be Dick’s to get put out in the cold!”
Nevertheless, though he tried to act the philosopher, it cut him that the high-spirited girl had condemned him. He felt himself in a false position from which he could not easily extricate himself. The worst of it was that if it came to a showdown he could not expect the simple truth to exonerate him.
From where they rode there drifted to him occasionally the sound of the gay voices of the young people. It struck him for the first time that he was getting old. Arlie could not be over eighteen, and Dick perhaps twenty-one. Maybe young people like that thought a fellow of twenty-seven a Methusaleh.
After a time the thirsty cattle smelt water and hit a bee line so steadily for it that they needed no watching. Every minute or two one of the leaders stretched out its neck and let out a bellow without slackening its pace.
Steve lazed on his pony, shifting his position to ease his cramped limbs after the manner of the range rider. In spite of himself, his eyes would drift toward the jaunty little figure on the pinto. The masculine in him approved mightily her lissom grace and the proud lilt of her dark head, with its sun-kissed face set in profile to him. He thought her serviceable costume very becoming, from the pinched felt hat pinned to the dark mass of hair, and the red silk kerchief knotted loosely round the pretty throat, to the leggings beneath the corduroy skirt and the flannel waist with sleeves rolled up in summer-girl fashion to leave the tanned arms bare to the dimpled elbows.
The trail, winding through a narrow defile, brought them side by side again.
“Ever notice what a persistent color buckskin is, Steve?” inquired France, by way of bringing him into the conversation. “It’s strong in every one of these cattle, though the old man has been trying to get rid of it for ten years.”
“You mustn’t talk to me, Dick,” responded his friend gravely. “Little Willie told a lie, and he’s being stood in a corner.”
Arlie flushed angrily, opened her mouth to speak, and, changing her mind, looked at him witheringly. He didn’t wither, however. Instead, he smiled broadly, got out his mouth organ, and cheerfully entertained them with his favorite, “I Met My Love In the Alamo.”
The hot blood under dusky skin held its own in her cheeks. She was furious with him, and dared not trust herself to speak. As soon as they had passed through the defile she spurred forward, as if to turn the leaders. France turned to his friend and laughed ruefully.
“She’s full of pepper, Steve.”
The ranger nodded. “She’s all right, Dick. If you want to know, she’s got a right to make a doormat of me. I lied to her. I was up against it, and I kinder had to. You ride along and join her. If you want to get right solid, tell her how many kinds of a skunk I am. Worst of it is, I ain’t any too sure I’m not.”
“I’m sure for you then, Steve,” the lad called back, as he loped forward after the girl.
He was so sure, that he began to praise his friend to Arlie, to tell her of what a competent cowman he was, how none of them could make a cut or rope a wild steer like him. She presently wanted to know whether Dick could not find something more interesting to talk about.
He could not help smiling at her downright manner. “You’ve surely got it in for him, Arlie. I thought you liked him.”
She pulled up her horse, and looked at him. “What made you think that? Did he tell you so?”
Dick fairly shouted. “You do rub it in, girl, when you’ve got a down on a fellow. No, he didn’t tell me. You did.”
“Me?” she protested indignantly. “I never did.”
“Oh, you didn’t say so, but I don’t need a church to fall on me before I can take a hint. You acted as though you liked him that day you and him came riding into camp.”
“I didn’t do any such thing, Dick France. I don’t like him at all,” very decidedly.
“All the boys do—all but Jed. I don’t reckon he does.”
“Do I have to like him because the boys do?” she demanded.
“O’ course not.” Dick stopped, trying to puzzle it out. “He says you ain’t to blame, that he lied to you. That seems right strange, too. It ain’t like Steve to lie.”
“How do you know so much about him? You haven’t known him a week.”
“That’s what Jed says. I say it ain’t a question of time. Some men I’ve knew ten years I ain’t half so sure of. He’s a man from the ground up. Any one could tell that, before they had seen him five minutes.”
Secretly, the girl was greatly pleased. She so wanted to believe that Dick was right. It was what she herself had thought.
“I wish you’d seen him the day he pulled Siegfried out of Lost Creek. Tell you, I thought they were both goners,” Dick continued.
“I expect it was most ankle-deep,” she scoffed. “Hello, we’re past Bald Knob!”
“They both came mighty nigh handing in their checks.”
“I didn’t know that, though I knew, of course, he was fearless,” Arlie said.
“What’s that?” Dick drew in his horse sharply, and looked back.
The sound of a rifle shot echoed from hillside to hillside. Like a streak of light, the girl’s pinto flashed past him. He heard her give a sobbing cry of anguish. Then he saw that Steve was slipping very slowly from his saddle.
A second shot rang out. The light was beginning to fail, but he made out a man’s figure crouched among the small pines on the shoulder of Bald Knob. Dick jerked out his revolver as he rode back, and fired twice. He was quite out of pistol range, but he wanted the man in ambush to see that help was at hand. He saw Arlie fling herself from her pony in time to support the Texan just as he sank to the ground.
“She’ll take care of Steve. It’s me for that murderer,” the young man thought.
Acting upon that impulse, he slid from his horse and slipped into the sagebrush of the hillside. By good fortune he was wearing a gray shirt of a shade which melted into that of the underbrush. Night falls swiftly in the mountains, and already dusk was softly spreading itself over the hills.
Dick went up a draw, where young pines huddled together in the trough; and from the upper end of this he emerged upon a steep ridge, eyes and ears alert for the least sign of human presence. A third shot had rung out while he was in the dense mass of foliage of the evergreens, but now silence lay heavy all about him. The gathering darkness blurred detail, so that any one of a dozen bowlders might be a shield for a crouching man.
Once, nerves at a wire edge from the strain on him, he thought he saw a moving figure. Throwing up his gun, he fired quickly. But he must have been mistaken, for, shortly afterward, he heard some one crashing through dead brush at a distance.
“He’s on the run, whoever he is. Guess I’ll get back to Steve,” decided France wisely.
He found his friend stretched on the ground, with his head in Arlie’s lap.
“Is it very bad?” he asked the girl.
“I don’t know. There’s no light. Whatever shall we do?” she moaned.
“I’m a right smart of a nuisance, ain’t I?” drawled the wounded man unexpectedly.
She leaned forward quickly. “Where are you hit?”
“In the shoulder, ma’am.”
“Can you ride, Steve? Do you reckon you could make out the five miles?” Dick asked.
Arlie answered for him. She had felt the inert weight of his heavy body and knew that he was beyond helping himself. “No. Is there no house near? There’s Alec Howard’s cabin.”
“He’s at the round-up, but I guess we had better