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

even while she resented it. He was a trifle too much at his ease for one who had just been snatched from dire peril. Yet even in his insouciance there was something engaging; something almost of distinction.

      “What was the trouble?”

      Mirth bubbled in his gray eyes. “I gathered, ma'am, that they wanted to collect my scalp.”

      “Do what?” she frowned.

      “Bump me off—send me across the divide.”

      “Oh, I know that. But why?”

      He seemed to reproach himself. “Now how could I be so neglectful? I clean forgot to ask.”

      “That's ridiculous,” was her sharp verdict.

      “Yes, ma'am, plumb ridiculous. My only excuse is that they began scattering lead so sudden I didn't have time to ask many 'Whyfors.' I reckon we'll just have to call it a Wyoming difference of opinion,” he concluded pleasantly.

      “Which means, I suppose, that you are not going to tell me.”

      “I got so much else to tell y'u that's a heap more important,” he laughed. “Y'u see, I'm enjoyin' my first automobile ride. It was certainly thoughtful of y'u to ask me to go riding with y'u, Miss Messiter.”

      “So you know my name. May I ask how?” was her astonished question.

      He gave the low laugh that always seemed to suggest a private source of amusement of his own. “I suspicioned that might be your name when I say y'u come a-sailin' down from heaven to gather me up like Enoch.”

      “Why?”

      “Well, ma'am, I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this country. I don't seem to remember having seen one before.”

      “I see. You're quite a Sherlock Holmes. Do you know anything more about me?”

      “I know y'u have just fallen heir to the Lazy D. They say y'u are a schoolmarm, but I don't believe it.”

      “Well, I am.” Then, “Why don't you believe it?” she added.

      He surveyed her with his smile audacious, let his amused eyes wander down from the mobile face with the wild-rose bloom to the slim young figure so long and supple, then serenely met her frown.

      “Y'u don't look it.”

      “No? Are you the owner of a composite photograph of the teachers of the country?”

      He enjoyed again his private mirth. “I should like right well to have the pictures of some of them.”

      She glanced at him sharply, but he was gazing so innocently at the purple Shoshones in the distance that she could not give him the snub she thought he needed.

      “You are right. My name is Helen Messiter,” she said, by way of stimulating a counter fund of information. For, though she was a young woman not much given to curiosity, she was aware of an interest in this spare, broad-shouldered youth who was such an incarnation of bronzed vigor.

      “Glad to meet y'u, Miss Messiter,” he responded, and offered his firm brown hand in Western fashion.

      But she observed resentfully that he did not mention his own name. It was impossible to suppose that he knew no better, and she was driven to conclude that he was silent of set purpose. Very well! If he did not want to introduce himself she was not going to urge it upon him. In a businesslike manner she gave her attention to eating up the dusty miles.

      “Yes, ma'am. I reckon I never was more glad to death to meet a lady than I was to meet up with y'u,” he continued, cheerily. “Y'u sure looked good to me as y'u come a-foggin' down the road. I fair had been yearnin' for company but was some discouraged for fear the invitation had miscarried.” He broke off his sardonic raillery and let his level gaze possess her for a long moment. “Miss Messiter, I'm certainly under an obligation to y'u I can't repay. Y'u saved my life,” he finished gravely.

      “Nonsense.”

      “Fact.”

      “It isn't a personal matter at all,” she assured him, with a touch of impatient hauteur.

      “It 's a heap personal to me.”

      In spite of her healthy young resentment she laughed at the way in which he drawled this out, and with a swift sweep her boyish eyes took in again his compelling devil-may-care charm. She was a tenderfoot, but intuition as well as experience taught her that he was unusual enough to be one of ten thousand. No young Greek god's head could have risen more superbly above the brick-tanned column of the neck than this close-cropped curly one. Gray eyes, deep and unwavering and masterful, looked out of a face as brown as Wyoming. He was got up with no thought of effect, but the tigerish litheness, the picturesque competency of him, spake louder than costuming.

      “Aren't you really hurt worse than you pretend? I'm sure your ankle ought to be attended to as soon as possible.”

      “Don't tell me you're a lady doctor, ma'am,” he burlesqued his alarm.

      “Can you tell me where the nearest ranch house is?” she asked, ignoring his diversion.

      “The Lazy D is the nearest, I reckon.”

      “Which direction?”

      “North by east, ma'am.”

      “Then I'll take the most direct road to it.

      “In that case I'll thank y'u for my ride and get out here.”

      “But—why?”

      He waved a jaunty hand toward the recent battlefield. “The Lazy D lies right back of that hill. I expect, mebbe, those wolves might howl again if we went back.”

      “Where, then, shall I take you?”

      “I hate to trouble y'u to go out of your way.

      “I dare say, but I'm going just the same,” she told him, dryly.

      “If you're right determined—” He interrupted himself to point to the south. “Do y'u see that camel-back peak over there?”

      “The one with the sunshine on its lower edge?”

      “That's it, Miss Messiter. They call those two humps the Antelope Peaks. If y'u can drop me somewhere near there I think I'll manage all right.”

      “I'm not going to leave you till we reach a house,” she informed him promptly. “You're not fit to walk fifty yards.”

      “That's right kind of y'u, but I could not think of asking so much. My friends will find me if y'u leave me where I can work a heliograph.”

      “Or your enemies,” she cut in.

      “I hope not. I'd not likely have the luck to get another invitation right then to go riding with a friendly young lady.”

      She gave him direct, cool, black-blue eyes that met and searched his. “I'm not at all sure she is friendly. I shall want to find out the cause of the trouble you have just had before I make up my mind as to that.”

      “I judge people by their actions. Y'u didn't wait to find out before bringing the ambulance into action,” he laughed.

      “I see you do not mean to tell me.”

      “You're quite a lawyer, ma'am,” he evaded.

      “I find you a very slippery witness, then.”

      “Ask anything y'u like and I'll tell you.”

      “Very well. Who were those men, and why were they trying to kill you?”

      “They turned their wolf loose on me because I shot up one of them yesterday.”

      “Dear me! Is it your