The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine

      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