to hold toward his comrade precisely the same attitude as he had before discovering her sex, he could not put into his words the same peremptory sting that, he had done before when he found that occasionally necessary. For no matter how severely he must seem to deal with her to avoid her own suspicions as to what he knew, as well as to keep from arousing those of others, his heart was telling a very different story all the time. He could see again the dainty grace with which she had danced for him, heard again that low voice breaking into a merry piping lilt, warmed once more to the living, elusive smile, at once so tender and mocking. He might set his will to preserve an even front to her gay charm, but it was beyond him to control the thrills that shot his pulses.
Chapter 8.
First Blood!
Occasionally Alice Mackenzie met Collins on the streets of Tucson. Once she saw him at the hotel where she was staying, deep in a discussion with her father of ways and means of running down the robbers of the Limited. He did not, however, make the least attempt to push their train acquaintanceship beyond the give and take of casual greeting. Without showing himself unfriendly, he gave her no opportunity to determine how far they would go with each other. This rather piqued her, though she would probably have rebuffed him if he had presumed far. Of which probability Val Collins was very well aware.
They met one morning in front of a drug store downtown. She carried a parasol that was lilac-trimmed, which shade was also the outstanding note of her dress. She was looking her very best, and no doubt knew it. To Val her dainty freshness seemed to breathe the sweetness of spring violets.
“Good morning, Miss Mackenzie. Weather like this I'm awful glad I ain't a mummy,” he told her. “The world's mighty full of beautiful things this glad day.”
“Essay on the Appreciation of Nature, by Professor Collins,” she smiled.
“To be continued in our next,” he amended. “Won't you come in and have a sundae? You look as if you didn't know it, but the rest of us have discovered it's a right warm morning.”
Looking across the little table at him over her sundae, she questioned him with innocent impudence. “I saw you and dad deep in plans Tuesday. I suppose by now you have all the train robbers safely tucked away in the penitentiary?”
“Not yet,” he answered cheerfully.
“Not yet!” Her lifted eyebrows and the derisive flash beneath mocked politely his confidence. “By this time I should think they might be hunting big game in deepest Africa.”
“They might be, but they're not.”
“What about that investment in futurities you made on the train? The month is more than half up. Do you see any chance of realizing?”
“It looks now as if I might be a false prophet, but I feel way down deep that I won't. In this prophet's business confidence is half the stock in trade.”
“Really. I'm very curious to know what it is you predicted. Was it something good?”
“Good for me,” he nodded.
“Then I think you'll get it,” she laughed. “I have noticed that it is the people that expect things—and then go out and take them—that inherit the earth these days. The meek have been dispossessed.”
“I'm glad I have your good wishes.”
“I didn't say you had, but you'll get along just as well without them,'' she answered with a cool little laugh as she rose.
“I'd like to discuss that proposition with you more at length. May I call on you some evening this week, Miss Mackenzie?”
There was a sparkle of hidden malice in her answer. “You're too late, Mr. Collins. We'll have to leave it undiscussed. I'm going to leave to-day for my uncle s ranch, the Rocking Chair.”
He was distinctly disappointed, though he took care not to show it. Nevertheless, the town felt empty after her train had gone. He was glad when later in the day a message came calling him to Epitaph. It took him at least seventy-five miles nearer her.
Before he had been an hour at Epitaph the sheriff knew he had struck gold this time. Men were in town spending money lavishly, and at a rough description they answered to the ones he wanted. Into the Gold Nugget Saloon that evening dropped Val Collins, big, blond, and jaunty. He looked far less the vigorous sheriff out for business than the gregarious cowpuncher on a search for amusement.
Del Hawkes, an old-time friend of his staging days, pounced on him and dragged him to the bar, whence his glance fell genially on the roulette wheel and its devotees, wandered casually across the impassive poker and Mexican monte players, took in the enthroned musicians, who were industriously murdering “La Paloma,” and came to rest for barely an instant at a distant faro table. In the curly-haired good-looking young fellow facing the dealer he saw one of the men he had come seeking. Nor did he need to look for the hand with the missing trigger finger to be sure it was York Neil—that same gay, merry-hearted York with whom he used to ride the range, changed now to a miscreant who had elected to take the short cut to wealth.
But the man beside Neil, the dark-haired, pallid fellow from whose presence something at once formidable and sinister and yet gallant seemed to breathe—the very sight of him set the mind of Collins at work busily upon a wild guess. Surely here was a worthy figure upon whom to set the name and reputation of the notorious Wolf Leroy.
Yet the sheriff's eyes rested scarce an instant before they went traveling again, for he wanted to show as yet no special interest in the object of his suspicions. The gathering was a motley one, picturesque in its diversity. For here had drifted not only the stranded derelicts of a frontier civilization, but selected types of all the turbid elements that go to make up its success. Mexican, millionaire, and miner brushed shoulders at the roulette-wheel. Chinaman and cow-puncher, Papago and plainsman, tourist and tailor, bucked the tiger side by side with a democracy found nowhere else in the world. The click of the wheel, the monotonous call of the croupier, the murmur of many voices in alien tongues, and the high-pitched jarring note of boisterous laughter, were all merged in a medley of confusion as picturesque as the scene itself.
“Business not anyways slack at the Nugget,” ventured Collins, to the bartender.
“No, I don't know as 'tis. Nearly always somethin' doing in little old Epitaph,” answered the public quencher of thirsts, polishing the glass top of the bar with a cloth.
“Playing with the lid off back there, ain't they?” The sheriff's nod indicated the distant faro-table.
“That's right, I guess. Only blue chips go.”
“It's Wolf Leroy—that Mexican-looking fellow there,” Hawkes explained in a whisper. “A bad man with the gun, they say, too. Well, him and York Neil and Scott Dailey blew in last night from their mine, up at Saguache. Gave it out he was going to break the bank, Leroy did. Backing that opinion usually comes high, but Leroy is about two thousand to the good, they say.”
“Scott Dailey? Don't think I know him.”
“That shorthorn in chaps and a yellow bandanna is the gentleman; him that's playing the wheel so constant. You don't miss no world-beater when you don't know Scott. He's Leroy's Man Friday. Understand they've struck it rich. Anyway, they're hitting high places while the mazuma lasts.”
“I can't seem to locate their mine. What's its brand?”
“The Dalriada. Some other guy is in with them; fellow by the name of Hardman, if I recollect; just bought out a livery barn in town here.”
“Queer thing, luck; strikes about as unexpected as lightning. Have another, Del?”
“Don't care if I do, Val. It always makes me thirsty to see people I like. Anything new up Tucson way?”
The band had fallen on “Manzanilla,”