_ CHAPTER V. AN AIDER AND ABETTOR
Having come to an understanding, Yeager and Keller wasted no time or temper in acrimony. Both of them belonged to that big outdoors West which plays the game to the limit without littleness. They were in hostile camps, but that did not prevent them from holding amiable conversation on the common topics of Cattleland. Only one of these they avoided by mutual consent. Neither of them had anything to say about rustling.
Together they ate and smoked and slept, and in the morning after breakfast they saddled and set out for Seven Mile. A man might have traveled far without seeing finer specimens of the frontier, any more competent, self-restrained, or fitter for emergency. They rode with straight back and loose seat, breaking long silences with occasional drawling comment. For in the cow country strong men talk only when they have something to say.
The stage had just left when they reached Seven Mile, and Public Opinion was seated on the porch as per custom. It regarded Keller with a stony, expressionless hostility. Yeager with frank disapprobation.
Just before swinging from the saddle, Jim turned to the nester. "I'm giving you an hour, seh. After that, I'm going to speak my little piece to the boys."
"Thank you. An hour will be plenty," Keller answered, and passed into the store, apparently oblivious of the silent observation focused upon him.
Phyllis, busy unwrapping a package of papers, glanced up to see his curly head in the stamp window.
"Anything for L. Keller?" he wanted to know, after he had unburdened himself of a friendly "Mornin', Miss Sanderson."
Her impulse was to ask him how his wound was, but she repressed it sternly. She took the letters from the K pigeonhole and found two for him.
"Thank you, I'm feeling fine," he laughed, gathering up his mail.
"I didn't ask you how you were feeling," she answered, turning coldly to her newspapers.
"I thought mebbe you'd want to know about my punctured tire."
"It's very good of you to relieve my anxiety."
"Let me relieve it some more, Miss Sanderson. Here's the knife you lost."
She glanced up carelessly at the pearl-handled knife he pushed through the window. "I didn't know it was lost."
"Well, now you know it's found. When do you remember seeing it last, ma'am?"
"I lent it to a friend two days ago."
"Oh, to a friend--two days ago."
His eyes were on her so steadily that the girl was aware of some significance he gave to the fact, some hidden meaning that escaped her.
"What friend did you say, Miss Sanderson?"
He asked it casually, but his question irritated her.
"I didn't say, sir."
"That's so. You didn't."
"Where did you get it?" she demanded.
He grinned. "I'll tell you that if you'll tell me who you lent it to."
Her curt answer reminded him that he was in her eyes a convicted criminal. "It's of no importance, sir."
"That's what you think, Miss Sanderson."
She sorted the newspapers in the bundle, and began to slip them into the private boxes where they belonged. Presently, however, her curiosity demanded satisfaction. Without looking at him, she volunteered information.
"But there's no mystery about it. Phil borrowed the knife to fix a stirrup leather, and forgot to give it back to me."
"Your brother?"
"Yes."
He was taken aback. There was nothing for it but a white lie. "I found it near Yeager's mine yesterday. I reckon he must have dropped it on his way there."
"I don't see anything very mysterious about that," she said frostily.
She looked so definitely unaware of him as she worked that he fell back from the window and passed out to the porch. He had found out more than he wanted to know.
Jim Yeager's drawling voice came to him, gentle and low as usual, but with an edge to it. "I been discoverin' I'm some unpopular to-day, Brill. Malpais has been expressin' its opinion right plain. You've arrived in time to chirp in with a 'Me, too.'"
Healy had evidently just ridden up, for he was still in the saddle. He relaxed into one of the easy attitudes used by men of the plains to rest themselves without dismounting.
"You know my sentiments, Jim," he replied, not unamiably.
"Sure I know them. Plumb dissatisfied with me, ain't you? Makes me feel awful bad." Jim was sailing into the full tide of his sarcasm when Keller touched him on the shoulder.
"I'd like to see you for a moment, Mr. Yeager, if you can give me the time," he said.
Healy took in the nester with an eye of jade. "Your twin brother wants you, Jim. Run along with him. Don't mind us."
"I won't, Brill."
The young man rose, and sauntered off with the Bear Creek settler. At the corral fence, some fifty yards from the house, he stopped under the shade of a live oak, and put his arms on the top rail. He had allowed himself to show no sign of it, but he resented this claim upon him that seemed to ally him further with the enemy.
"Here I am, Mr. Keller. What can I do for you?"
"You're a friend of Miss Sanderson. You would stand between her and trouble?" the other demanded abruptly.
"I expect."
"Then find out for me what Phil Sanderson did with the knife his sister lent him two days ago. Find out whether he lent it to anybody, and, if so, who."
"What for?"
It had come to a show-down, and the other tabled his cards.
"I found that knife yesterday mo'ning. It was lying beside the dead cow in the park where your friends happened on me. I reckon the rustlers must have heard me coming and drove the calf away just before I arrived. In his hurry one of them forgot that knife. If you'll tell me the man who had it in his pocket yesterday when he left-home, I'll tell you who one of the Malpais rustlers is."
Jim considered this, his gaze upon the far-away range. When he brought it back to Keller, he was smiling incredulously.
"I hear you say so, seh. But what a man with, a halter round his neck says don't go far before a court."
"I expected you to say about that."
"Then I haven't disappointed you." He continued presently, with cold hostility: "That story you cooked up is about the only one you could spring. What surprises me is that a man with as good a head as yours took twenty-four hours to figure out your explanation. I want to tell you, too, that it don't make any hit with me that you're trying to throw the blame on a boy I've known all my life."
"Who happens to be a brother of Miss Sanderson," Keller let himself suggest.
Yeager flushed. "That ain't the point."
"The point is that I'm trying to clear this boy, and I want your help."
"Looks to me like you want to clear yourself."
"If I prove to you that I'm not a rustler, will you padlock your tongue and help me clear young Sanderson?"
"I sure will--if you prove it to my satisfaction."
Keller drew from his pocket the two letters he had just received. "Read these."
When he had read, Yeager handed them back, and offered his hand. "That clears you, seh. Truth is, I never was satisfied you was a rustler. My mind was satisfied; but, durn it, you didn't _look_ like a waddy. It's lucky I hadn't spoke to the boys yet."
"I want to keep this quiet," the Bear Creek settler explained.
"Sure. I'm a clam, and at your service, seh."
"Then find out the truth about the knife."
Yeager's eye chiselled into that of Keller. "Mind, I ain't going to help you bring trouble to Phyllie, and I ain't going to stand by and see it, either."
The other smiled. "I don't ask it of you. What I want is to clear the boy."
"Good enough," agreed Yeager, and led the way back.
Before they had yet reached the house, a figure dropped from the foliage of the live oak under which they had been standing, and rolled like a ball from the fence into the deep dust of the corral. It picked itself up in a gray cloud, from which shone as a nucleus a black face with beady eyes and flashing-white teeth. Swiftly it scampered across the paddock, disappeared into the rear of the stable, and reappeared at the front door.
"Here you, 'Rastus, where you been?" demanded the wrangler. "Didn't I tell you to clean Miss Phyl's trap? I've wore my lungs out hollering for you. Now, you git to work, or I'll wear you to a frazzle."
'Rastus, general alias for his baptismal name of George Washington Abraham Lincoln Randolph, grinned and ducked, shot out of the stable like a streak of light, and appeared ten seconds later in the kitchen presided over by his rotund mother, Becky.
His abrupt entrance disturbed the maternal after-dinner nap. From the rocking-chair where she sat Becky rolled affronted eyes at him.
"What you doin' here, Gawge Washington? Ain't I done tole you sebenty times seben to keep outa my kitchen at dis time o' day?"
"I wanter see Miss Phyl."
"Then I low you kin take it out in wantin'. Think she got time to fool away on a nigger sprout like you-all? Light a shuck back to the stable, where you belong."
'Rastus grinned amiably, flung himself at a door, and vanished into that part of the house which was forbidden territory to him, the while Becky stared after him in amazement.
"What in tarnation got in dat nigger child?" she gasped.
Phyllis, having arranged the mail and delivered most of it, had left the store in charge of the clerk and retired to her private den, a cool room finished in restful tints at the northeast corner of the house. She was sitting by a window reading a magazine, when there came a knock. Her "Come in" disclosed 'Rastus and the whites of his rolling eyes.
She nodded and smiled. "What can I do for you, George Washington Abraham Lincoln Randolph?"
"I done come to tell you somepin I heerd whilst I was asleep in de live oak at the corral."
"Something you dreamed. It is very good of you, George Wash----"
"Now, don't you call me all dat again, Miss Phyl. And I didn't dream it nerrer. I woke up and heerd it. Mr. Jim Yeager and dat nester they call Keller wuz a-talkin', and Mr. Jim he allowed dat Keller wuz a rustler, and den Keller he allowed dat Mr. Phil wuz de rustler."
"What!" The girl had sprung to her feet, amazed, her dark eyes blazing indignation.
"Tha's what he said. He went on to tell how he done found a knife by the dead cow, an' 'twuz yore knife, an' you done loan it to Mr. Phil."
"He said that!" She was a creature transformed by passion. The hot blood of Southern ancestors raced through her veins clamorously. She wanted to strike down this man, to annihilate him and the cowardly lie he had given to shield himself. And pat to her need came the very person she could best use for her instrument.
Healy stood surprised in the doorway, confronted by the slender young amazon. The storm of passion in the eyes, the underlying flush in the dusky cheeks, indicated a new mood in his experience of this young woman of many moods.
"Come in and shut the door," she ordered. Then, "Tell him, 'Rastus."
The boy, all smiles gone now, repeated his story, and was excused.
"What do you think of that, Brill?" the girl demanded, after the door had closed on him.
The stockman's eyes had grown hard. "I think Keller's covering his own tracks. Of course we've got no direct proof, but----"
"We have," she broke in.
"I can't see it. According to Jim Yeager----"
"Jim lied. I asked him to."
"You--what?"
"I asked him to say that this man had come there to work for him. Jim was not to blame."
"But--why?"
She threw out a gesture of self-contempt. "Why did I do it? I don't know. Because he was wounded, I suppose."
"Wounded! Then I did hit him?"
"Yes. In the arm--a flesh wound. I met him riding through the mesquite. After I had tied up his wound, I took him to Jim's."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "So you tied up his wound?"
"Yes," she answered defiantly, her head up.
"That tender heart of yours," he murmured, with almost a sneer.
"Yes. I'm a fool."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well."
"And he pays me back by trying to throw it on Phil. Hunt him down, Brill. Bring him to me. I'll tell all I know against him," she cried vindictively.
"I'll get him, Phyl," he promised, and the sound of his laughter was not pleasant. "I'll get him for you, or find out why."
"Think of him trying to put it on Phil, and after I stood by him and kept his secret. Isn't that the worst ever?" the girl flamed.
"He rode away not five minutes ago as big as coffee on that ugly roan of his with the white stockings; knew what we thought about him, but didn't pay any more attention to us than as if we were bumps on a log."
Healy strode out to the porch, told his story, and within five minutes had organized his posse and appointed a rendezvous for two hours later at Seven Mile.
At the appointed time his men were on hand, six of them, armed with rifles and revolvers, ready for grim business.
From her window Phyllis saw them ride away, and persuaded herself that she was glad. Vengeance was about to fall upon this insolent freebooter who had not even manhood enough to appreciate a kindness. But as the hours passed she was beset by a consuming anxiety. What more likely than that he would resist! If so, there could be only one end. She could not keep her thoughts from those seven men whom she had sent against the one.
There was nobody to whom she could talk about it, for Phil and her father were away at Noches. Restless as a caged panther, she twice had her horse brought to the door, and rode into the hills to meet her posse. But she could not be sure which way they would come, and after venturing a short distance she would return for fear they might arrive in her absence. Night had fallen over the country, and the stars were out long before she got back the second time. Nine--ten--eleven o'clock struck, and still no sign of those for whom she waited.
At last they came, their prisoner riding in the midst, bareheaded and with his hands tied.
"I've got him, Phyl!" Healy cried in a voice that told the girl he was riding on a wave of triumph.
"I see you have."
Nevertheless she looked not at the victor, but at the vanquished, and never had she seen a man who looked more master of his fate than this one. He was smiling down at her whimsically, and she saw they had not taken him without a struggle. The marks of it were on them and on him. Healy's cheek bone was laid open in a nasty cut, and Slim had a handkerchief tied round his head.
As for Keller, his shirt was in ribbons and dyed with the stains of blood from the wound that had broken out again in the battle. The hair on the left side of his head was clotted with dried blood, and his cheeks were covered with it. Both eyes were blacked, and hands and face were scratched badly. But his mien was as jaunty, his smile as gallant, as if he had come at the head of a conquering army.
"Good evenin', Miss Sanderson," he bowed ironically.
She looked at him, and turned away without answering. She heard Healy curse softly and knew why. This man contrived somehow to rob him of his triumph.
"You are none of you hurt, Brill?" the girl asked in a low voice.
"No. He fought like a wild cat, but we took him by surprise. He had only his bare fists."
"How about him? Is he hurt?"
"I don't know--or care," the man answered sullenly.
"But he must be looked to."
"I don't know why. It ain't my fault we had to beat him up."
"I didn't say it _was_ your fault, Brill," she answered gently. "But any one can see he has lost a lot of blood, and his wounds are full of dust. They must be washed. I want him brought into the house. Aunt Becky and I will look after him."
"No need of that. Slim will fix him up."
She shook her head. "No, Brill."
His eyes gave way first, but his surrender came with a bad grace.
"All right, Phyl. But he's going to be covered by a gun all the time. I'm not taking chances on him."
"Then have him taken into my den. I'll wake Aunt Becky and we'll be there in a few minutes."
When Phyllis arrived with Aunt Becky she found the nester sitting on the lounge, Healy opposite him with a revolver close to his hand. The prisoner's arms had been freed. His sardonic smile still twitched at the corners of his mouth.
"You've ce'tainly begun your practice on a disreputable patient, Doctor Sanderson. I haven't had time to comb my hair since that little seance with your friends. We sure did have a sociable time. They're all good mixers." He looked into the long glass opposite, laughed at sight of his swollen face, then rattled into a misquotation of some verses he remembered:
"There's many a black black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine;
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May."
"Put the water and things down on that table, Becky," her mistress told her, ignoring the man's blithe folly.
"I'm giving you lots of chances to do the Good Samaritan act," he continued. "Honest, I hate to be so much trouble. You'll have to blame Mr. Healy. He's the responsible party for these little accidents of mine."
"I'm going to be responsible for one more," the stockman told him darkly.
"I understand your intentions are good, but I've noticed that sometimes expectation outruns performance," his prisoner came back promptly.
"Not this time, I think."
Phyllis understood that Brill was threatening the nester and that the latter was defying him lightly, but what either meant precisely she did not know. She proceeded to business without a word except the necessary directions to Becky. Not until the arm was dressed and the wound on the head washed and bandaged did she address Keller.
"I'll send you a powder that will help you get to sleep. The doctor left it here for Phil, and he did not need it," she said.
"Mebbe I won't need it, either." Keller laughed hardily, at his enemy it seemed to the girl, and with some hint of a sinister understanding between them from which she was excluded. "Thanks just the same, for that and for everything else you've done for me."
Phyllis said "Good night" stiffly, and followed the old negress out. She went directly to her bedroom, but not to sleep. The night was hot, and it had been to her a day full of excitement. She had much to think of. Going to the open window, she sat down in a low chair with her arms across the sill.
Two men met beneath her window.
"Gimme the makings, Slim," one said to the other.
While he was shaking the tobacco from the pouch to the paper, Slim spoke. "The boys ought all to be here in another hour, Budd. After that, it won't take us long."
"Not long," the fat man answered uneasily.
There was a silence. Slim broke it. "We got to do it, o' course."
"Looks like. Got to make an example. No peace on the range till we do."
"I hate like sin to, Budd. He's so damn game."
"Me, too. But we got to. No two ways about it."
"I reckon. Brill says so. But I wish the cuss had a chanct to fight for his life."
They moved off together in troubled silence, Budd's cigarette glowing red in the darkness. Behind them they left a girl shocked and rigid. They were going to lynch him! She knew it as certainly as if she had been told it in set words. Her blood grew cold, and she shivered. While the confused horror of it raced through her brain, she noticed subconsciously that her fingers on the sill were trembling violently.
What could she do? She was only a girl. These men deferred to her in the trivial pleasantries, but she knew they would go their grim way no matter how she pleaded. And it would be her fault. She had betrayed the rustler to them. It would be the same as if she had murdered him. He had known while she was tending his wounds that she had delivered him to death, and he had not even reproached her.
Courage flowed back to her heart. She would save him if it were possible. It must be by strategy if at all. But how? For of course he was guarded.
She stepped out into the corridor. All was dark there. She tiptoed along it to the guest room, and found the door unlocked. Nobody was inside. She canvassed in her mind the possibilities. They might have him outdoors or in the men's bunk house with them under a guard, or they might have locked him up somewhere until the arrival of the others. If the latter, it must be in the store, since that was the only safe place under lock and key.
Phyllis slipped out of the back door into the darkness, and skirted the house at a distance. There were lights in the bunk house of the ranch riders, and through the window she could see a group gathered. Creeping close to the window, she looked in. Their prisoner was not with them. In front of the store two men were seated in the darkness. She was almost upon them before she saw them. Each of them carried a rifle.
"Hello! Who's that?" one of them cried sharply.
It was Tom Dixon.
Phyllis came forward and spoke. "That you, Tom? I suppose you are guarding the prisoner."
"Yep. Can't you sleep, Phyl?" He walked a dozen yards with her.
"I couldn't, but I see you're keeping watch, all right. I probably can now. I suppose I was nervous."
"No wonder. But you may sleep, all right. He won't trouble you any. I'll guarantee that," he promised largely. "Oh, Phyl!"
She had turned to go, but she stopped at his call. "Well?"
"Don't you be mad at me. I was only fooling the other day. Course I hadn't ought to have got gay. But a fellow makes a break once in a while."
Under the stress of her deeper anxiety she had forgotten all about her tiff with him. It had seemed important at the time, but since then Tom and his affairs had been relegated to second place in her mind. He was only a boy, full of the vanity that was a part of him. Somehow, her anger against him was all burnt out.
"If you never will again, Tom," she conceded.
"I'll be good," he smiled, meaning that he would be good as long as he must.
"All right," she said, without much enthusiasm.
She left him and passed into the house without haste. But once inside she fairly flew to Phil's room. On a nail near the head of his bed hung a key. She took this, descended to the kitchen, and from there noiselessly down the stairway to the cellar. She groped her way without a light along the adobe wall till she came to a door which was unlocked. This opened into another part of the cellar, used as a room for storing supplies needed in their trade. Past barrels and boxes she went to another stairway and breathlessly ascended it. At the top of eight or nine steps a door barred progress. Very carefully she found the keyhole, fitted in the key, and by infinitesimal degrees unlocked the door.
The night seemed alive with the noise of her movements. Now the door creaked as it swung open before her. She waited, heart beating like a trip hammer, and stared into the blackness of the store.
"Who is it?" a voice asked in a low tone.
"It's me, Phyl Sanderson. Are you alone?" she whispered.
"Yes. Tied to a chair. Guards are just outside."
She went toward him softly with hands outstretched in the darkness, and presently her fingers touched his face. They travelled downward till they found the ropes which bound him. For a moment she fumbled at the knots before she remembered a swifter way.
"Wait," she breathed, and stole back of the counter to the case where pocketknives were kept.
Finding one, she ran to him and hacked at the rope till he was free.
He rose and stretched his cramped limbs.
"This way." Phyllis took him by the hand, and led him to the stairs. Together they descended, after she had locked the door. Another minute, and they stood in the kitchen, still hand in hand.
The girl released herself. "You will find Slim's horse tied to the fence of the corral. When you reach it, ride for your life," she said.
"Why have you saved me after you betrayed me?" he demanded.
"I save you because I did betray you. I couldn't have your blood on my head. Now, go."
"Not till I know why you betrayed me."
"_You_ can ask that." Her indignation gathered and broke. "Because you are what you are. Because I know what you told Jim Yeager this afternoon. Why don't you go?"
"What did I tell Yeager? About the knife, you mean?"
"You tried to lay it on Phil to save yourself."
"Did Yeager tell you that?"
"No, but I know it," She pushed him toward the door. "Go, while there is still a chance."
"I'm not going--not yet. Not till you promise to ask Yeager what I said."
A footstep sounded, and the door opened. The intruder stopped, his hand still on the handle, aware that there were others in the room.
"Who is it?" Phyllis breathed, stricken almost dumb with terror.
"It's Slim. Hope I ain't buttin' in, Phyllie."
Unconsciously he had given her the cue she needed.
"Well, you are." She laughed nervously, as might a lover caught unexpectedly. "It's--it's Phil," she pretended to pretend.
"Oh, it's Phil." Slim laughed in kindly derision, and declared before he went out: "I expect you would spell his name B-r-i-double l. Don't forget to invite me to the wedding, Phyllie. Meanwhile I'll be mum as a clam till you say the word."
With which he jingled away. The door was scarce closed before the girl turned on Keller.
"There! You see. They may catch you any moment."
"Will you ask Yeager?"
"Yes, if you'll go."
"All right. I'll go."
Still he did not leave. The magic of this slim girl had swept him from his feet. In imagination he still felt the touch of her warm fingers, soft as a caress, the thrill of her hair as it had brushed his cheek when she had stooped over him. The drag of sex was upon him and had set him trembling strangely.
"Why don't you go?" she cried softly.
He snatched himself away.
But before he had reached the door he came back in two strides. Startled and unnerved, she waited on him. He caught both her hands in his, and opened them wide so that she was drawn toward him by the swing of the motion. There for an instant he stood, looking down into her eyes by the faint light that sifted through the window upon her.
"What--what do you want?" she demanded tremulously, emotion flooding her in waves.
"Why are you saving me, girl?"
"I--don't know. I've told you why."
"I'm a villain, by your way of it, yet you save my life even while you think me a skunk. I can't thank you. What's the use of trying?"
He looked down into her eyes, and that gaze did more than thank her. It told her he would never forget and never let her forget. How it happened she could not afterward remember, but she found herself in his arms, his kiss tingling through her blood like wine.
She thrust him from her--and he was gone.
She sank into a chair beside the kitchen table, her pulses athrob with excitement. Scorn herself she might and would in good time, but just now her whole capacity for emotion was keyed to an agony of apprehension for this prince of scamps. By the beating of her galloping heart she timed his steps. He must have reached the horse now. Already he would have it untied, would be in the saddle. Surely by this time he had eluded the sentries and was slipping out of the danger zone. Before him lay the open road, the hills, and safety.
A cry rang out in the stillness--and another. A shot, the beat of running feet, a panted oath, more shots! The silent night had suddenly become vocal with action and the fierce passions of men. She covered her face with her hands to shut out the vision of what her imagination conjured--a horse flying with empty saddle into the darkness, while a huddled figure sank together lifeless by the roadside. _