The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
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man looked sulkily across the valley, his lips trembling with vexation and the shame of knowing that this girl had been a witness of that scene when he had fled like a scared rabbit and left her to bear the brunt of what he had done.
"You told me to go, and now you blame me for doing what you said," he complained bitterly.
She realized the weakness of his defense—that he had saved himself at the expense of the girl he claimed to love, simply because she had offered herself as a sacrifice in his place. She thought of another man, who, at the risk of his life, had held back the half dozen pursuers just to give a better chance to a girl he had not known a week. She thought of the cattleman who had ridden gayly into this valley of enemies, because he loved her, and was willing to face any punishment for the wrong he had done her. Her brother, too, pointed the same moral. He had defied the enemy, though he had been in his power. Not one of them would have done what Tom Dixon, in his panic terror, had allowed himself to do. But they were men, all of them—men of that stark courage that clings to self-respect rather than to life. This youth had met the acid test, and had failed in the assay. She had no anger toward him—only a kindly pity, and a touch of contempt which she could not help.
"No—I don't blame you, Tom," she told him, very kindly. "But I can't marry you. I couldn't if you explained till Christmas. That is final. Now let us be friends."
She held out her hand. He looked at it through the tears of mortification that were in his eyes, dashed it aside with an oath, swung to the saddle, and galloped down the road.
Phyllis gave a wistful sigh. Tears filmed her eyes. He was her first lover, had given her apples and candy hearts when he was in the third grade and she learning her A, B, C. So she felt a heartache to see him go like this. Their friendship was shattered, too. Nor had she experience enough to know that this could not have endured, save as a form, after the wrench he had given it. Yet she knew him well enough now to be sure that it was his vanity and self-esteem that were hurt, and not his love. He would soon find consolation among the other ranch girls, upon whom he had been used to lavish his attentions at intervals when she was not handy to receive them.
"Was Tom Dixon mean to you, teacher?"
Little five-year-old Jimmie Tryon was standing before her, feet apart, fists knotted, and brow furrowed. She swooped upon her champion and snatched him up for a kiss.
"Nobody has been mean to teacher, Jimmie, you dear little kiddikins," she cried. "It's all right, honey. Tom thinks it isn't, but before long he'll know it is."
"Who'll tell him?" Jimmie wanted to know anxiously.
"Some nice girl, little curiosity box. I don't know who yet, but it will be one of two or three I could name," she laughed.
She harnessed the horse and hitched it to the trap in which Jimmie and she came to school. But before she had gathered up the reins to start, another young man strolled upon the scene.
This one was walking and carried a rifle.
At sight of him a glow began to burn through her dark cheeks. They had not been alone together before since that moment when the stress of their emotion had swept them to a meeting of warm lips and warm bodies that had startled her by the electric pulsing of her blood.
Her eyes could not hold to his. Shame dragged the lashes down.
With him it was not shame. The male in him rode triumphant because he had moved a girl to the deeps of her nature. But something in him, some saving sense of embarrassment, of reverence for the purity and innocence he sensed in her, made him shrink from pressing the victory. His mind cast about for a commonplace with which to meet her.
He held up as a trophy of his prowess two cottontails. "Who says I can't shoot?" he wanted to know boisterously.
"Where did you buy them?" she scoffed, faintly trying for sauciness.
"That's a fine reward for honest virtue, after I tramped five miles to get them for your supper," protested Keller.
She recovered her composure quickly, as women will.
"If they are for my supper, we'll have to ask him to ride home with us—won't we, Jimmie? It would never do to have them reach the ranch too late," she said, making room for Keller in the seat beside her.
It was after she had driven several hundred yards that he said, with a smile: "I met a young man on horseback as I was coming up. He went by me like a streak of light. Looked like he found this a right mournful world. You had ought to scatter sunshine and not gloom, Miss Phyllis."
"Am I scattering gloom?" she asked demurely.
"Not right now," he laughed. "But looks like you have been."
She flicked a fly from the flank of her horse before she answered: "Some people are so noticing."
"It was hanging right heavy on him. Had the look of a man who had lost his last friend," the young man observed meditatively.
"Dear me! How pathetic!"
"Yes—he sure looked like he'd rejoice to plug another cattleman. I 'most arranged to send for Buck Weaver again," said Keller calmly.
Phyllis turned on him eyes brilliant with amazement. "What's that you say?"
"I said he looked some like he'd admire to go gunning again."
"Yes, but you said too——"
"Sho! I've been using my eyes and ears. I never did find that story of yours easy to swallow. When I discovered from your brother that you was riding with Tom Dixon the day Buck was shot, and when I found out from 'Rastus that the gun that did the shooting was Dixon's, I surely smelt a mouse. Come to mill the thing out, I knew you led Buck's boys off on a blind trail, while the real coyote hunted cover."
"He isn't a coyote," she objected.
Larrabie thought of the youth with a faint smile of scorn. He knew how to respect an out-and-out villain; but there was no bottom to a man who would shoot from cover without warning, and then leave a girl to bear the blame of his wrongdoing. "No—I reckon coyote is too big a name for him," he admitted.
"Buck Weaver ruined his father and drove him from his homestead. It was natural he should feel a grudge."
"That's all right, too. We're talking about the way he settled it. How come you to let him do it?"
"I was riding about twenty yards behind him. Suddenly I saw his gun go up, and stopped. I thought it might be an antelope. As soon as he had fired, he turned and told me he had shot Weaver. The poor boy was crazy with fear, now that he had done it. I took his gun and made him hide in the big rocks, while I cut across toward the cañon. The men saw me, and gave chase."
"They fired at you. Thank God, none of them hit you," said Keller, with emphasis.
Her swift gaze appreciated the deep feeling that welled from him. "Of course they did not know I was a woman. All they could see was that somebody was riding through the chaparral."
"Jimmie, what do you think of a girl game enough to take so big a chance to save a friend? Deserves a Carnegie medal, don't you reckon?" Keller put the question to the third passenger, using him humorously as a vent to his feelings.
Phyllis did not look at him, nor he at her. "And what do you think of a man game enough to take the same chance to save a girl who was not even a friend?" the girl asked of little Jimmie, as lightly as she could.
"Wasn't she? Well, if my friends will save my life every time I need them to, like this enemy did, I'll be satisfied with them a-plenty."
"He stood by her, too," she answered, trying to keep the matter impersonal.
"Perhaps he wanted to make her his friend," Larrabie suggested.
"There is no perhaps about his success," she said quietly, her gaze just beyond the ears of her horse. The young man dared now to look at her—a child of the sun despite her duskiness. Eagerly he awaited the deep, lustrous eyes that would presently sweep round upon him, big and dark and sparkling. When she turned her head, they were full of