The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
me out of Arizona.”
“I don't know what you mean about the money, but you must let him go. You spoke of a service I had done you. This is my pay.”
“To turn him loose to hunt us down?”
“He'll not trouble you if you let him go.”
A sardonic smile touched his face. “A lot you know of him. He thinks it his duty to rid the earth of vermin like us. He'd never let up till he got us or we got him. Well, we've got him now, good and plenty. He took his chances, didn't he? It isn't as if he didn't know what he was up against. He'll tell you himself it's a square deal. He's game, and he won't squeal because we win and he has to pay forfeit.”
The girl wrung her hands despairingly.
“It's his life or mine—and not only mine, but my men's,” continued the outlaw. “Would you turn a wolf loose from your sheep pen to lead the pack to the kill?”
“But if he were to promise—”
“We're not talking about the ordinary man—he'd promise anything and lie to-morrow. But Sheriff Collins won't do it. If you think you can twist a promise out of him not to take advantage of what he has found out you're guessing wrong. When you think he's a quitter, just look at that cork hand of his, and remember how come he to get it. He'll take his medicine proper, but he'll never crawl.”
“There must be some way,” she cried desperately,
“Since you make a point of it, I'll give him his chance.”
“You'll let him go?” The joy in her voice was tremulously plain.
He laughed, leaning carelessly against the mantelshelf. But his narrowed eyes watched her vigilantly. “I didn't say I would let him go. What I said was that I'd give him a chance.”
“How?”
“They say he's a dead shot. I'm a few with a gun myself. We'll ride down to the plains together, and find a good lonely spot suitable for a graveyard. Then one of us will ride away, and the other will stay, or perhaps both of us will stay.”
She shuddered. “No—no—no. I won't have it.”
“Afraid something might happen to me, ma'am?” he asked, with a queer laugh,
“I won't have it.”
“Afraid, perhaps, he might be the one left for the coyotes and the buzzards?”
She was white to the lips, but at his next word the blood came flaming back to her cheeks.
“Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you; say you love him, and be done with it? Say it and I'll take him back to Tucson with you safe as if he were a baby.”
She covered her face with her hands, but with two steps he had reached her and captured he hands.
“The truth,” he demanded, and his eyes compelled.
“It is to save his life?”
He laughed harshly. “Here's melodrama for you! Yes—to save your lover's life.”
She lifted her eyes to his bravely. “What you say is true. I love him.”
Leroy bowed ironically. “I congratulate Mr. Collins, who is now quite safe, so far as I am concerned. Meanwhile, lest he be jealous of your absence, shall we return now?”
Some word of sympathy for the reckless scamp trembled on her lips, but her instinct told her would hold it insult added to injury, and she left her pity unvoiced.
“If you please.”
But as he heeled away she laid a timid hand on his arm. He turned and looked grimly down at the working face, at the sweet, soft, pitiful eyes brimming with tears. She was pure woman now, all the caste pride dissolved in yearning pity.
“Oh, you lamb—you precious lamb,” he groaned, and clicked his teeth shut on the poignant pain of his loss.
“I think you're splendid,” she told him. “Oh, I know what you've done—that you are not good. I know you've wasted your life and lived with your hand against every man's. But I can't help all that. I look for the good in you, and I find it. Even in your sins you are not petty. You know how to rise to an opportunity.”
This man of contradictions, forever the creature of his impulses, gave the lie to her last words by signally failing to rise to this one. He snatched her to him, and looked down hungry-eyed at her sweet beauty, as fresh and fragrant as the wild rose in the copse.
“Please,” she cried, straining from him with shy, frightened eyes.
For answer he kissed her fiercely on the cheeks, and eyes, and mouth.
“The rest are his, but these are mine,” he laughed mirthlessly.
Then, flinging her from him, he led the way into the next room. Flushed and disheveled, she followed. He had outraged her maiden instincts and trampled down her traditions of caste, but she had no time to think of this now.
“If you're through explaining the mechanism of that Winchester to Sheriff Collins we'll reluctantly dispense with your presence, Mr. Reilly. We have arranged a temporary treaty of peace,” the chief outlaw said.
Reilly, a huge lout of a fellow with a lowering countenance, ventured to expostulate. “Ye want to be careful of him. He's quicker'n chain lightning.”
His chief exploded with low-voiced fury. “When I ask your advice, give it, you fat-brained son of a brand blotter. Until then padlock that mouth of yours. Vamos.”
Reilly vanished, his face a picture of impotent malice, and Leroy continued:
“We're going to the Rocking Chair in the morning, Mr. Collins—at least, you and Miss Mackenzie are going there. I'm going part way. We've arranged a little deal all by our lones, subject to your approval. You get away without that hole in your head. Miss Mackenzie goes with you, and I get in return the papers you took off Scott and Webster.”
“You mean I am to give up the hunt?” asked Collins.
“Not at all. I'll be glad to death to see you blundering in again when Miss Mackenzie isn't here to beg you off. The point is that in exchange for your freedom and Miss Mackenzie's I get those papers you left in a safety-deposit vault in Epitaph. It'll save me the trouble of sticking up the First National and winging a few indiscreet citizens of that burgh. Savvy?”
“That's all you ask?” demanded the surprised sheriff.
“All I ask is to get those papers in my hand and a four-hour start before you begin the hunt. Is it a deal?”
“It's a deal, but I give it to you straight that I'll be after you as soon as the four hours are up,” returned Collins promptly. “I don't know what magic Miss Mackenzie used. Still, I must compliment her on getting us out mighty easy.”
But though the sheriff looked smilingly at Alice, that young woman, usually mistress of herself in all emergencies, did not lift her eyes to meet his. Indeed, he thought her strangely embarrassed. She was as flushed and tongue-tied as a country girl in unaccustomed company. She seemed another woman than the self-possessed young beauty he had met a month before on the Limited, but he found her shy abashment charming.
“I guess you thought you had come to the end of the passage, Mr. Collins,” suggested the outlaw, with listless curiosity.
“I didn't know whether to order the flowers or not, but 'way down in my heart I was backing my luck,” Collins told him.
“Of course it's understood that you are on parole until we separate,” said Leroy curtly.
“Of course.”
“Then we'll have supper at once, for we'll have to be on the road early.” He clapped his hands together, and the Mexican woman appeared. Her master flung out a command or two in her own language.
“—poco tiempo,—”