alarm: “He’s all right, dad. Can’t you tell by his way of talking that he’s from the South? Make him lie down.”
Something sweet and vibrant in the voice lingered afterward in the Texan’s mind almost like a caress, but at the time he was too busy to think of this. He dropped behind a cottonwood, and drew his revolver.
“How many of them are there?” he asked of the lad, in a whisper.
“About six, I think. I’m sorry I shot at you.”
“What’s the row?”
“They followed us out of Gimlet Butte. They’ve been drinking. Isn’t that some one climbing up the side of the ridge?”
“I believe it is. Let me have your rifle, kid.”
“What for?” The youngster took careful aim, and fired.
A scream from the sagebrush—just one, and then no more.
“Bully for you’, Arlie,” the old man said.
None of them spoke for some minutes, then Fraser heard a sob—a stifled one, but unmistakable none the less.
“Don’t be afraid, kid. We’ll stand ‘em off,” the Texan encouraged.
“I ain’t afraid, but I—I——Oh, God, I’ve killed a man.”
The Texan stared at him, where he lay in the heavy shadows, shaken with his remorse. “Holy smoke! Wasn’t he aiming to kill you? He likely isn’t dead, anyhow. You got real troubles to worry about, without making up any.”
He could see the youngster shaking with the horror of it, and could hear the staccato sobs forcing themselves through the closed teeth. Something about it, some touch of pathos he could not account for, moved his not very accessible heart. After all, he was a slim little kid to be engaged in such a desperate encounter Fraser remembered his own boyhood and the first time he had ever seen bloodshed, and, recalling it, he slipped across in the darkness and laid an arm across the slight shoulder.
“Don’t you worry, kid. It’s all right. You didn’t mean—”
He broke off in swift, unspeakable amazement. His eye traveled up the slender figure from the telltale skirt. This was no boy at all, but a girl. As he took in the mass of blue-black hair and the soft but clean-cut modeling from ear to chin, his hand fell from her shoulder. What an idiot he had been not to know from the first that such a voice could have come only from a woman! He had been deceived by the darkness and by the slouch hat she wore. He wanted to laugh in sardonic scorn of his perception.
But on the heel of that came a realization of her danger. He must get her out of there at once, for he knew that the enemy must be circling round, to take them on the flank too. It was not a question of whether they could hold off the attackers. They might do that, and yet she might be killed while they were doing it. A man used to coping with emergencies, his brain now swiftly worked out a way of escape.
“Yore father and I will take care of these coyotes. You slip along those shadows up the hill to where my Teddy hawss is, and burn the wind out of here,” he told her.
“I’ll not leave dad,” she said quickly.
The old mountaineer behind the horse laughed apologetically. “I been trying to git her to go, but she won’t stir. With the pinto daid, o’ course we couldn’t both make it.”
“That’s plumb foolishness,” the Texan commented irritably.
“Mebbe,” admitted the girl; “but I reckon I’ll stay long as dad does.”
“No use being pigheaded about it.”
Her dark eyes flashed. “Is this your say-so, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is?” she asked sharply, less because she resented what he said than because she was strung to a wire edge.
His troubled gaze took in again her slim girlishness. The frequency of danger had made him proof against fear for himself, but just now he was very much afraid for her. Hard man as he was, he had the Southerner’s instinctive chivalry toward woman.
“You better go, Arlie,” her father counseled weakly.
“Well, I won’t,” she retorted emphatically.
The old man looked whimsically at the Texan. “Yo’ see yo’self how it is, stranger.”
Fraser saw, and the girl’s stanchness stirred his admiration even while it irritated him. He made his decision immediately.
“All right. Both of you go.”
“But we have only one horse,” the girl objected. “They would catch us.”
“Take my Teddy.”
“And leave you here?” The dark eyes were full on him again, this time in a wide-open surprise.
“Oh, I’ll get out once you’re gone. No trouble about that.”
“How?”
“We couldn’t light out, and leave yo’ here,” the father interrupted.
“Of course we couldn’t,” the girl added quickly. “It isn’t your quarrel, anyhow.”
“What good can you do staying here?” argued Fraser. “They want you, not me. With you gone, I’ll slip away or come to terms with them. They haven’t a thing against me.”
“That’s right,” agreed the older man, rubbing his stubbly beard with his hand. “That’s sho’ly right.”
“But they might get you before they understood,” Arlie urged.
“Oh, I’ll keep under cover, and when it’s time, I’ll sing out and let them know. Better leave me that rifle, though.” He went right on, taking it for granted that she had consented to go: “Slip through those shadows up that draw. You’ll have no trouble with Teddy. Whistle when you’re ready, and your father will make a break up the hill on his hawss. So-long. See you later some time, mebbe.”
She went reluctantly, not convinced, but overborne by the quality of cheerful compulsion that lay in him. He was not a large man, though the pack and symmetry of his muscles promised unusual strength. But the close-gripped jaw, the cool serenity of the gray eyes that looked without excitement upon whatever they saw, the perfect poise of his carriage—all contributed to a personality plainly that of a leader of men.
It was scarce a minute later that the whistle came from the hilltop. The mountaineer instantly swung to the saddle and set his pony to a canter up the draw. Fraser could see him join his daughter in the dim light, for the moon had momentarily gone behind a cloud, but almost at once the darkness swallowed them.
Some one in the sagebrush called to a companion, and the Texan knew that the attackers had heard the sound of the galloping horses. Without waiting an instant, he fired twice in rapid succession.
“That’ll hold them for a minute or two,” he told himself. “They won’t understand it, and they’ll get together and have a powwow.”
He crouched behind the dead horse, his gaze sweeping the wash, the sagebrush, and the distant group of cottonwoods from which he had seen a shot fired. Though he lay absolutely still, without the least visible excitement, he was alert and tense to the finger tips. Not the slightest sound, not the smallest motion of the moonlit underbrush, escaped his unwavering scrutiny.
The problem before him was to hold the attackers long enough for Arlie and her father to make their escape, without killing any of them or getting killed himself. He knew that, once out of the immediate vicinity, the fugitives would leave the road and take to some of the canyons that ran from the foothills into the mountains. If he could secure them a start of fifteen minutes that ought to be enough.
A voice from the wash presently hailed him:
“See here! We’re going to take you back with us, old man. That’s a cinch. We want you for that Squaw Creek raid, and we’re