. "It will only anger them. Now they will seek vengeance on you."
The man shrugged his shoulders. "Search me. Perhaps I wanted to prove to myself that a man may be a mean bully, and not all coyote. Perhaps I wanted to get under his hide. Who knows?"
She knew, in part. He had treated her abominably, and wanted blindly to pay for it in the first way that came to his mind. Half savage as he sometimes was, that way had been to stand up to personal punishment, to invite retaliation from his enemies.
"You must have your face looked to. Shall I call Josephine?"
"No," he answered harshly.
"I think I will. We can help it, I'm sure."
That "we" saved the day. He let her call the Mexican woman, and order warm water, towels, dressings, and adhesive plaster. It seemed to him more than a fancy that there was healing in the cool, soft fingers which washed his face and adjusted the bandages. His eyes, usually so hard, held now the dumb hunger one sees in those of a faithful dog. They searched hers for something which he knew he would never find in them.
CHAPTER X
INTO THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY
A man lay on the top of Flat Rock, stretched at supple ease. By his side was a carbine; in his hand a pair of field glasses. These last had been trained upon Twin Star Ranch for some time, but were now focused upon a pair of approaching riders. At the edge of the young willow grove the two dismounted and came forward leisurely.
"Looks like the mountains are coming to Mahomet this trip," the watcher told himself.
One figure was that of a girl--a brown, light-stepping nymph, upon whom the checkered sunlight filtered through the leaves. The other was a finely built man, strong as an ox, but with the sap of youth still in his blood and the spring of it in his step, in spite of his nearly twoscore years. He stopped at the foot of Flat Rock, and turned to his companion.
"I've been wondering why you went riding with me yesterday and again to-day, Miss Phyllis. I reckon I've hit on the reason."
"I like to ride."
"Yes, but I expect you don't like to ride with me so awful much."
"Yet you see I do," answered the girl with her swift, shy smile.
"And the reason is that you know I would be riding, anyway. You don't want any of your people from the hills to use me as a mark. With you along, they couldn't do it."
"My people don't shoot from ambush," she told him hotly. It was easy to send her gallant spirit out in quick defense of her kindred.
He looked at his arm, still resting in a sling, and smiled significantly.
She colored. "That was an impulse," she told him.
"And you're guarding me from any more family impulses like it." He grinned. "Not that it flatters me so much, either. I've got a notion tucked in the back of my head that you're watching me like a hen does her one chick, for their sake and not for mine. Right guess, I'll bet a dollar. How about it, Miss Sanderson?"
"Yes," she admitted. "At least, most for them."
"You'd like to call the chase off for the sake of the hunters, and not for the sake of the coyote."
"I wish you wouldn't throw that word up to me. I oughtn't to have said that. Please!"
"All right--I won't. It isn't your
saying it, but thinking it, that hurts."