“Wal, Renn?” queried Britt, with a smile.

  “Don’t grin at me—you Texas chessy-cat,” groaned Frayne, with suspended breath.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong! The whole world is upside down…. I’m locoed, Britt—buffaloed—beat!—Nothing left for me but to go out and get myself shot!”

  “Renn, have you been drinkin’?”

  “Not yet. But I sure will be pronto.”

  “Nonsense. Tell me what happened.—Why, man, I was shore Holly would be glad to see you. I’m darn sorry. But I’m only an old fool.”

  “She was glad—to see me,” whispered Frayne, huskily, and he looked dazed.

  “Aw!—Wal, what could be wrong, then?” went on Britt, smoothly, and drew the unresisting Frayne along to the end of the porch. He felt mightily guilty, yet somehow elated.

  “What?—Man alive, it’s all wrong.”

  “Renn, I cain’t savvy. Better tell me. What did Holly say?” returned Britt, powerfully.

  “She stood in the door—as I rode up,” replied Frayne, as if impelled. “But when I got off with the bags she was gone. I went in…. There she stood—white—as white…. I said, ‘Miss Holly. Here I am with the money—more than we figured.’ … I laid the bag on the table. She waved it aside—as if that money—which damn near drove me crazy—was nothing. Nothing at all! That, and the way she looked—upset me…. She took hold of my coat. ‘Renn! You’re back—safe?’ she whispered. I don’t know what I said, but I assured her I was all right—that all was well. She shut her eyes. I saw tears slide out from under her tight eyelids…. She leaned against me and shook. Then she opened her eyes. The tears were all gone. They shone like black stars—deep in a well…. Beautiful!—They will haunt me sleepless—the rest of my life…. Then, Cap—she—she kissed me…. Not on my cheek! But on my lips—my sun-burnt, alkali-split, tobacco-stained lips!”

  “Yeah? An’ then what did you do?” queried Britt, feelingly, as Frayne leaned against the cabin wall. This was the moment. The cool hard outlaw did not manifest himself in this moment. He was betraying his true self. A dark terrible pain changed the gray of his eyes.

  “Do?—I broke—and ran,” he whispered, hoarsely, swallowing hard.

  “Ran?—You, Renn Frayne? Wal, wal!”

  “Britt, you are a soulless cuss.”

  “Holly loves you,” returned Britt, quietly, sure of Holly, sure of himself, and in this stern broken mood of Frayne’s, sure of him.

  “My God!—Don’t say that!”

  “It’s true, Renn. I found it out since you left. This is the end of Holly’s many flings at the cowboys. This time—poor kid—she got a dose of her own medicine. Holly is caught…. Renn, for heaven’s sake ——”

  “Britt, you needn’t say more,” interrupted Frayne, coming away from the wall, gray-faced and spent. “Do you think I’m one of these rocks—or a piece of dead wood…. I worship Holly Ripple!—That’s been true ever since the day she asked me to stay at Don Carlos’ Rancho…. And it was all right—till now…. Till now!—My God, who could have foreseen that sweet, beautiful, innocent girl would fall in love with me? Me!—Britt, I’ve got to go out and get myself shot.”

  “Ah-huh!” ejaculated Britt, in slow scorn. “Thet’d be a fine way to treat Holly…. Fer her kindness an’ generosity—her faith an’ love—you’d reward her by leavin’ her heart-broken—by leavin’ us heah wuss off than ever. You cain’t do thet, Renn Frayne.”

  “Yes, it’s yellow of me,” flashed Frayne, passionately. “But what else is there for me?—Cap, she might—she might ——”

  “Like as not, Renn. Holly not only might. She will! An’ then what, man?”

  “I’d fall—on my knees.”

  “Quite appropriate, if you ask me…. Frayne, you’re worn oot an’ overwrought. Let’s go in.”

  “Wait…. Cap, I’ll take that back—about getting myself shot. Lord knows, I may get it any day…. I’ll stay on and see you through this rustler war. But I must not go near Holly. And you must swear you’ll never betray me.”

  “Shore, I swear thet, Renn,” replied Britt, once more dry and drawling of speech. A happiness tugged at his heart-strings. A moment back panic had assailed him. Britt liked and respected Frayne all the more for his weakness, for his despair, for what must have been honor. The future did not look so dark as formerly for Holly Ripple.

  Chapter Ten

  ONE and all the returning cowboys sought their bunks, after Jose had satisfied the inner man, and in Brazos’ case left a dire threat as to what would result if anybody disturbed his repose. Skylark showed remarkable eagerness to undertake the twenty mile ride to Doane’s, to acquaint that individual of the recovery of his horses. This deceived no one, although Laigs made the only audible comment: “My gosh, I’d like to get it so I’d know how it feels!”

  Britt, in fear and trembling, yet happy within, went up to the ranch-house to see Holly. He found her another perfect example of the incomprehensibleness of women. She was the old Holly. It relieved Britt as well as puzzled him. Frayne had been most revivifying medicine. To be sure Holly would never imagine that Frayne had told Britt about the kiss which had been his undoing. And Britt concluded this would be a very inopportune time to break his perfectly unscrupulous promise to Frayne. Somehow, marvelously, Holly had extracted the old fire and joy and mystery, with something sweetly baffling, from those few moments alone with Frayne. Therefore all seemed well.

  “Did you hide the money?” asked Britt, recalling Holly’s carelessness about this detail. They shared a secret hiding-place, where her father and the Valverdes before him had stored gold and valuables.

  “Yes. I counted it. Such a job! You know we told Frayne to fetch small bills.”

  “How much?”

  “Nearly one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Wal, it’ll hev to last a while, my dear. I can’t risk any more drives.”

  “But you intended to,” she protested.

  “Shore. Since the ootfit got back I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Wal, information. Brazos doesn’t like the idee, an’ Frayne won’t heah of it.”

  “He won’t?—I wonder why.”

  “Struck me Renn’s kinda queer. I reckon it’s thet he jest cain’t leave you again,” rejoined Britt, casually, and he pretended to be blind to Holly’s rich red blush. This romance was proceeding to his satisfaction, but he had a warning then not to overdo his part. He would let nature take its course for a while.

  “Holly, you remember thet blue roan you gave Ann Doane?” inquired Britt.

  “Frisk? Indeed, I do. I loved that pony. But Ann was so taken with him. Why do you ask?”

  “Wal, Frisk was stolen by hawse-thieves along with Doane’s other hawses. Lo an’ behold, our ootfit fetched them back!”

  “Today?” exclaimed Holly.

  “Shore. When else could they? It was plumb lucky. I didn’t get much oot of Brazos an’ nothin’ oot of Frayne, so I reckon there wasn’t much to it.”

  “Cap Britt! Don’t you try any of your old tricks. You know—if these devils of mine captured any horse-thieves they’d hang them.”

  “I reckon. They’re shore het-up aboot things these days. But I know fer a fact thet they didn’t capture this bunch of hawse-thieves.”

  “Good. I’m glad. I pity these poor outcasts who have to steal.”

  “Wal, lass, I’m not so full of pity as you,” drawled Britt. “An’ if you didn’t have the most dangerous ootfit on this frontier you’d soon lose yore pity.”

  “Oh, for the days when I was little! The long, lazy, glamorous days of caravans, of the endless fiestas, the fandangos, the sombreros and chaparagos!”

  “They will never return, lass. But you will always have Mexicans. I rather look ahead, say five years, though thet’s awful soon, when we’ll have peace on the range—an’ the prattle an’ patter of children in this great house.”

  “Oh, yes—how romantic,” remarked Holly, without flicking an eyelash. “Perhaps Brazos and Skylark—possibly Frayne—will supply you with some of that joy of life soon…. By the way, Cappy, are all the men in?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s out?”

  “Talman, Trinidad an’ Rebel.”

  “Oh…. That doesn’t look so good, does it?”

  “Wal, it might be good. I’m givin’ Talman the benefit of a doubt. Cottonwood Basin is a long way an’ a big country. It’ll take lots of ridin’. But Rebel ought to be heah.”

  “Is he working alone?”

  “Yes. I gave him an odd job.”

  “Watching Talman!—I should think the boys would hate spying on one another.”

  “They shore do.”

  “How could any of my men betray me!”

  “Wal, Frayne explained thet in his way. I’d say aboot the same. Hail fellar meetin’ strangers, or cowmen not in the ootfit, a few stiff drinks, some persuasion—an’ a big roll of greenbacks. The queer thing is thet cowboys withoot a bit of yellow in them have been known to do it. An’ the other kind air easy. Slaughter an’ McCoy know this as wal as we do. They’d shore pay handsome to corrupt some of our boys. If they are goin’ crooked.”

  “Is there any doubt about that?”

  “No. But to prove it! Thet’ll take hard clever work, unless these men grow bold or careless. Sellin’ to crooked cattle buyers they might steal indefinitely heah on this range without bein’ caught.”

  “Britt, I don’t believe any cowmen, especially on my ranch, could ever fool Brazos or Frayne.”

  “Wal,” rejoined Britt, made thoughtful by this pregnant observation from a woman’s intuition, “there might be a heap in thet.”

  “Anyway, if it happens, don’t tell me,” concluded Holly, shrinkingly.

  At supper that night Britt asked Frayne, “What’s this talk aboot the James boys?”

  “They were in Las Animas,” returned Frayne. “It wasn’t known to everybody. But all kinds of talk was going around. I met Jesse and talked with him. I knew him years ago. He wanted me to join his band.”

  “Wal!—What was he doin’ way oot heah?”

  “He and Frank had been in California. They came right through Don Carlos’ Rancho. They ate at Holly’s table one night and she never knew who they were. Cole Younger and others of their gang met them at Las Animas. They had scattered after the robbery at the Kansas City Fair last September. Just before that, somewhere in Missouri, Jesse James had killed three men. Jesse told me that he and Frank had killed six men over a card game in California.”

  “Nine men!”

  “That’s nothing for the James Boys. If you cross them one way or another they’re tolerable bad hombres. Train robbers, bank robbers! They work on a big scale. Jesse must have twenty men in his outfit altogether. But they travel in small bunches.”

  “Renn, air them James fellars any punkins with guns?” inquired Brazos, who had been an absorbed listener.

  “Neither would stand much chance with you, Brazos, on an even break. But they’re not gunmen. Just plain robbers.”

  “Gosh! I stood right alongside Jesse James in thet saloon—an’ didn’t savvy.”

  “Damn good thing,” ejaculated Laigs Mason. “If you had, you’d picked a fight with him.”

  “Aw, talk sense, yu little tumble-bug! I never picked a fight in my life.”

  “Frayne, did James ask you what you were doin’?” queried Britt.

  “No. I told him I had gone into the cattle business. He said New Mexico had the prettiest ranges he had seen. But that cattle raising was too slow, too tame for him.”

  “Haw! Haw!” laughed one of the cowboys.

  “Too slow an’ tame!” ruminated Mason, with scorn.

  “Sho he’s wrong,” spoke up Jackson, seriously. “I done wuz a bank robber once. We stoled de safe oot of de bank, an’ sho nuff near busticated ourselves luggin’ it oot on de prairiee. Den we wearied ourselves fer two days breakin’ dat iron box open. Dere was nuthin’ inside but paper.”

  A roar greeted the negro’s laconic exposition of why he considered the bank robbing business undesirable.

  “Wal, dawg-gone-it ——”

  “Lissen!” suddenly interrupted the Cherokee, holding up his hand, his sombre, bronze face intent. Jose stopped like a statue over his oven. The room became quiet.

  “Cherry, what yu heah?” queried Brazos, sharply.

  “Hoss come like hell!”

  “Wal, I should smile,” agreed Brazos, rising, his face clouded. This cowboy had a penchant for presaging trouble.

  “Keep still,” ordered Britt. “We all haven’t the ears of a jack-rabbit…. What if a hawse is comin’ like hell?”

  That quieted the listening group. The doors were open. The warm summer night was still except for soft sounds of song and guitar in the distance. As Britt listened he swept his glance from one to another of his men. Brazos had heard. The half-breeds nodded. Santone flashed dark eyes at Cherry. Then all the others, almost as one man, exhibited proof of the Indian’s marvelous hearing. A second later Britt caught the faint rhythmic roll of the hoofs of a horse coming at a dead run on the hard road. There was nothing in this sound to make that group of cowboys tense and expectant. But it did. It was the moment and the place—the something charged in the atmosphere. Some of the boys went on eating, yet they were very quiet.

  “Thet hombre is ridin’ in fer cigarettes,” burst out Mason.

  “Mebbe he wants to keep cool this hyar hot night,” vouchsafed a comrade.

  “Shore, he’s runnin’.”

  “Jose, shoot me a hot biscuit.”

  These and other remarks greeted Britt’s ears. Outside on the road the swift beat of hoofs slowed to a clatter, then a scraping slide that sent gravel pattering in a shower. Creak of leather, clang of spurs, thud of boots—and hard steps on the porch!

  “Rebel!” sang out Brazos. “An’ the fire is oot!”

  Swift clinking steps thumped through the bunk-house, to the door of the dining-room. A rider entered. Britt recognized Rebel, but only from his unmistakable small stature and his garb. Lather and dust covered him; bits of brush and cedar stuck in his chaps; the odor of the range clung round him. From a gray and black visage blazed two terrible eyes that flashed over the outfit.

  “Brazos—Santone—you—all back!” he panted, hoarsely.

  “Howdy, Rebel. Shore, we’re all heah,” replied Brazos, coolly.

  “Been ridin’, eh?” asked Britt, as he arose.

  “Boss, I couldn’t have—wuss news…. Fellars, finish yore supper. Lemme get—my breath…. Water an’ some grub. No whiskey. I’m—all right.”

  “Take it easy, pard. I’ll throw yore saddle an’ turn yore hawse in,” replied Brazos. And scarcely another word was spoken among them, none to Rebel, until a few minutes later, when they all assembled in the bunk-house.

  “Shet doors an’ winders,” said Rebel, curtly. “Reckon we don’t want anybody else heahin’ what I got to say.”

  “Hev a smoke, Rebel,” said Laigs Mason, offering one. “An’ set down, cowboy. You’re shakin’ like a fence-wire in a November wind.”

  Rebel accepted the cigarette and, seating himself on the table, he puffed it a few times while sweeping the semicircle of his comrades with those eyes of fire.

  “Captain Britt—an’ fellars—I’m darn sorry I hev to report thet—thet Talman an’ Trinidad air double-crossin’ us,” began Rebel, in husky halting voice.

  Into the shocked stillness that followed, split the cracking sound of a hard fist in a hard palm. The first treachery under the new regime, since Holly Ripple’s endeavor to enroll them in knightly loyalty, grayed the faces and silenced the tongues of these cowboys. Britt’s heart sank. He had hoped against hope. And a slow smouldering rage took flame within him.

  “All right—Sloan,” choked out the foreman. “We all know you hate to squeal as much as we hate to heah you. But as an ootfit we got our backs to the wall.”

  “I’ve been ridin’ ten days an’ in thet time we’re oot aboot three thousand haid, rough estimate made at long distance with a glass, an’ all grades. Which means shore other brands besides ours.”

  “Three thousand haid!” ejaculated Britt, thunderstruck.

  “Talk low, Cap,” interposed Frayne. “Sloan, you’re not a man to over-estimate. But….”

  “Frayne, I’m underestimatin’.”

  “Rebel, yu shore ain’t drunk or crazy,” burst out Brazos in a fierce whisper, his eyes leaping blue flames. “Hev yu been hit on the haid?”

  “Aw, Reb!” remonstrated Laigs, who would have corroborated anything stated by Brazos.

  “Gospel truth, fellars. An’ don’t rile me. I’m kinda sick an’ so ——— ——— mad thet I’m seein’ you-all double…. Jest the same you know damn well thet Ben Sloan has good eyes. They’ve watched four drives, all aboot the same size, an’ with five riders each. Different riders! Three of these went between west an’ south, haided either fer Fort Sumner, Roswell, Lincoln, or Santa Fe, or mebbe Las Vegas. The last drive, with aboot a thousand haid, air due to go north in the mawnin’, I reckoned.”

  “These drives from Cottonwood Basin?” queried Britt, hanging on Sloan’s words.

  “Three of them. The last bunch must have been picked within sight of the ranch. ’Cause I seen the cattle travellin’ west on the other side of the Cottonwood.”

  “Ha! In the timber?”

  “Yes. An’ along the edge. Say, less’n thirty miles from where you’re settin’ now.”

  “But, Sloan, how could all thet be possible?” demanded Britt, utterly bewildered.

  “I don’t know shore. My idees may be wrong. But heahs how I figger. Fust, Talman had a field-glass.”

  “How do you know thet?”

  “I seen it. I seen him usin’ it from the top of Gray Hill.”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “Ask me another. Wal, to go on. You sent Talman an’ Trinidad off fer the Basin, ahaid of all of us. I was to trail them a day late. Boss, I didn’t track them. If I had they’d seen me. ’Cause they never went to the Basin. I figgered they’d do aboot what they did do. So I struck off into the hills from heah, an’ worked down. Second mawnin’ early I seen smoke come oot of the cedars on Gray Hill. An’ thet was my tip. But it took me two days to find oot them campers was Talman an’ Trinidad. One of them was there all the time. One of them rode off three times. Two separate bunches of riders made the foot of thet hill, aboot sundown on different days. Wal, Talman is cute. He played to locate when an’ where you sent riders. No doubt he seen Skylark ride oot with his men, an’ Jim with his. I mustn’t forget thet Talman had two kinds of signals, mebbe a piece of mirror, an’ the other was regular old Injun smoke-signals.”