"I came to see if you were awake," she explained.

"Yes, ma'am, I am," he smiled.

"I was thinking that we ought to be going. It will be dark before we reach Mal Pais."

He leaped to his feet and faced her.

"C'rect."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

He relit the fire and put on the coffee-pot before he saddled the horse.

She ate and drank hurriedly, soon announcing herself ready for the start.

She mounted from his hand; then without asking any questions he swung to a place behind her.

"We'll both ride," he said.

The stars were out before they reached the outskirts of the mining-camp.

At the first house of the rambling suburbs Neill slipped to the ground and walked beside her toward the old adobe plaza of the Mexican town.

People pa.s.sed them on the run, paying no attention to them, and others dribbled singly or in small groups from the houses and saloons. All of them were converging excitedly to the plaza.

"Must be something doing here," said her guide. "Now I wonder what!"

Round the next turn he found his answer. There must have been present two or three hundred men, mostly miners, and their gazes all focussed on two figures which stood against a door at the top of five or six steps.

One of the forms was crouched on its knees, abject, cringing terror stamped on the white villainous face upturned to the electric light above. But the other was on its feet, a revolver in each hand, a smile of reckless daring on the boyish countenance that just now stood for law and order in Mal Pais.

The man beside the girl read the situation at a glance. The handcuffed figure groveling on the steps belonged to the murderer Struve, and over him stood lightly the young ranger Steve Fraser. He was standing off a mob that had gathered to lynch his prisoner, and one glance at him was enough to explain how he had won his reputation as the most dashing and fearless member of a singularly efficient force. For plain to be read as the danger that confronted him was the fact that peril was as the breath of life to his nostrils.

CHAPTER VII -- ENTER MR. DUNKE

"He's my prisoner and you can't have him," the girl heard the ranger say.

The answer came in a roar of rage. "By G.o.d, we'll show you!"

"If you want him, take him. But don't come unless you are ready to pay the price!" warned the officer.

He was bareheaded and his dark-brown curly hair crisped round his forehead engagingly. Round his right hand was tied a blood-stained handkerchief. A boy he looked, but his record was a man's, and so the mob that swayed uncertainly below him knew. His gray eyes were steady as steel despite the fire that glowed in them. He stood at ease, with nerve unshaken, the curious lifted look of a great moment about the poise of his graceful figure.

"It is Lieutenant Fraser," cried Margaret, but as she looked down she missed her escort.

An instant, and she saw him. He was circling the outskirts of the crowd at a run. For just a heart-beat she wondered what he was about, but her brain told her before her eye. He swung in toward the steps, shoulders down, and bored a way through the stragglers straight to the heart of the turmoil. Taking the steps in two jumps, he stood beside the ranger.

"h.e.l.lo, Tennessee," grinned that young man. "Come to be a pall-bearer?"

"h.e.l.lo, Texas! Can't say, I'm sure. Just dropped in to see what's doing."

Steve's admiring gaze approved him a man from the ground up. But the ranger only laughed and said: "The band's going to play a right lively tune, looks like."

The man from the Panhandle had his revolvers out already. "Yes, there will be a hot time in the old town to-night, I shouldn't wonder."

But for the moment the attackers were inclined to parley. Their leader stepped out and held up a hand for a suspension of hostilities. He was a large man, heavily built, and powerful as a bear. There was about him an air of authority, as of one used to being obeyed. He was dressed roughly enough in corduroy and miner's half-leg boots, but these were of the most expensive material and cut. His cold gray eye and thin lips denied the manner of superficial heartiness he habitually carried. If one scratched the veneer of good nature it was to find a hard selfishness that went to his core.

"It's Mr. Dunke!" the young school-teacher cried aloud in surprise.

"I've got something to say to you, Mr. Lieutenant Ranger," he announced, with importance.

"Uncork it," was Fraser's advice.

"We don't want to have any trouble with you, but we're here for business. This man is a cold-blooded murderer and we mean to do justice on him."

Steve laughed insolently. "If all them that hollers for justice the loudest got it done to them, Mr. Dunke, there'd be a right smart shrinkage in the census returns."

Dunke's eye gleamed with anger. "We're not here to listen to any smart guys, sir. Will you give up Struve to us or will you not?"

"That's easy. I will not."

The mob leader turned to the Tennessean. "Young man, I don't know who you are, but if you mean to b.u.t.t into a quarrel that ain't yours all I've got to say is that you're hunting an early grave."

"We'll know about that later, seh."

"You stand pat, do you?"

"Well, seh, I draw to a pair that opens the pot anyhow," answered Larry, with a slight motion of his weapons.

Dunke fell back into the mob, a shot rang out into the night, and the crowd swayed forward. But at that instant the door behind Fraser swung open. A frightened voice sounded in his ear.

"Quick, Steve!"

The ranger slewed his head, gave an exclamation of surprise, and hurriedly threw his prisoner into the open pa.s.sage.

"Back, Larry! Lively, my boy!" he ordered.

Neill leaped back in a spatter of bullets that rained round him. Next moment the door was swung shut again.

"You all right, Nell?" asked Fraser quickly of the young woman who had opened the door, and upon her affirmative reply he added: "Everybody alive and kicking? n.o.body get a pill?"

"I'm all right for one," returned Larry. "But we had better get out of this pa.s.sage. I notice our friends the enemy are sending their cards through the door after us right anxious."

As he spoke a bullet tore a jagged splinter from a panel and buried itself in the ceiling. A second and a third followed.

"That's c'rect. We'd better be 'Not at home' when they call. Eh, Nell?"