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

three is quite enough—recently,” she mimicked. “You seem to me a good deal of a desperado.”

      “Yes, ma'am.”

      “Don't say 'Yes, ma'am,' like that, as if it didn't matter in the least whether you are or not,” she ordered.

      “No, ma'am.”

      “Oh!” She broke off with a gesture of impatience at his burlesque of obedience. “You know what I mean—that you ought to deny it; ought to be furious at me for suggesting it.”

      “Ought I?”

      “Of course you ought.”

      “There's a heap of ways I ain't up to specifications,” he admitted, cheerfully.

      “And who are they—the men that were attacking you?”

      There was a gleam of irrepressible humor in the bold eyes. “Your cow-punchers, ma'am.”

      “My cow-punchers?”

      “They ce'tainly belong to the Lazy D outfit.”

      “And you say that you shot one of my men yesterday?” He could see her getting ready for a declaration of war.

      “Down by Willow Creek—Yes, ma'am,” he answered, comfortably.

      “And why, may I ask?” she flamed

      “That's a long story, Miss Messiter. It wouldn't be square for me to get my version in before your boys. Y'u ask them.” He permitted himself a genial smile, somewhat ironic. “I shouldn't wonder but what they'll give me a giltedged testimonial as an unhanged horse thief.”

      “Isn't there such a thing as law in Wyoming?” the girl demanded.

      “Lots of it. Y'u can buy just as good law right here as in Kalamazoo.”

      “I wish I knew where to find it.”

      “Like to put me in the calaboose?”

      “In the penitentiary. Yes, sir!” A moment later the question that was in her thoughts leaped hotly from her lips. “Who are you, sir, that dare to commit murder and boast of it?”

      She had flicked him on the raw at last. Something that was near to pain rested for a second in his eyes. “Murder is a hard name, ma'am. And I didn't say he was daid, or any of the three,” came his gentle answer.

      “You MEANT to kill them, anyhow.”

      “Did I?” There was the ghost of a sad smile about his eyes.

      “The way you act, a person might think you one of Ned Bannister's men,” she told him, scornfully.

      “I expect you're right.”

      She repented her a little at a charge so unjust. “If you are not ashamed of your name why are you so loath to part with it?”

      “Y'u didn't ask me my name,” he said, a dark flush sweeping his face.

      “I ask it now.”

      Like the light from a snuffed candle the boyish recklessness had gone out of his face. His jaws were set like a vise and he looked hard as hammered steel.

      “My name is Bannister,” he said, coldly.

      “Ned Bannister, the outlaw,” she let slip, and was aware of a strange sinking of the heart.

      It seemed to her that something sinister came to the surface in his handsome face. “I reckon we might as well let it go at that,” he returned, with bitter briefness.

      Chapter 2.

       The King of the Big Horn Country

       Table of Contents

      Two months before this time Helen Messiter had been serenely teaching a second grade at Kalamazoo, Michigan, notwithstanding the earnest efforts of several youths of that city to induce her to retire to domesticity “What's the use of being a schoolmarm?” had been the burden of their plaint. “Any spinster can teach kids C-A-T, Cat, but only one in several thousand can be the prettiest bride in Kalamazoo.” None of them, however, had been able to drive the point sufficiently home, and it is probable that she would have continued to devote herself to Young America if an uncle she had never seen had not died without a will and left her a ranch in Wyoming yclept the Lazy D.

      When her lawyer proposed to put the ranch on the market Miss Helen had a word to say.

      “I think not. I'll go out and see it first, anyhow,” she said.

      “But really, my dear young lady, it isn't at all necessary. Fact is, I've already had an offer of a hundred thousand dollars for it. Now, I should judge that a fair price.”

      “Very likely,” his client interrupted, quietly. “But, you see, I don't care to sell.”

      “Then what in the world are you going to do with it?”

      “Run it.”

      “But, my dear Miss Messiter, it isn't an automobile or any other kind of toy. You must remember that it takes a business head and a great deal of experience to make such an investment pay. I really think—”

      “My school ends on the fourteenth of June. I'll get a substitute for the last two months. I shall start for Wyoming on the eighteenth of April.”

      The man of law gasped, explained the difficulties again carefully as to a child, found that he was wasting his breath, and wisely gave it up.

      Miss Messiter had started on the eighteenth of April, as she had announced. When she reached Gimlet Butte, the nearest railroad point to the Lazy D, she found a group of curious, weatherbeaten individuals gathered round a machine foreign to their experience. It was on a flat car, and the general opinion ran the gamut from a newfangled sewing machine to a thresher. Into this guessing contest came its owner with so brisk and businesslike an energy that inside of two hours she was testing it up and down the wide street of Gimlet Butte, to the wonder and delight of an audience to which each one of the eleven saloons of the city had contributed its admiring quota.

      Meanwhile the young woman attended strictly to business. She had disappeared for half an hour with a suit case into the Elk House; and when she returned in a short-skirted corduroy suit, leggings and wide-brimmed gray Stetson hat, all Gimlet Butte took an absorbing interest in the details of this delightful adventure that had happened to the town. The population was out en masse to watch her slip down the road on a trial trip.

      Presently “Soapy” Sothern, drifting in on his buckskin from the Hoodoo Peak country, where for private reasons of his own he had been for the past month a sojourner, reported that he had seen the prettiest sight in the State climbing under a gasoline bronc with a monkey-wrench in her hand. Where? Right over the hill on the edge of town. The immediate stampede for the cow ponies was averted by a warning chug-chug that sounded down the road, followed by the appearance of a flashing whir that made the ponies dance on their hind legs.

      “The gasoline bronc lady sure makes a hit with me,” announced “Texas,” gravely. “I allow I'll rustle a job with the Lazy D outfit.”

      “She ce'tainly rides herd on that machine like a champeen,” admitted Soapy. “I reckon I'll drift over to the Lazy D with you to look after yore remains, Tex, when the lightning hits you.”

      Miss Messiter swung the automobile round in a swift circle, came to an abrupt halt in front of the hotel, and alighted without delay. As she passed in through the half score of admirers she had won, her dark eyes swept smilingly over assembled Cattleland. She had already met most of them at the launching of the machine from the flat car, and had directed their perspiring energies as they labored to follow her orders. Now she nodded a recognition with a little ripple of gay laughter.

      “I'm delighted to be able to contribute to the entertainment of Gimlet