Oddly enough, he saw fit to believe her. Perhaps it was because he had just eaten and was at bodily ease with the world. She stood before him, arms limp, eyes on the floor. He drew the cork from the bottle and took a long pull.

"Good whisky," he vouchsafed between the third and fourth drags. "I'll take what's left with me--if you don't mind."

He was going then! Her poor terrified heart beat with a trifle more spirit. She looked up. Their eyes met.

"Don't look so happy!" he snarled. "Maybe I'll take you with me!"

He eyed her discomfiture with a sinister look. He uttered a short bark of a laugh. "Dontcha fret. I ain't got time to fuss with any female.

Not that I would, even if I had time, so don't go flatterin' yourself any. Women ain't in my line. You're all a squalling bunch of Gawd's mistakes, every last one of you, and you can stick a pin in that.

Women? Phutt!"

So saying, Dan Slike turned his head slightly and spat accurately through the open draft into the stove. An engaging gentleman, Mr.

Slike!

"I saw two mules and a horse in the corral when I came by," he resumed, dandling the whisky bottle on his knee. "Looks like a good horse--better than the one I left up in the timber. I'll ride your horse and lead the other. Where do you keep your saddle and bridle?

In the shed, huh? Aw right, you can show me when we go out. Listen, I expect to-morrow some time you'll have a few gents a-callin' on you.

Yeah, to-morrow. It'll likely take those Golden Bar citizens till about then to pick up my trail. You needn't to look too hopeful.

Those jiggers don't know they're alive. I saw 'em scatterin' off h.e.l.l-bent the wrong way before I ever started this way, you bet. Why, h.e.l.ls bells, I even topped a horse behind a corral with the woman right in the house gettin' supper, and she never knowed it. Tell you, girl, I'm slick. And if I didn't have more sense in the tip of my finger than all those fellers and their li'l tin sheriff and his li'l tin deputies, I'd be a heap ashamed of myself. Say--about that sheriff; I heard folks talkin' in the street this afternoon and they said the sheriff had skedaddled because he'd murdered a sport named O'Gorman. A fi-ine sheriff he is, to slop around turnin' tricks like that. A fi-ine sheriff, and you can tell him I said so."

He drove in the cork with the heel of his hand and slipped the bottle into a side pocket of his coat. Standing up, he tapped her smartly on the shoulder. "Get me that hat over there on the hook. I left town in such a hurry I clean forgot to fetch mine along."

Silently she brought the hat.

"Why do you women always wear hats too big for you?" he grumbled, after trying it on. "I couldn't keep this thing on my head."

She had brought an Omaha newspaper from town that day. It lay outspread on the table. He tore off a half page, plaited it neatly and stuffed the thickened strip in behind the sweatband of the hat.

"It will fit me now," he said briskly, pulling on the hat. "Gimme those cantenas and saddle pockets hanging on the wall."

She obeyed stumblingly. Into the cantenas, from her store of provisions, he packed bacon, coffee, a sack of flour a third full, a tin can full of salt, another can filled with matches, a salt pack full of sugar, several cans of tomatoes and peaches, a frying-pan and a small can of lard. In the saddle pockets he stowed away the twelve boxes of rifle cartridges, the six boxes of revolver cartridges and a knife, fork and spoon. The long-bladed butcher knife he nonchalantly slipped down his boot-leg.

"I'll tie the coffee pot on the saddle," he said, buckling the billet of a cantena flap. "It's too wet to go in here. Can't take a chance on spoiling my flour. C'mon, le's go find the saddle."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE PERSISTENT SUITOR

"You see," said Dan Slike, as he topped his mount, "I ain't really been hard on you. I didn't ask you for a nickel. I only took what I needed. And if you hadn't fought me like you did, I wouldn't have laid a finger on you. Think of that and be happy."

He whirled the horse and rode away toward the lower ground behind the house, the coffeepot clacking rhythmically against the barrel of the Winchester Hazel had vainly hoped he would forget to take with him.

Hazel remained standing beside the corral gate. Suddenly she was conscious of a great weariness. She was as one who has traveled a day's journey without food. Her arms and legs were leaden. Her head ached, her body ached, her spirit ached.

With dragging steps she returned to the house. From the cupboard she brought forth the bottle of whisky she had lied to save and poured a stiff four fingers into a teacup. She drank off the liquor in three gulps. But she was so spent that, other than a fit of coughing, there was no effect.

The lamp was burning low and fitfully, filling the kitchen with a smell of burning wicking. She had forgotten to refill it that morning. She put away the whisky bottle, turned out the lamp and filled it by the faint light from an opened draft-c.h.i.n.k. But in reaching for the chimney, she knocked it to the floor and broke it.

Apathetically, every movement mechanical, she found another chimney and adjusted it in the clamps. A smell of burned hair suddenly filled her nostrils. A lock of hair had fallen against the lamp chimney. She put her hand to her head. Her hair was in a slovenly tangle over one ear.

She did it up any way and skewered it fast with a few pins.

Crunch! The remains of the lamp chimney crackled under foot. She brought out the dustpan and brushed and swept up the pieces. She carried the broken gla.s.s out to the trash pile. When she returned to the kitchen, there was a man standing in the middle of the room.

Nothing had the power to surprise her now. She would not have been amazed had the devil himself popped into the room. The man turned at her entry. He was Rafe Tuckleton. He glowered down at her. She shut the door and put away the dustpan and brush behind the wood-box.

"What do you want?" she asked lifelessly.

"Who's been here?" he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at the table. "Two plates, two cups, two saucers--who you been entertaining?"

Entertaining! Good Lord! Hazel sat down on the wood-box and laughed hysterically.

He was around the table and confronting her in three strides. "Who's been here?" he kept at her.

"Dan Slike," she said with a spasmodic giggle.

"You're a liar," he told her promptly. "Dan Slike didn't come this way. He--he went another way. There's a posse on his trail now.

You've had Bill Wingo here, that's whatsamatter."

"I haven't," she denied, wagging her head at him. "Dan Slike was here, I tell you."

"The h.e.l.l he was. You must think I'm a fool. Bill Wingo's been here, I tell you. Think I don't know, huh, you deceivin' hussy! Trying to make small of me, carryin' on with other men, huh?"

She said nothing. It is doubtful if she heard him, for all his roaring voice and gesturing fists. Billy Wingo! _Her_ Billy--once. He had loved her too--once. What a queer, queer world it was. Everybody and everything at cross-purposes. Yet there was a reason for it all. Must be. Even a reason for Rafe. She looked up at Rafe. He was glaring down at her with a most villainous expression on his lean features.

"How long has Bill Wingo been gone?" he demanded.

"It wasn't Bill," she insisted doggedly. "It was Dan Slike, and he's been gone maybe half an hour."

"Say, whatsa use of lyin' to me? You're an odd number, by all accounts, but you ain't so odd you could sit here and eat and drink and carry on with your uncle's murderer. You can't tell me _that_."

She was regarding him with curious eyes. "I thought you always said Dan Slike didn't kill my uncle?"

"Well--uh--you see, everybody else seems to think he did.

And--ah--maybe I was wrong. Anyway, say I was. For all I know to the contrary, he did kill your uncle. What's fairer than that, I'd like to know? You think he killed Tom Walton, don't you?"

She continued to stare at Rafe. "I know he did."

"Then how do you expect me to believe you ate supper with him? You're foolish. You had Bill Wingo here, and we'll settle this Wingo business right now. You see, don't you, how you can never marry the feller?

This Tip O'Gorman murder has queered him round here for keeps. Sooner or later he'll hang for it. You'd look fine wouldn't you, the widow of a----"

"Don't say it," she cut him short. "Billy Wingo is no murderer. He fights fair, which is more than I can say for you. However, you can set your mind at rest. I'm not likely to marry Billy Wingo, or anybody else."

"Then what do you care whether I call him a murderer or not, if you don't love him?" he probed. "I thought a while back you had taken my advice and busted it off with Bill, but now after hearin' what you tried to do to Nate Samson, and all that ammunition and grub you bought to-day, the day after Tip was killed, why I began to think maybe you was startin' in to play the Jack again. I told you last fall I was gonna have you myself. You ain't forgot it, have you?"

His eyes, savage and mean, held hers steadily. "I come over here, to-night to get you. I'm taking you back with me to-night to my ranch.

To-morrow you can marry me or not. It'll be just as you say."