PART II -- THE GIRL OF LOST VALLEY

CHAPTER I -- IN THE FIRE ZONE

"Say, you Teddy hawss, I'm plumb fed up with sagebrush and scenery. I kinder yearn for co'n bread and ham. I sure would give six bits for a drink of real wet water. Yore sentiments are similar, I reckon, Teddy."

The Texan patted the neck of his cow pony, which reached round playfully and pretended to nip his leg. They understood each other, and were now making the best of a very unpleasant situation. Since morning they had been lost on the desert. The heat of midday had found them plowing over sandy wastes. The declining sun had left them among the foothills, wandering from one to another, in the vain hope that each summit might show the silvery gleam of a windmill, or even that outpost of civilization, the barb-wire fence. And now the stars looked down indifferently, myriads of them, upon the travelers still plodding wearily through a land magically transformed by moonlight to a silvery loveliness that blotted out all the garish details of day.

The Texan drew rein. "We all been discovering that Wyoming is a powerful big state. Going to feed me a cigarette, Teddy. Too bad a hawss cayn't smoke his troubles away," he drawled, and proceeded to roll a cigarette, lighting it with one sweeping motion of his arm, that pa.s.sed down the leg of his chaps and ended in the upward curve at his lips.

The flame had not yet died, when faintly through the illimitable velvet night there drifted to him a sound.

"Did you hear that, pardner?" the man demanded softly, listening intently for a repet.i.tion of it.

It came presently, from away over to the left, and, after it, what might have been taken for the popping of a distant bunch of firecrackers.

"Celebrating the Fourth some premature, looks like. What? Think not, Teddy! Some one getting shot up? Sho! You are romancin', old hawss."

Nevertheless he swung the pony round and started rapidly in the direction of the shots. From time to time there came a renewal of them, though the intervals grew longer and the explosions were now individual ones. He took the precaution to draw his revolver from the holster and to examine it carefully.

"Nothing like being sure. It's a heap better than being sorry afterward," he explained to the cow pony.

For the first time in twelve hours, he struck a road. Following this as it wound up to the summit of a hill, he discovered that the area of disturbance was in the valley below. For, as he began his descent, there was a flash from a clump of cotton-woods almost at his feet.

"Did yo' git him?" a voice demanded anxiously.

"Don't know, dad," the answer came, young, warm, and tremulous.

"h.e.l.lo! There's a kid there," the Texan decided. Aloud, he asked quietly: "What's the row, gentlemen?"

One of the figures whirled--it was the boyish one, crouched behind a dead horse--and fired at him.

"Hold on, sonny! I'm a stranger. Don't make any more mistakes like that."

"Who are you?"

"Steve Fraser they call me. I just arrived from Texas. Wait a jiff, and I'll come down and explain."

He stayed for no permission, but swung from the saddle, trailed the reins, and started down the slope. He could hear a low-voiced colloquy between the two dark figures, and one of them called roughly:

"Hands up, friend! We'll take no chances on yo'."

The Texan's hands went up promptly, just as a bullet flattened itself against a rock behind him. It had been fired from the bank of the dry wash, some hundred and fifty yards away.

"That's no fair! Both sides oughtn't to plug at me," he protested, grinning.

The darkness which blurred detail melted as Fraser approached, and the moonlight showed him a tall, lank, unshaven old mountaineer, standing behind a horse, his shotgun thrown across the saddle.

"That's near enough, Mr. Fraser from Texas," said the old man, in a slow voice that carried the Southern intonation. "This old gun is loaded with buckshot, and she scatters like h.e.l.l. Speak yore little piece. How came yo' here, right now?"

"I got lost in the Wind River bad lands this mo'ning, and I been playing hide and go seek with myself ever since."

"Where yo' haided for?"

"Gimlet b.u.t.te."

"Huh! That's right funny, too."

"Why?"

"Because all yo' got to do to reach the b.u.t.te is to follow this road and yore nose for about three miles."

A bullet flung up a spurt of sand beside the horse.

The young fellow behind the dead horse broke in, with impatient 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 b.u.t.te. 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, G.o.d, 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 ma.s.s of blue-black hair and the soft but clean-cut modeling from ear to chin, his hand fell from her shoulder.