Steve looked at the prisoner. "It's your spiel, friend," he said.

"All right. I'll tell you some facts. Just as I was coming down from the Roskruge range this mo'ning I was held up for my team. One of these fellows--the one called Kinney--had started from Fort Lincoln on this roan here, but he was wounded and broke down. There was some gun-play, and he gave me this scratch on the cheek. The end of it was that he took my team and left me with his worn-out bronc. I plugged on all day with the hawss till about three mebbe, then seeing it was all in I unsaddled and picketed. I lay down and dropped asleep. Next I knew the necktie-party was in session."

"What time was it y'u met this fellow Kinney?" asked Long sharply.

"Must have been about nine or nine-thirty I judge."

"And it's five now. That's eight hours' start, and four more before we can cut his trail on Roskruge. By G.o.d, we've lost him!"

"Looks like," agreed another ruefully.

"Make straight for the Arivaca cut-off and you ought to stand a show,"

suggested Fraser.

"That's right. If we ride all night, might beat him to it." Each of the five contributed a word of agreement.

Five minutes later the Texan and the ranger watched a dust-cloud drifting to the south. In it was hidden the posse disappearing over the hilltop.

Steve grinned. "I hate to disappoint the boys. They're so plumb anxious.

But I reckon I'll strike the telephone line and send word to Moreno for one of the rangers to cut out after Kinney. Going my way, seh?"

"If you're going mine."

"I reckon I am. And just to pa.s.s the time you might tell me the real story of that hold-up while we ride."

"The real story?"

"Well, I don't aim to doubt your word, but I reckon you forgot to tell some of it." He turned on the other his gay smile. "For instance, seh, you ain't asking me to believe that you handed over your rig to Kinney so peaceful and that he went away and clean forgot to unload from you that gun you pack."

The eyes of the two met and looked into each other's as clear and straight as Texas sunshine. Slowly Neill's relaxed into a smile.

"No, I won't ask you to believe that. I owe you something because you saved my life--"

"Forget it," commanded the lieutenant crisply.

"And I can't do less than tell you the whole story."

He told it, yet not the whole of it either; for there was one detail he omitted completely. It had to do with the cause for existence of the little black-and-blue bruise under his right eye and the purple ridge that seamed his wrist. Nor with all his acuteness could Stephen Fraser guess that the one swelling had been made by a gold ring on the clenched fist of an angry girl held tight in Larry Neill's arms, the other by the lash of a horsewhip wielded by the same young woman.

CHAPTER III -- A DISCOVERY

The roan, having been much refreshed by a few hours on gra.s.s, proved to be a good traveller. The two men took a road-gait and held it steadily till they reached a telephone-line which stretched across the desert and joined two outposts of civilization. Steve strapped on his climbing spurs and went up a post lightly with his test outfit. In a few minutes he had Moreno on the wire and was in touch with one of his rangers.

"h.e.l.lo! This you, Ferguson? This is Fraser. No, Fraser--Lieutenant Fraser. Yes. How many of the boys can you get in touch with right away?

Two? Good. I want you to cover the Arivaca cut-off. Kinney is headed that way in a rig. His sister is with him. She is not to be injured under any circ.u.mstances. Understand? Wire me at the Mal Pais mines to-morrow your news. By the way, Tom Long and some of the boys are headed down that way with notions of lynching Kinney. Dodge them if you can and rush your man up to the Mal Pais. Good-bye."

"Suppose they can't dodge them?" ventured Neill after Steve had rejoined him.

"I reckon they can. If not--well, my rangers are good boys; I expect they won't give up a prisoner."

"I'm right glad to find you are going to the Mal Pais mines with me, lieutenant. I wasn't expecting company on the way."

"I'll bet a dollar Mex against two plunks gold that you're wondering whyfor I'm going."

Larry laughed. "You're right. I was wondering."

"Well, then, it's this way. What with all these boys on Kinney's trail he's as good as rounded up. Fact is, Kinney's only a weak sister anyhow.

He turned State's witness at the trial, and it was his testimony that convicted Struve. I know something about this because I happened to be the man that caught Struve. I had just joined the rangers. It was my first a.s.signment. The other three got away. Two of them escaped and the third was not tried for lack of sufficient evidence. Now, then: Kinney rides the rods from Yuma to Marfa and is now or had ought to be somewhere in this valley between Posa Buena and Taylor's ranch. But where is Struve, the hardier ruffian of the two? He ain't been seen since they broke out. He sure never reached Ft. Lincoln. My notion is that he dropped off the train in the darkness about Casa Grande, then rolled his tail for the Mal Pais country. Your eyes are asking whys mighty loud, my friend; and my answer is that there's a man up there mebbe who has got to hide Struve if he shows up. That's only a guess, but it looks good to me. This man was the brains of the whole outfit, and folks say that he's got cached the whole haul the gang made from that S. P. hold-up. What's more, he scattered gold so liberal that his name wasn't even mentioned at the trial. He's a big man now, a millionaire copper king and into gold-mines up to the hocks. In the Southwest those things happen. It doesn't always do to look too closely at a man's past.

"We'll say Struve drops in on him and threatens to squeak. Mebbe he has got evidence; mebbe he hasn't. Anyhow, our big duck wants to forget the time he was wearing a mask and bending a six-gun for a living. Also and moreover, he's right anxious to have other folks get a chance to forget.

From what I can hear he's clean mashed on some girl at Amarillo, or maybe it's Fort Lincoln. See what a twist Strove's got on him if he can slip into the Mal Pais country on the q. t."

"And you're going up there to look out for him?"

"I'm going in to take a casual look around. There's no telling what a man might happen onto accidentally if he travels with his ear to the ground."

The other nodded. He could now understand easily why Fraser was going into the Mal Pais country, but he could not make out why the ranger, naturally a man who lived under his own hat and kept his own counsel, had told him so much as he had. The officer shortly relieved his mind on this point.

"I may need help while I'm there. May I call on you if I do, seh?"

Neill felt his heart warm toward this hard-faced, genial frontiersman, who knew how to judge so well the timbre of a casual acquaintance.

"You sure may, lieutenant."

"Good. I'll count on you then."

So, in these few words, the compact of friendship and alliance was sealed between them. Each of them was strangely taken with the other, but it is not the way of the Anglo-Saxon fighting man to voice his sentiment. Though each of them admired the stark courage and the flawless fort.i.tude he knew to dwell in the other, impa.s.sivity sat on their faces like an ice-mask. For this is the hall-mark of the Southwest, that a man must love and hate with the same unchanging face of iron, save only when a woman is in consideration.

They were to camp that night by Cottonwood Spring, and darkness caught them still some miles from their camp. They were on no road, but were travelling across country through washes and over countless hills.

The ranger led the way, true as an arrow, even after velvet night had enveloped them.

"It must be right over this mesa among the cottonwoods you see rising from that arroyo," he announced at last.

He had scarcely spoken before they struck a trail that led them direct to the spring. But as they were descending this in a circle Fraser's horse shied.

"Hyer you, Pinto! What's the matter with--"

The ranger cut his sentence in two and slid from the saddle. When his companion reached him and drew rein the ranger was bending over a dark ma.s.s stretched across the trail. He looked up quietly.

"Man's body," he said briefly.

"Dead?"

"Yes."