Outlaw Ranch. Frank C. Robertson

Chet said. “And I’d like tuh do something tuh help yuh find yore brother.”

      “I’m afraid we owe you something already,” she said. “Aren’t you the man who gave us back our money?”

      She was looking straight at him out of honest golden-brown eyes which wouldn’t be denied. He couldn’t lie to her.

      “Yes, I’m the man,” he admitted.

      “And those other two were the men who held us up?”

      “Yes.”

      The question he had dreaded came as inexorably as doom.

      “Then why are you traveling with them?”

      He couldn’t tell her that it was because he wanted to protect her and her brother, and no other reason would suffice, unless he branded himself as a crook.

      “We just happen tuh be travelin’ in the same direction,” he said weakly. “As for the robbery, it was probably a drunken prank. No doubt they would have given you back yore money later.”

      “It was no prank,” she declared. “And if it was a joke it was just as reprehensible.”

      “I agree with you,” was all Chet could find to say. He had no excuse for reopening the discussion about her brother; no reason for delaying his departure. Leda Harrison knew that his two companions were outlaws, and she knew that he knew it. He had returned her money, but that couldn’t condone his evil association in her eyes.

      “It’d been a dang poor joke on them fellers if they hadn’t busted my rifle.” Nevada spoke up. “If they hadn’t bent the bar’l around like a letter ‘s,’ I’d uh trailed ’em tuh Kirk Holliday’s own bailiwick but what I’d uh got that money back.”

      “Well, I hope you don’t have no more bad luck,” Chet mumbled, and remounted his pony. He could see Biggers and Fossum watching him, so he herded the horses on to the corral.

      “Why don’t yuh invite yore friends along when yuh go callin’?” Al Biggers inquired sourly.

      “I don’t pay social calls this early in the mornin’,” Chet replied evenly. “I was just helpin’ the kid ketch his horses.”

      “Yeah? Took yuh a long time, didn’t it?”

      “That girl burned her hand. I helped wrap it up.”

      “What the hell is that outfit doin’ in here? Where they headin’?” Biggers demanded.

      “To tell the truth,” Chet said, looking the man straight in the eye, “they’re lookin’ for that man Charley Harrison I spoke tuh you about. He’s their brother.”

      “The hell he is!” Biggers blurted.

      “Are you sure you boys don’t remember him?”

      “There never was nobody in this country by that name,” Biggers asserted flatly.

      “Mebbe he went by another name,” Chet murmured. “They claim that he owned the I X L.”

      “Owned the—” Biggers paused abruptly and directed a glance at his companion.

      Chet saw Fossum shake his head slightly.

      “Somebody,” the outlaw said heavily, “has been feedin’ ’em taffy. The I X L has belonged tuh old Adam Broome for twenty years.”