The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
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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."
"I don't think it."
"You think I'm entirely to blame in this trouble with your people. Don't dodge. You know you think I'm a bully."
"I think you're very arbitrary," she replied, flushing.
"Same thing, I reckon. Maybe I am. Did you ever hear my side of the story?"
"No. I'll listen, if you will tell me."
Weaver shook his head. "No—I guess that wouldn't be playing fair. You're on the other side of the fence. That's where you belong. Come to that, I'm no white-winged angel, anyhow. All that's said of me—most of it, at least—I sure enough deserve."
"I wonder," she mused, smiling at him.
Scarcely a week before, she had been so immature that even callow Tom Dixon had seemed experienced beside her. Now she was a young woman in bloom, instinctively sure of herself, even without experience to guide her. Though he had never said so, she knew quite well that this berserk of the plains had begun to love her with all the strength of his untamed heart. She would have been less than human had it not pleased her, even though, at the same time, it terrified her.
Buck swept his hand around the horizon. "Ask anybody. They'll all give me the same certificate of character. And I reckon they ain't so far out, either," he added grimly.
"Perhaps they are all right, and yet all wrong too."
He looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"Maybe they don't see the other side of you" said Phyllis gently.
"How do you know there's another side?"
"I don't know how, but I do."
"I reckon it must be a right puny one."
"It has a good deal to fight against, hasn't it?"
"You're right it has. There's a devil in me that gets up on its hind legs and strangles what little good it finds. But it certainly beats me how you know so much that goes on inside a sweep like me."
"You forget. I'm not very good myself. You know my temper runs away with me, too."
"You blessed lamb!" she heard him say under his breath; and the way he said it made the exclamation half a groan.
For her naive confession emphasized the gulf between them. Yet it pleased him mightily that she linked herself with him as a fellow wrongdoer.
"I suppose you've been wondering why your people have made no attempt to rescue you," he said presently; for