"I reckon the fellow went down instead of up," suggested Norris.
"No, he came up."
Lee had stopped and was studying wheel tracks that ran up from the ditch to his ranch house. His face was very white and set. He pointed to them with a shaking finger.
"There's where he went in the ditch, and there's where he came out."
Norris forded the stream, cast a casual eye on the double track, and nodded. He was still in a fog of mystery, but the old man was already fearing the worst.
He gulped out his fears tremblingly. For himself, he was of a flawless nerve, but this touched nearer home than his own danger.
"Them wheel-tracks was made by my little gyurl's runabout, Phil."
"Good heavens!" The younger man drew rein sharply and stared at him. "You don't think----"
He broke off, recalling the sharp, firm little foot-print on the edge of the ditch some miles below.
"I don't reckon I know what to think. If she was in this, she's got some good reason." A wave of passion suddenly swept the father. "By God! I'd like to see the man that dares mix her name up in this."
Norris met this with his friendly smile. "You can't pick a row with me about that, old man. I'm with you till the cows come home. But that ain't quite the way to go at this business. First thing, we've got to wipe out these tracks. How? Why, sheep! There's a bunch of three hundred in that pasture. We'll drive the bunch down to the ditch and water them here. _Savez?_"
"And wipe out the wheel-marks in the sand. Bully for you, Phil."
"That's the idea. After twelve hundred chisel feet have been over this sand I reckon the wheel-tracks will be missing."
They rode up to the house, and the first thing that met them was the candid question of the girl:
"Have you heard, Daddy?"
And out of his troubled heart he had answered, "Beats me, 'Lissie."
"They've sent for the officers. Jack Flatray is on the way himself. So is Sheriff Burke," volunteered Alan gloomily.
"Getting right busy, ain't they?" Norris sneered.
Again Lee glanced quickly at Norris. "I reckon, Phil, we better drive that bunch of sheep down to water right away. I clean forgot them this mo'ning."
"Sure." The younger man was not so easily shaken. He turned to McKinstra naturally. "How many of the hold-ups were there?"
"I saw only one, and didn't see him very good. He was a slim fellow in a black mask."
"You don't say. Were you the driver?"
Alan felt the color suffuse his face. "No, I was the guard."
"Oh, you were the guard."
Alan felt the suave irony that covered this man's amusement, and he resented it impotently. When Melissy came to his support he was the more grateful.
"And we all think he did just right in using his common sense, Mr. Norris," the girl flashed.
"Oh, certainly."
And with that he was gone after her father to help him water the sheep.
"I don't see why those sheep have to be watered right now," she frowned to Alan. "Dad _did_ water them this morning. I helped him."
Together they went into the store, where Jos was telling his story for the sixth time to a listening circle of plainsmen.
"And right then he come at you and ree-quested yore whole outfit to poke a hole in the scenery with yore front feet?" old Dave Ellis asked just as Melissy entered.
"_Si, Seor._"
"One of MacQueen's Roaring Fork gang did it, I'll bet," Alan contributed sourly.
"What kind of a lookin' guy was he?" spoke up a dark young man known as Bob Farnum.
"A big man, _seor_, and looked a ruffian."
"They're always that way until you run 'em down," grinned Ellis. "Never knew a hold-up wasn't eight foot high and then some--to the fellow at the wrong end of the gun."
"If you mean to say, Dave Ellis, that I lay down to a bluff----" Alan was beginning hotly when the old frontiersman interrupted.
"Keep your shirt on, McKinstra. I don't mean to say it. Nobody but a darn fool makes a gun-play when the cards are stacked that-a-way. Yore bad play was in reaching for the gun at all."
"Well, Jack Flatray will git him. I'll bet a stack of blues on that," contributed a fat ranchman wheezily.
"Unless you mussed up the trail coming back," said Ellis to the stage-driver.
"We didn't. I thought of that, and I had Jos drive clear round the place. Jack will find it all right unless there's too much travel before he gets here," said Alan.
Farnum laughed malevolently. "Mebbe he'll get him and mebbe he won't. Jack's human, like the rest of us, if he is the best sheriff in Arizona. Here's hoping he don't get him. Any man that waltzes out of the cactus and appropriates twenty thousand dollars belonging to Mr. Morse is welcome to it for all of me. I don't care if he is one of MacQueen's bad men. I wish it had been forty thousand."
Farnum did not need to explain the reasons for his sentiments. Everybody present knew that he was the leader of that bunch of cattlemen who had bunched themselves together to resist the encroachments of sheep upon the range. Among these the feeling against Morse was explosively dangerous. It had found expression in more than one raid upon his sheep. Many of them had been destroyed by one means or another, but Morse, with the obstinacy characteristic of him, had replaced them with others and continually increased his herds. There had been threats against his life, and one of his herders had been wounded. But the mine-owner went his way with quiet fearlessness and paid no attention to the animosity he had stirred up. The general feeling was that the trouble must soon come to a head. Nobody expected the rough and ready vaqueros, reckless and impulsive as they were, to submit to the loss of the range, which meant too the wiping out of their means of livelihood, without a bitter struggle that would be both lawless and bloody.
Wherefore there was silence after Farnum had spoken, broken at length by the amiable voice of the fat ranchman, Baker.
"Well, we'll see what we'll see," he wheezed complacently. "And anyways I got to have some horseshoe plug, Melissy."
The girl laughed nervously as she reached for what he wanted. "You're a safe prophet, Mr. Baker," she said.
"He'd be a safe one if he'd prophesy that Jack Flatray would have Mr. Hold-up in the calaboose inside of three days," put in a half-grown lad in leathers.
"I ain't so sure about that. You'll have to show me, and so will Mr. Deputy Sheriff Flatray," retorted Farnum.
A shadow darkened the doorway.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen all--and Miss Lee," a pleasant voice drawled.
The circle of eyes focused on the new-comer and saw a lean, muscular, young fellow of medium height, cool and alert, with the dust of the desert on every sunbaked inch of him.
"I'm damned if it ain't Jack here already!" gasped Baker.
CHAPTER VII
WATERING SHEEP
The deputy glanced quietly round, nodded here and there at sight of the familiar face of an acquaintance, and spoke to the driver.
"Let's hear you say your little piece again, Jos."
The Mexican now had it by heart, and he pattered off the thing from beginning to end without a pause. Melissy, behind the counter, leaned her elbows on it and fastened her eyes on the boyish face of the officer.