Mavericks

by Raine, William MacLeod

  She took the kerchief from her neck, and tied it about the hurt, then pulled down the sleeve and buttoned it over the brown forearm. All this she did quite impersonally, her face free of the least sympathy.

  "Thank you, ma'am. You're a right friendly enemy."

  "It isn't a matter of friendship at all. One couldn't leave a wounded jack rabbit in pain," she retorted coldly, taking up the trail again.

  There was room for two abreast, and he chose to ride beside her. "So you tied me up because it was your Christian duty," he soliloquized aloud. "Just the same as if I had been a mangy coyote that was suffering."

  "Exactly."

  He let his cool eyes rest on her with a hint of amusement. "And what were you thinking of doing with me now, ma'am?"

  "I'm going to take you up to Jim Yeager's mine. He is doing his assessment work now, and he'll look out for you for a day or two."

  "Look out for me in a locked room?" he wanted to know casually.

  "I didn't say so. It isn't my business to arrest criminals," she told him icily.

  His eyes gleamed mischief. "Is it your business to help them to escape?"

  "I'm not helping you to escape. I'll not risk your dying in the hills alone. That is all."

  "Jim Yeager is your friend?"

  "Yes."

  "And you guarantee he'll keep his mouth padlocked and not betray me?"

  "He'll do as he pleases about that," she said indifferently.

  "Then I don't reckon I'll trouble his hospitality. Good-by, Miss Sanderson. I've enjoyed meeting you very much."

  He checked his pony and bowed.

  "Where are you going?" the girl exclaimed.

  "Up Bear Creek."

  "It's twenty miles. You can't do it."

  "Sure I can. Thanks for your kindness, Miss Sanderson. I'll return the handkerchief some day," and with a touch swung round his pony.

  "You're not going. I won't have it, and you wounded!"

  He turned in the saddle, smiling at her with jaunty insouciance.

  "I'll answer for Jim. He won't betray you," she promised, subduing her pride.

  "Thanks. I'll take your word for it, but I won't trouble your friend. I've had all the Christian charity that's good for me this mo'ning," he drawled.

  At that she flamed out passionately: "Do you want me to tell you that I like you, knowing what you are? Do you want me to pretend that I feel friendly when I hate you?"

  "Do you want me to be under obligations to folks that hate me?" he came back with his easy smile.

  "You have lost a lot of blood. Your arm is still bleeding. You know I can't let you go alone."

  "You're ce'tainly aching for a chance to be a Good Samaritan, Miss Sanderson."

  With this he left her. But he had not gone a hundred yards before he heard her pony cantering after his. One glance told him she was furious, both at him and at herself.

  "Did you come after your handkerchief, ma'am? I'm not through with it yet," he said innocently.

  "I'm going with you. I'm not going to leave you till we meet some one that will take charge of you," she choked.

  "It isn't necessary. I'm much obliged, ma'am, but you're overestimating the effect of this pill your friend injected into me."

  "Still, I'm going. I won't have your death on my hands," she told him defiantly.

  "Sho! I ain't aimin' to pass over the divide on account of a scratch like this. There's no danger but what I can look out for myself."

  She waited in silence for him to start, looking straight ahead of her.

  He tried in vain to argue her out of it. She had nothing to say, and he saw she was obstinately determined to carry her point.

  Finally, with a little chuckle at her stubbornness, he gave in and turned round.

  "All right. Yeager's it is. We're acting like a pair of kids, seems to me." This last with a propitiatory little smile toward her which she disdained to answer.

  Yeager saw them from afar, and recognized the girl.

  "Hello, Phyllis!" he shouted down. "With you in a minute."

  The girl slipped to the ground, and climbed the steep trail to meet him. Her crisp "Wait here," flung over her shoulder with the slightest turn of the head, kept Keller in the saddle.

  Halfway up she and the man met. The one waiting below could not hear what they said, but he could tell she was explaining the situation to Yeager. The latter nodded from time to time, protested, was vehemently overruled, and seemed to leave the matter with her. Together they retraced their way. Young Yeager, in flannel shirt and half-leg miner's boots, was a splendid specimen of bronzed Arizona. His level gaze judged the man on horseback, approved him, and met him eye to eye.

  "Better light, Mr. Keller. If you come in we'll have a look at your arm. An accident like that is a mighty awkward thing to happen to a man on the trail. It's right fortunate Miss Sanderson found you so soon after it happened."

  The nester knew a surge of triumph in his blood, but it did not show in the impassive face which he turned upon his host.

  "It was right fortunate for me," he said, swinging from the saddle. Incidentally he was wondering what story had been narrated to Yeager, but he took a chance without hesitation. "A fellow oughtn't to be so careless when he's got a gun in his hand."

  "You're right, seh. In this country of heavy underbrush a man's gun is liable to go off and hit somebody any time if he ain't careful. You're in big luck you didn't shoot yourself up a heap worse."

  Yeager led the way to his cabin, and offered Phyllis the single chair he boasted, and the nester a seat on the bed. Sitting beside him, he examined the wound and washed it.

  "Comes to being an invalid I'm a false alarm," Keller said apologetically. "I didn't want to come, but Miss Sanderson would bring me."

  "She was dead right, too. Time you had ridden twenty miles through the hot sun with that wound you would have been in a raging fever."

  "One way and another I'm quite in her debt."

  "That's so," agreed Yeager, intent on his work.

  She refused to meet the nester's smile. "Fiddlesticks! You talk mighty foolish, Jim. I wouldn't go away and leave a wounded dog if I could help it."

  "Suppose the dog were a sheep-killer?" Keller asked with his engaging, impudent smile.

  A dust cloud rose from her skirt under a stroke of the restless quirt. "I'd do my best for it and let it settle with the law afterward."

  "Even if it were a wolf caught in a trap?"

  "I should put it out of its pain. No matter how much I detested it, I wouldn't leave it there to suffer."

  "I'm quite sure you wouldn't," the wounded man agreed.

  Yeager looked from one to the other, not quite catching the drift of the underlying meaning. Another thing puzzled him, too. But, like most men of the unfenced Southwest, Yeager had a large capacity for silence. Now he attended strictly to his business, without mentioning what he had noticed.

  The wound dressed, Phyllis rose to leave. "You'll be down for your mail to-morrow, Jim," she suggested, as she sauntered toward the door.

  "Sure. I'll let you know how our patient is getting along."

  "Oh, he's yours. I don't want any of the credit," she returned carelessly.

  Then, the words scarce off her lips, she gave a little cry of alarm, and stepped quickly back into the room. What she had seen had sapped the color from her face. Yeager started forward, but she waved him back.

  "It's Phil and Brill Healy. You've got to hide us, Jim," she told him tensely.

  The nester began to grin. He always did when he faced a difficulty apparently insurmountable. Also his fingers slid toward the butt of his revolver.

  * * *

  CHAPTER IV

  "I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?"

  Jim swept the cabin with a gesture. "Where can I hide you? Anyhow, there are the horses in plain sight."

  Phyllis took imperious control. "Get a coat on him, Jim," she ordered.

  At the same time she caught up the basin of bloodstained
water and flung its contents through the open window. The torn linen and the stained handkerchief she tossed into a corner and covered with a gunny sack.

  "Not a word about the wound, Jim. Mr. Keller is here to help you do your assessment work, remember. And whatever I say, don't give me away."

  Yeager nodded. He had manoeuvred the wounded arm through the coat sleeve and was straightening out the shoulders. The nester's eyes were shining with excitement. Alone of the three, he was enjoying himself.

  "Remember now. Don't talk too much. Let me run this," the girl cautioned, and with that she stepped to the door, caught sight of her brother with a glad little cry of apparent relief, and ran swiftly to him.

  "Oh, Phil!" she almost sobbed, and the stress of her emotion was genuine enough, even if she dissembled as to the cause.

  The boy patted her dark hair gently. They were twins, without other near relatives except their father, and the tie between them was close.

  "What is it, Phyllie? Why didn't you stay where we left you?"

  "I was afraid for you. And I rode a little nearer. Then he came straight toward me—and I rode away. I could hear him crashing through the mesquite. When I reached the trail of Jim's mine, I followed it, for I knew he would be here."

  "Sure. Course she was scared. What woman wouldn't be? We oughtn't both to have left her. But there wasn't one chance in a thousand of his stumbling on the very spot where she was," said Healy.

  Phil gentled her with a caressing hand. "It's all right now, sis. Did you happen to see the fellow at all?"

  "Yes. At a distance."

  "I don't suppose you would know him," Healy said.

  She gave a strained little laugh. "I didn't wait to get a description of him. Didn't you boys recognize him?"

  After Phil's answer she breathed freer. "We did not get near enough, though Brill got two shots at him as he pulled out. He was going hell-for-leather and Brill missed both times." He lowered his voice and asked angrily: "What's he doing here?"

  For Keller had followed Yeager from the cabin and was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He wore no hat, and had the manner of one very much at home.

  "He's helping Jim with his assessment work," she answered in the same low tone. "It's too bad you lost the rustler. He must have broken for the hills."

  Healy's eyes had narrowed to slits. Now he murmured a question: "What about this man Keller? Was he here when you came, Phyl?"

  The girl turned to Yeager, who had sauntered up. "Didn't you say he came this morning, Jim?"

  Yeager's eyes were like a stone wall. "Yep. This mo'ning. I needed some husky guy to help me, so I got him."

  "Funny you had to get a fellow from Bear Creek to help you, Jim."

  "Are you looking for a job, Brill?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Because I ain't noticed any stampede this way among the boys to preempt this job. I take a man where I can find him, Brill, and I don't ask you to O.K. him."

  "I see you don't, Jim. The boys aren't going to like it very well, though."

  "Then they know what they can do about it," Yeager answered evenly, level eyes steadily on those of his critic.

  "What time did this nester get here, Jim?" broke in Phil.

  Yeager's opaque eyes passed from Healy to Sanderson. "It might have been about eight."

  "Then he couldn't be the man," the boy said to Healy, almost in a whisper.

  "What man?" Jim asked.

  "We ran on a rustler branding a C.O. calf. We got close enough to take a shot at him. Then he slid into some arroyo, and we lost him," Phil exclaimed.

  "How long ago was this?" asked Yeager.

  "About an hour since we first saw him. Beats all how he ever made his getaway. We were right after him when he gave us the slip."

  "Oh, he gave you the slip, did he?"

  "Dropped into some hole and pulled it in after him. These hills are built for hide and seek, looks like."

  "Notice the color of his horse?"

  "It was a roan, Jim. Something like that nester's." Phil nodded toward the animal Keller had ridden.

  All eyes focused hard on the horse with the white stockings.

  "What brand was he putting on the calf? That'll tell you who the man was."

  Phil and Healy looked at each other, and the latter laughed. "That's one on us. We didn't stay to look, but got right out for Mr. Rustler."

  "Did he kill the cow?"

  Phil nodded.

  "Then you'll find the calf still hanging around there unless he had a pal to drive it away."

  "That's right. We'll go back now and look. Ready, Phyl?"

  "Yes." She stepped to her horse, and swung to the saddle.

  Meanwhile Healy rode forward to the cabin. Through narrowed lids he looked down at the man standing in the doorway. "Give that message to your friends?" he demanded insolently.

  There are men who have to look at each other only once to know that there is born between them a perpetual hostility. Each of these men had felt it at the first shock of meeting eyes. They would feel it again as often as they looked at each other.

  "No," the nester answered.

  "Why not?"

  "I didn't care to. You may carry your own messages."

  "When I do I'll carry them with a gun."

  "Interesting if true." Keller's gaze passed derisively over him and dismissed the man.

  "And I hope when I come I'll meet Mr. Keller first."

  The nester's attention was focused indolently upon the hills. He seemed to have forgotten that the cattleman was in Arizona.

  Healy ripped out a sudden oath, drove the spurs in, and went down the trail with his broncho on the buck.

  Keller looked at Yeager and laughed, but that young man met him with a frosty eye.

  "I've got some questions to ask you, Mr. Keller," he said.

  "Unload 'em."

  Yeager led the way inside, offered his guest the chair, and sat down on the bed with his arms on the table which had been drawn close to it.

  "In the first place, I'll announce myself. I don't hold with rustlers or waddies. I'm a white man. That being understood, I want to know where we're at."

  "Meaning?"

  "Miss Phyllis unloads a story on me about you shooting yourself up accidental. Soon as I looked at you that looked fishy to me. You ain't that kind of a durn fool. Would you mind handing me a dipper of water? Thanks." Yeager tossed the water out of the window, and the dipper back into the pail. "I noticed you handed me that water with your right hand. Your gun is on your right side. Then how in Mexico, you being right-handed, did you manage to shoot yourself in the right arm below the elbow?"

  Keller laughed dryly, and offered no information. "Quite a Sherlock Holmes, ain't you?"

  "Hell, no! I got eyes in my head, though. Moreover, that bullet went in at right angles to your arm. How did you make out to do that?"

  "Sleight of hand," suggested the other.

  "No powder marks, either. And, lastly, it was, a rifle did it, not a revolver."

  "Anything more?"

  "Some. That side talk between you and Miss Phyllis wasn't over and above clear to me then. I savez it now. She hates you like p'ison, but she's too tender-hearted to give you up. Ain't that it?"

  "That's it."

  "She lied for you to me. She lied again to Phil. So did I. Oh, we didn't lie in words, but it's the same thing. Now, I wouldn't lie to save my own skin. Why then should I for yours, and you a rustler and a thief?"

  "I'm a rustler and a thief, am I?"

  "Ain't you?"

  "Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?"

  Yeager debated an instant before he answered flatly, "No."

  "Then I won't say it."

  The wounded man tossed his answer off so flippantly that Yeager scowled at him. "Mr. Keller, you're a newcomer here. I wonder if you know what the Malpais country would be liable to do to a man caught rustling now."

  "I can guess."

  "Let me tell what
I know and your life wouldn't be worth a plugged quarter."

  "Why didn't you tell?"

  Yeager brought his big fist down heavily on the table. "Because of Phyl Sanderson. That's why. She put it up to me, and I played her game. But I ain't sure I'm going to keep on playing it. I'm a Malpais man. My father has a ranch down there, and I've rode the range all my life. Why should I throw down my friends to save a rustler caught in the act?"

  "You've already tried and convicted me, I see."

  "The facts convict you, seh."

  "Your understanding of the facts, I reckon you mean."

  "I haven't noticed that you're giving me any chance to understand them different," Yeager cut back dryly.

  The nester took from his pocket a little pearl-handled knife, picked up a potato from a basket beside him, and began to whittle on it absently. He looked across the table at the man sitting on the bed, and debated a question in his mind. Was it best to confess the whole truth? Or should he keep his own counsel?

  "I see you've got Miss Sanderson's knife. Did you forget to return it?" Yeager made comment.

  For just an instant Keller's eye confessed amazement. "Miss Sanderson's knife! Why—how did you know it was hers?" he asked, gathering himself together lamely.

  "I ought to know, seeing as I gave it to her for a Christmas present. Sent to Denver for that knife, I did. Best lady's knife in the market, I'm told. Made in Sheffield, England."

  "Ye-es. It's sure a good knife. I'll ce'tainly return it next time I see her."

  "Funny she ever let you get away with it. She's some particular who she lends that knife to," Jim said proudly.

  Keller wiped the blade carefully, shut it, and put the knife back in his pocket. Nevertheless, he was worried in his mind. For what Yeager had told him changed wholly the problem before him. It suggested a possibility, even a probability, very distasteful to him. He was in trouble himself, and before he was through he expected to get others into deep water, too. But not Phyllis Sanderson—surely not this impulsive girl with the blue-black hair and dark, scornful eyes. Wherefore he decided to keep silent now and let Yeager do what he would.

  "I reckon, seh, you'll have to do your own guessing at the facts," he said gently.

  "Just as you say, Mr. Keller. I reckon if you had anything to say for yourself you would say it. Now, I'll do what talking I've got to do. You may stay here twenty-four hours. After that you may hit the trail for Bear Creek. I'm going down to Seven Mile to tell what I know."