“All aboard for the Mal Pais,” he sang out cheerfully.
Too cheerfully perhaps. His assurance that all was well between them chilled her manner. He might forgive himself easily if he was that sort of man; she would at least show him she was no party, to it. He had treated her outrageously, had manhandled her with deliberate intent to insult. She would show him no one alive could treat her so and calmly assume to her that it was all right.
Her cool eyes examined the horse, and him.
“I don't quite see how you expect to arrange it, Mr. Neill. That is your name, isn't it?” she added indifferently.
“That's my name—Larry Neill. Easiest thing in the world to arrange. We ride pillion if it suits you; if not, I'll walk.”
“Neither plan suits me,” she announced curtly, her gaze on the far-away hills.
He glanced at her in quick surprise, then made the mistake of letting himself smile at her frosty aloofness instead of being crestfallen by it. She happened to look round and catch that smile before he could extinguish it. Her petulance hardened instantly to a resolution.
“I don't quite know what we're going to do about it—unless you walk,” he proposed, amused at the absurdity of his suggestion.
“That's just what I'm going to do,” she retorted promptly.
“What!” He wheeled on her with an astonished smile on his face.
This served merely to irritate her.
“I said I was going to walk.”
“Walk seventeen miles?”
“Seventy if I choose.”
“Nonsense! Of course you won't.”
Her eyebrows lifted in ironic demurrer. “I think you must let me be the judge of that,” she said gently.
“Walk!” he reiterated. “Why, you're walked out. You couldn't go a mile. What do you take me for? Think I'm going to let you come that on me.”
“I don't quite see how you can help it, Mr. Neill,” she answered.
“Help it! Why, it ain't reasonable. Of course you'll ride.”
“Of course I won't.”
She set off briskly, almost jauntily, despite her tired feet and aching limbs.
“Well, if that don't beat—” He broke off to laugh at the situation. After she had gone twenty steps he called after her in a voice that did not suppress its chuckle: “You ain't going the right direction, Miss Kinney.”
She whirled round on him in anger. How dared he laugh at her?
“Which is the right way?” she choked.
“North by west is about it.”
She was almost reduced to stamping her foot.
Without condescending to ask more definite instructions she struck off at haphazard, and by chance guessed right. There was nothing for it but to pursue. Wherefore the man pursued. The horse at his heels hampered his stride, but he caught up with her soon.
“Somebody's acting mighty foolish,” he said.
She said nothing very eloquently.
“If I need punishing, ma'am, don't punish yourself, but me. You ain't able to walk and that's a fact.”
She gave her silent attention strictly to the business of making progress through the cactus and the sand.
“Say I'm all you think I am. You can trample on me proper after we get to the Mal Pais. Don't have to know me at all if you don't want to. Won't you ride, ma'am? Please!”
His distress filled her with a fierce delight. She stumbled defiantly forward.
He pondered a while before he asked quietly:
“Ain't you going to ride, Miss Kinney?”
“No, I'm not. Better go on. Pray don't let me detain you.”
“All right. See that peak with the spur to it? Well, you keep that directly in line and make straight for it. I'll say good-by now, ma'am. I got to hurry to be in time for dinner. I'll send some one out from the camp to meet you that ain't such a villain as I am.”
He swung to the saddle, put spurs to his pony, and cantered away. She could scarce believe it, even when he rode straight over the hill without a backward glance. He would never leave her. Surely he would not do that. She could never reach the camp, and he knew it. To be left alone in the desert again; the horror of it broke her down, but not immediately. She went proudly forward with her head in the air at first. He might look round. Perhaps he was peeping at her from behind some cholla. She would not gratify him by showing any interest in his whereabouts. But presently she began to lag, to scan draws and mesas anxiously for him, even to call aloud in an ineffective little voice which the empty hills echoed faintly. But from him there came no answer.
She sat down and wept in self-pity. Of course she had told him to go, but he knew well enough she did not mean it. A magnanimous man would have taken a better revenge on an exhausted girl than to leave her alone in such a spot, and after she had endured such a terrible experience as she had. She had read about the chivalry of Western men. Yet these two had ridden away on their horses and left her to live or die as chance willed it.
“Now, don't you feel so bad, Miss Margaret. I wasn't aiming really to leave you, of course,” a voice interrupted her sobs to say.
She looked through the laced fingers that covered her face, mightily relieved, but not yet willing to confess it. The engineer had made a circuit and stolen up quietly behind.
“Oh! I thought you had gone,” she said as carelessly as she could with a voice not clear of tears.
“Were you crying because you were afraid I hadn't?” he asked.
“I ran a cactus into my foot. And I didn't say anything about crying.”
“Then if your foot is hurt you will want to ride. That seventeen miles might be too long a stroll before you get through with it.”
“I don't know what I'll do yet,” she answered shortly.
“I know what you'll do.”
“Yes?”
“You'll quit your foolishness and get on this hawss.”
She flushed angrily. “I won't!”
He stooped down, gathered her up in his arms, and lifted her to the saddle.
“That's what you're going to do whether you like it or not,” he informed her.
“How are you going to make me stay here, now you have put me here?”
“I'm going to get on behind and hold you if it's necessary.”
He was sensible enough of the folly of it all, but he did not see what else he could do. She had chosen to punish him through herself in a way that was impossible. It was a childish thing to do, born of some touch of hysteria her experience had induced, and he could only treat her as a child till she was safely back in civilization.
Their wills met in their eyes, and the man's, masculine and dominant, won the battle. The long fringe of hers fell to the soft cheeks.
“It won't be at all necessary,” she promised.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“That's the way to talk.”
“If you care to know,” she boiled over, “I think you the most hateful man I ever met.”
“That's all right,” he grinned ruefully. “You're the most contrary woman I ever bumped into, so I reckon honors are easy.”
He strode along beside the horse, mile after mile, in a silence which neither of them cared to break. The sap of youth flowed free in him, was in his elastic tread, in the set of his broad shoulders, in the carriage of his small, well-shaped head. He was as lean-loined and lithe as a panther, and his stride ate up the miles as easily.
They nooned at a spring in the dry wash of Bronco Creek. After he had unsaddled and picketed he condescended to explain to her.
“We'll stay here three hours or mebbe four through the heat of the day.”
“Is it far now?” she asked wearily.
“Not more than seven miles I should judge. Are you about all in?”
“Oh, no! I'm all right, thank you,” she said, with forced sprightliness.
His shrewd, hard gaze went over her and knew better.
“You lie down under those live-oaks and I'll get some grub ready.”
“I'll cook lunch while you lie down. You must be tired walking so far through the sun,” said Miss Kinney.
“Have I got to pick you up again and carry you there?”
“No, you haven't. You keep your hands off me,” she flashed.
But nevertheless she betook herself to the shade of the live-oaks and lay down. When he went to call her for lunch he found her fast asleep with her head pillowed on her arm. She looked so haggard that he had not the heart to rouse her.
“Let her sleep. It will be the making of her. She's fair done. But ain't she plucky? And that spirited! Ready to fight so long as she can drag a foot. And her so sorter slim and delicate. Funny how she hangs onto her grudge against me. Sho! I hadn't ought to have kissed her, but I'll never tell her so.”
He went back to his coffee and bacon, dined, and lay down for a siesta beneath a cottonwood some distance removed from the live-oaks where Miss Kinney reposed. For two or three hours he slept soundly, having been in the saddle all night. It was mid-afternoon when he awoke, and the sun was sliding down the blue vault toward the sawtoothed range to the west. He found the girl still lost to the world in deep slumber.
The man from the Panhandle looked across the desert that palpitated with heat, and saw through the marvelous atmosphere the smoke of the ore-mills curling upward. He was no tenderfoot, to suppose that ten minutes' brisk walking would take him to them. He guessed the distance at about two and a half hour's travel.
“This is ce'tainly a hot evening. I expect we better wait till sundown before moving,” he said aloud.
Having made up his mind, it was characteristic of him that he was asleep again in five minutes. This time she wakened before him, to look into a wonderful sea of gold that filled the crotches of the hills between the purple teeth. No sun was to be seen—it had sunk behind the peaks—but the trail of its declension was marked by that great pool of glory into which she gazed.
Margaret crossed the wash to the cottonwood under which her escort was lying. He was fast asleep on his back, his gray shirt open at the bronzed, sinewy neck. The supple, graceful lines of him were relaxed, but even her inexperience appreciated the splendid shoulders and the long rippling muscles. The maidenly instinct in her would allow but one glance at him, and she was turning away when his eyes opened.
Her face, judging from its tint, might have absorbed some of the sun-glow into which she had been gazing.
“I came to see if you were awake,” she explained.
“Yes, ma'am, I am,” he smiled.
“I was thinking that we ought to be going. It will be dark before we reach Mal Pais.”
He leaped to his feet and faced her.
“C'rect.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
He relit the fire and put on the coffee-pot before he saddled the horse. She ate and drank hurriedly, soon announcing herself ready for the start.
She mounted from his hand; then without asking any questions he swung to a place behind her.
“We'll both ride,” he said.
The stars were out before they reached the outskirts of the mining-camp. At the first house of the rambling suburbs Neill slipped to the ground and walked beside her toward the old adobe plaza of the Mexican town.
People passed them on the run, paying no attention to them, and others dribbled singly or in small groups from the houses and saloons. All of them were converging excitedly to the plaza.
“Must be something doing here,” said her guide. “Now I wonder what!”
Round the next turn he found his answer. There must have been present two or three hundred men, mostly miners, and their gazes all focussed on two figures which stood against a door at the top of five or six steps. One of the forms was crouched on its knees, abject, cringing terror stamped on the white villainous face upturned to the electric light above. But the other was on its feet, a revolver in each hand, a smile of reckless daring on the boyish countenance that just now stood for law and order in Mal Pais.
The man beside the girl read the situation at a glance. The handcuffed figure groveling on the steps belonged to the murderer Struve, and over him stood lightly the young ranger Steve Fraser. He was standing off a mob that had gathered to lynch his prisoner, and one glance at him was enough to explain how he had won his reputation as the most dashing and fearless member of a singularly efficient force. For plain to be read as the danger that confronted him was the fact that peril was as the breath of life to his nostrils.
“He's my prisoner and you can't have him,” the girl heard the ranger say.
The answer came in a roar of rage. “By God, we'll show you!”
“If you want him, take him. But don't come unless you are ready to pay the price!” warned the officer.
He was bareheaded and his dark-brown curly hair crisped round his forehead engagingly. Round his right hand was tied a blood-stained handkerchief. A boy he looked, but his record was a man's, and so the mob that swayed uncertainly below him knew. His gray eyes were steady as steel despite the fire that glowed in them. He stood at ease, with nerve unshaken, the curious lifted look of a great moment about the poise of his graceful figure.
“It is Lieutenant Fraser,” cried Margaret, but as she looked down she missed her escort.
An instant, and she saw him. He was circling the outskirts of the crowd at a run. For just a heart-beat she wondered what he was about, but her brain told her before her eye. He swung in toward the steps, shoulders down, and bored a way through the stragglers straight to the heart of the turmoil. Taking the steps in two jumps, he stood beside the ranger.
“Hello, Tennessee,” grinned that young man. “Come to be a pall-bearer?”
“Hello, Texas! Can't say, I'm sure. Just dropped in to see what's doing.”
Steve's admiring gaze approved him a man from the ground up. But the ranger only laughed and said: “The band's going to play a right lively tune, looks like.”
The man from the Panhandle had his revolvers out already. “Yes, there will be a hot time in the old town to-night, I shouldn't wonder.”
But for the moment the attackers were inclined to parley. Their leader stepped out and held up a hand for a suspension of hostilities. He was a large man, heavily built, and powerful as a bear. There was about him an air of authority, as of one used to being obeyed. He was dressed roughly enough in corduroy and miner's half-leg boots, but these were of the most expensive material and cut. His cold gray eye and thin lips denied the manner of superficial heartiness he habitually carried. If one scratched the veneer of good nature it was to find a hard selfishness that went to his core.
“It's Mr. Dunke!” the young school-teacher cried aloud in surprise.
“I've got something to say to you, Mr. Lieutenant Ranger,” he announced, with importance.
“Uncork it,” was Fraser's advice.
“We don't want to have any trouble with you, but we're here for business. This man is a cold-blooded murderer and we mean to do justice on him.”
Steve laughed insolently. “If all them that hollers for justice the loudest got it done to them, Mr. Dunke, there'd be a right smart shrinkage in the census returns.”
Dunke's eye gleamed with anger. “We're not here to listen to any smart guys, sir. Will you give up Struve to us or will you not?”
“That's easy. I will not.”
The mob leader turned to the Tennessean. “Young man, I don't know who you are, but if you mean to butt into a quarrel that ain't yours all I've got to say is that you're hunting an early grave.”
“We'll know about that later, seh.”
“You stand pat, do you?”
“Well, seh, I draw to a pair that opens the pot anyhow,” answered Larry, with a slight motion of his weapons.
Dunke fell back into the mob, a shot rang out into the night, and the crowd swayed forward. But at that instant the door behind Fraser swung open. A frightened voice sounded in his ear.
“Quick, Steve!”
The ranger slewed his head, gave an exclamation of surprise, and hurriedly threw his prisoner into the open passage.
“Back, Larry! Lively, my boy!” he ordered.
Neill leaped back in a spatter of bullets that rained round him. Next moment the door was swung shut again.
“You all right, Nell?” asked Fraser quickly of the young woman who had opened the door, and upon her affirmative reply he added: “Everybody alive and kicking? Nobody get a pill?”
“I'm all right for one,” returned Larry. “But we had better get out of this passage. I notice our friends the enemy are sending their cards through the door after us right anxious.”
As he spoke a bullet tore a jagged splinter from a panel and buried itself in the ceiling. A second and a third followed.
“That's c'rect. We'd better be 'Not at home' when they call. Eh, Nell?”
Steve put an arm affectionately round the waist of the young woman who had come in such timely fashion to their aid and ran through the passage with her to the room beyond, Neill following with the prisoner.
“You're wounded, Steve,” the young woman cried.
He shrugged. “Scratch in the hand. Got it when I arrested him. Had to shoot his trigger finger off.”
“But I must see to it.”
“Not now; wait till we're out of the woods.” He turned to his friend: “Nell, let me introduce to you Mr. Neill, from the Panhandle. Mr. Neill, this is my sister. I don't know how come she to drop down behind us like an angel from heaven, but that's a story will wait. The thing we got to do right now is to light a shuck out of here.”
His friend nodded, listening to the sound of blows battering the outer door. “They'll have it down in another minute. We've got to burn the wind seven ways for Sunday.”
“What I'd like to know is whether there are two entrances to this rat-trap. Do you happen to know, Nell?” asked Fraser of his sister.
“Three,” she answered promptly. “There's a back door into the court and a trap-door to the roof. That's the way I came.”
“And it's the way we'll go. I might a-known you'd know all about it give you a quarter of a chance,” her brother said admiringly. “We'll duck through the roof and let Mr. Dunke hold the sack. Lead the way, sis.”
She guided them along another passageway and up some stairs to the second story. The trap-door that opened to the flat roof was above the bed about six feet. Neill caught the edges of the narrow opening, drew himself up, and wriggled through. Fraser lifted his sister by the waist high enough for Larry to catch her hands and draw her up.
“Hurry, Steve,” she urged. “They've broken in. Hurry, dear.”
The ranger unlocked his prisoner's handcuffs and tossed them up to the Tennessean.
“Get a move on you, Mr. Struve, unless you want to figure in a necktie party,” he advised.
But the convict's flabby muscles were unequal to the task of getting him through the opening. Besides which, his wounded hand, tied up with a blood-soaked rag, impeded him. He had to be pulled from above and boosted from behind. Fraser, fit to handle his weight in wildcats, as an admirer had once put it, found no trouble in following. Steps were already heard on the stairs below when Larry slipped the cover to its place and put upon it a large flat stone which he found on the roof for that purpose. The fugitives crawled along the roof on their hands and knees so as to escape the observation of the howling mob outside the house. Presently they came into the shadows, and Nell rose, ran forward to a little ladder which led to a higher roof, and swiftly ascended. Neill, who was at her heels, could not fail to note the light supple grace with which she moved. He thought he had never seen a more charming woman in appearance. She still somehow retained the slim figure and taking ways of a girl, in conjunction with the soft rounded curves of a present-day Madonna.
Two more roofs were crossed before they came to another open trap-door. A lamp in the room below showed it to be a bedroom with two cots in it. Two children, one of them a baby, were asleep in these. A sweet-faced woman past middle age looked anxiously up with hands clasped together as in prayer.
“Is it you, Nellie?” she asked.
“Yes, mother, and Steve, and his friend. We're all right.”
Fraser dropped through, and his sister let herself down into his arms. Struve followed, and was immediately handcuffed. Larry put back the trap and fastened it from within before he dropped down.
“We shall have to leave at once, mother, without waiting to dress the children,” explained Fraser. “Wrap them in blankets and take some clothes along. I'll drop you at the hotel and slip my prisoner into the jail the back way if I can; that is, if another plan I have doesn't work.”
The oldest child awoke and caught sight of Fraser. He reached out his hands in excitement and began to call: “Uncle Steve! Uncle Steve back again.”
Fraser picked up the youngster. “Yes, Uncle Steve is back. But we're going to play a game that Indians are after us. Webb must be good and keep very, very still. He mustn't say a word till uncle tells him he may.”
The little fellow clapped his hands. “Goody, goody! Shall we begin now?”
“Right this minute, son. Better take your money with you, mother. Is father here?”
“No, he is at the ranch. He went down in the stage to-day.”
“All right, friends. We'll take the back way. Tennessee, will you look out for Mr. Struve? Sis will want to carry the baby.”
They passed quietly down-stairs and out the back door. The starry night enveloped them coldly, and the moon looked down through rifted clouds. Nature was peaceful as her own silent hills, but the raucous jangle of cursing voices from a distance made discord of the harmony. They slipped along through the shadows, meeting none except occasional figures hurrying to the plaza. At the hotel door the two men separated from the rest of the party, and took with them their prisoner.
“I'm going to put him for safe-keeping down the shaft of a mine my father and I own,” explained Steve. “He wouldn't be safe in the jail, because Dunke, for private reasons, has made up his mind to put out his lights.”
“Private reasons?” echoed the engineer.
“Mighty good ones, too. Ain't that right?” demanded the ranger of Struve.
The convict cursed, though his teeth still chattered with fright from the narrow escape he had had, but through his prison jargon ran a hint of some power he had over the man Dunke. It was plain he thought the latter had incited the lynching in order to shut the convict's mouth forever.
“Where is this shaft?” asked Neill.
“Up a gulch about half a mile from here.”
Fraser's eyes fixed themselves on a young man who passed on the run. He suddenly put his fingers to his lips and gave a low whistle. The running man stopped instantly, his head alert to catch the direction from which the sound had come. Steve whistled again and the stranger turned toward them.
“It's Brown, one of my rangers,” explained the lieutenant.
Brown, it appeared, had just reached town and stabled his horse when word came to him that there was trouble on the plaza. He had been making for it when his officer's whistle stopped him.
“It's all over except getting this man to safety. I'm going to put him down an abandoned shaft of the Jackrabbit. He'll be safe there, and nobody will think to look for him in any such place,” said Fraser.
The man from the Panhandle drew his friend to one side. “Do you need me any longer? I left Miss Kinney right on the edge of that mob, and I expect I better look around and see where she is now.”
“All right. No, we don't need you. Take care you don't let any of these miners recognize you. They might make you trouble while they're still hot. Well, so-long. See you to-morrow at the hotel.”
The Tennessean looked to his guns to make sure they hung loose in the scabbards, then stepped briskly back toward the plaza.
Margaret Kinney's heart ceased beating in that breathless instant after the two dauntless friends had flung defiance to two hundred. There was a sudden tightening of her throat, a fixing of dilated eyes on what would have been a thrilling spectacle had it not meant so much more to her. For as she leaned forward in the saddle with parted lips she knew a passionate surge of fear for one of the apparently doomed men that went through her like swift poison, that left her dizzy with the shock of it.
The thought of action came to her too late. As Dunke stepped back to give the signal for attack she cried out his name, but her voice was drowned in the yell of rage that filled the street. She tried to spur her horse into the crowd, to force a way to the men standing with such splendid fearlessness above this thirsty pack of wolves. But the denseness of the throng held her fixed even while revolvers flashed.
And then the miracle happened. She saw the door open and limned in a penumbra of darkness the white comely face of a woman. She saw the beleaguered men sway back and the door close in the faces of the horde. She saw bullets go crashing into the door, heard screams of baffled fury, and presently the crash of axes into the panels of the barrier that held them back. It seemed to fade away before her gaze, and instead of it she saw a doorway full of furious crowding miners.
Then presently her heart stood still again. From her higher place in the saddle, well back in the outskirts of the throng, in the dim light she made out a figure crouching on the roof; then another, and another, and a fourth. She suffered an agony of fear in the few heart-beats before they began to slip away. Her eyes swept the faces near her. One and all they were turned upon the struggling mass of humanity at the entrance to the passage. When she dared look again to the roof the fugitives were gone. She thought she perceived them swarming up a ladder to the higher roof, but in the surrounding grayness she could not be sure of this.
The stamping of feet inside the house continued. Once there was the sound of an exploding revolver. After a long time a heavy figure struggled into view through the roof-trap. It was Dunke himself. He caught sight of the ladder, gave a shout of triumph, and was off in pursuit of his flying prey. As others appeared on the roof they, too, took up the chase, a long line of indistinct running figures.
There were other women on the street now, most of them Mexicans, so that Margaret attracted little attention. She moved up opposite the house that had become the scene of action, expecting every moment to hear the shots that would determine the fate of the victims.
But no shots came. Lights flashed from room to room, and presently one light began to fill a room so brilliantly that she knew a lamp must have been overturned and set the house on fire. Dunke burst from the front door, scarce a dozen paces from her. There was a kind of lurid fury in his eyes. He was as ravenously fierce as a wolf balked of its kill. She chose that moment to call him.
“Mr. Dunke!”
Her voice struck him into a sort of listening alertness, and again she pronounced his name.
“You, Miss Kinney—here?” he asked in amazement.
“Yes—Miss Kinney.”
“But—What are you doing here? I thought you were at Fort Lincoln.”
“I was, but I'm here now.”
“Why? This is no place for you to-night. Hell's broke loose.”
“So it seems,” she answered, with shining eyes.
“There's trouble afoot, Miss Margaret. No girl should be out, let alone an unprotected one.”
“I did not come here unprotected. There was a man with me. The one, Mr. Dunke, that you are now looking for to murder!”
She gave it to him straight from the shoulder, her eyes holding his steadily.
“Struve?” he gasped, taken completely aback.
“No, not Struve. The man who stood beside Lieutenant Fraser, the one you threatened to kill because he backed the law.”
“I guess you don't know all the facts, Miss Kinney.” He came close and met her gaze while he spoke in a low voice. “There ain't many know what I know. Mebbe there ain't any beside you now. But I know you're Jim Kinney's sister.”
“You are welcome to the knowledge. It is no secret. Lieutenant Fraser knows it. So does his friend. I'm not trying to hide it. What of it?”
Her quiet scorn drew the blood to his face.
“That's all right. If you do want to keep it quiet I'm with you. But there's something more. Your brother escaped from Yuma with this fellow Struve. Word came over the wire an hour or two ago that Struve had been captured and that it was certain he had killed his pal, your brother. That's why I mean to see him hanged before mo'ning.”
“He did kill my brother. He told me so himself.” Her voice carried a sob for an instant, but she went on resolutely. “What has that to do with it? Isn't there any law in Texas? Hasn't he been captured? And isn't he being taken back to his punishment?”
“He told you so himself!” the man echoed. “When did he tell you? When did you see him?”
“I was alone with him for twelve hours in the desert.”
“Alone with you?” His puzzled face showed how he was trying to take this in, “I don't understand. How could he be alone with you?”
“I thought he was my brother and I was helping him to escape from Fort Lincoln.”
“Helping him to escape! Helping Wolf Struve to escape! Well, I'm darned if that don't beat my time. How come you to think him your brother?” the man asked suspiciously.
“It doesn't matter how or why. I thought so. That's enough.”
“And you were alone with him—why, you must have been alone with him all night,” cried Dunke, coming to a fresh discovery.
“I was,” she admitted very quietly.
A new suspicion edged itself into his mind. “What did you talk about? Did he say anything about—Did he—He always was a terrible liar. Nobody ever believed Wolf Struve.”
Without understanding the reason for it, she could see that he was uneasy, that he was trying to discount the value of anything the convict might have told her. Yet what could Struve the convict, No. 9,432, have to do with the millionaire mine-owner, Thomas J. Dunke? What could there be in common between them? Why should the latter fear what the other had to tell? The thing was preposterous on the face of it, but the girl knew by some woman's instinct that she was on the edge of a secret Dunke held hidden deep in his heart from all the world. Only this much she guessed; that Struve was a sharer of his secret, and therefore he was set on lynching the man before he had time to tell it.
“They got away, didn't they?” she asked.
“They got away—for the present,” he answered grimly. “But we're still hunting them.”
“Can't you let the law take its course, Mr. Danke? Is it necessary to do this terrible thing?”
“Don't you worry any about it, Miss Kinney. This ain't a woman's job. I'll attend to it.”
“But my friends,” she reminded him.
“We ain't intending to hurt them any. Come, I'll see you home. You staying at the hotel?”
“I don't know. I haven't made any arrangements yet.”
“Well, we'll go make them now.”
But she did not move. “I'm not going in till I know how this comes out.”
He was a man used to having his own brutal way, one strong by nature, with strength increased by the money upon which he rode rough-shod to success.
He laughed as he caught hold of the rein. “That's ridiculous!”
“But my business, I think,” the girl answered sharply, jerking the bridle from his fingers.
Dunke stared at her. It was his night of surprises. He failed to recognize the conventional teacher he knew in this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman who fronted him so sure of herself. She seemed to him to swim brilliantly in a tide of flushed beauty, in spite of the dust and the stains of travel. She was in a shapeless khaki riding-suit and a plain, gray, broad-brimmed Stetson. But the one could not hide the flexible curves that made so frankly for grace, nor the other the coppery tendrils that escaped in fascinating disorder from under its brim.
“You hadn't ought to be out here. It ain't right.”
“I don't remember asking you to act as a standard of right and wrong for me.”
He laughed awkwardly. “We ain't quarreling, are we, Miss Margaret?”
“Certainly I am not. I don't quarrel with anybody but my friends.”
“Well, I didn't aim to offend you anyway. You know me better than that.” He let his voice fall into a caressing modulation and put a propitiatory hand on her skirt, but under the uncompromising hardness of her gaze the hand fell away to his side. “I'm your friend—leastways I want to be.”
“My friends don't lynch men.”
“But after what he did to your brother.”
“The law will take care of that. If you want to please me call off your men before it is too late.”
It was his cue to please her, for so far as it was in him the man loved her. He had set his strong will to trample on his past, to rise to a place where no man could shake his security with proof of his former misdeeds. He meant to marry her and to place her out of reach of those evil days of his. Only Struve was left of the old gang, and he knew the Wolf well enough to be sure that the fellow would delight in blackmailing him. The convict's mouth must be closed. But just now he must promise t she wanted, and he did.
The promise was still on his lips when a third person strode into their conversation.
“Sorry I had to leave you so hastily, Miss Kinney. I'm ready to take you to the hotel now if it suits you.”
Both of them turned quickly, to see the man from the Panhandle sauntering forth from the darkness. There was a slight smile on his face, which did not abate when he nodded to Dunke amiably.
“You?” exclaimed the mine-owner angrily.
“Why, yes—me. Hope we didn't inconvenience you, seh, by postponing the coyote's journey to Kingdom Come. My friend had to take a hand because he is a ranger, and I sat in to oblige him. No hard feelings, I hope.”
“Did you—Are you all safe?” Margaret asked.
“Yes, ma'am. Got away slick and clean.”
“Where?” barked Dunke.
“Where what, my friend?”
“Where did you take him?”
Larry laughed in slow deep enjoyment. “I hate to disappoint you, but if I told that would be telling. No, I reckon I won't table my cards yet a while. If you're playing in this game of Hi-Spy go to it and hunt.”
“Perhaps you don't know that I am T. J. Dunke.”
“You don't say! And I'm General Grant. This lady hyer is Florence Nightingale or Martha Washington, I disremember which.”
Miss Kinney laughed. “Whichever she is she's very very tired,” she said. “I think I'll accept your offer to see me to the hotel, Mr. Neill.”
She nodded a careless good night to the mine-owner, and touched the horse with her heel. At the porch of the rather primitive hotel she descended stiffly from the saddle.
Before she left the Southerner—or the Westerner, for sometimes she classified him as one, sometimes as the other—she asked him one hesitant question.
“Were you thinking of going out again tonight?”
“I did think of taking a turn out to see if I could find Fraser. Anything I can do for you?”
“Yes. Please don't go. I don't want to have to worry about you. I have had enough trouble for the present.”
“Would you worry about me?” he asked quietly, his eyes steadily on her.
“I lie awake about the most unaccountable things sometimes.”
He smiled in his slow Southern fashion. “Very well. I'll stay indoors. I reckon Steve ain't lost, anyhow. You're too tired to have to lie awake about me to-night. There's going to be lots of other nights for you to think of me.”
She glanced at him with a quick curiosity. “Well, of all the conceit I ever heard!”
“I'm the limit, ain't I?” he grinned as he took himself off.