"Must have camped here last night and while he was asleep the cattle stampeded down the caon," Tim hazarded.
"That guess is as good as any. They ce'tainly stomped the life out of him thorough. Anyhow, Bellamy has met up with his punishment. We'll have to pack the body back to town, boys," the sheriff told them.
Half an hour later the party filed out to the creosote flats and struck across country toward Mesa. Flatray was riding pillion behind Tim. His own horse was being used as a pack saddle.
CHAPTER II
BRAND BLOTTING
The tenderfoot, slithering down a hillside of shale, caught at a greasewood bush and waited. The sound of a rifle shot had drifted across the ridge to him. Friend or foe, it made no difference to him now. He had reached the end of his tether, must get to water soon or give up the fight.
No second shot broke the stillness. A swift zigzagged across the cattle trail he was following. Out of a blue sky the Arizona sun still beat down upon a land parched by ons of drought, a land still making its brave show of greenness against a dun background.
Arrow straight the man made for the hill crest. Weak as a starved puppy, his knees bent under him as he climbed. Down and up again a dozen times, he pushed feverishly forward. All day he had been seeing things. Cool lakes had danced on the horizon line before his tortured vision. Strange fancies had passed in and out of his mind. He wondered if this, too, were a delusion. How long that stiff ascent took him he never knew, but at last he reached the summit and crept over its cactus-covered shoulder.
He looked into a valley dressed in its young spring garb. Of all deserts this is the loveliest when the early rains have given rebirth to the hope that stirs within its bosom once a year. But the tenderfoot saw nothing of its pathetic promise, of its fragile beauty so soon to be blasted. His sunken eyes swept the scene and found at first only a desert waste in which lay death.
"I lose," he said to himself out loud.
With the words he gave up the long struggle and sank to the ground. For hours he had been exhausted to the limit of endurance, but the will to live had kept him going. Now the driving force within had run down. He would die where he lay.
Another instant, and he was on his feet again eager, palpitant, tremulous. For plainly there had come to him the bleating of a calf.
Moving to the left, he saw rising above the hill brow a thin curl of smoke. A dozen staggering steps brought him to the edge of a draw. There in the hollow below, almost within a stone's throw, was a young woman bending over a fire. He tried to call, but his swollen tongue and dry throat refused the service. Instead, he began to run toward her.
Beyond the wash was a dead cow. Not far from it lay a calf on its side, all four feet tied together. From the fire the young woman took a red-hot running iron and moved toward the little bleater.
The crackling of a twig brought her around as a sudden tight rein does a high-strung horse. The man had emerged from the prickly pears and was close upon her. His steps dragged. The sag of his shoulders indicated extreme fatigue. The dark hollows beneath the eyes told of days of torment.
The girl stood before him slender and straight. She was pale to the lips. Her breath came fast and ragged as if she had been running.
Abruptly she shot her challenge at him. "Who are you?"
"Water," he gasped.
One swift, searching look the girl gave him, then "Wait!" she ordered, and was off into the mesquit on the run. Three minutes later the tenderfoot heard her galloping through the brush. With a quick, tight rein she drew up, swung from the saddle expertly as a _vaquero_, and began to untie a canteen held by buckskin thongs to the side of the saddle.
He drank long, draining the vessel to the last drop.
From her saddle bags she brought two sandwiches wrapped in oiled paper.
"You're hungry, too, I expect," she said, her eyes shining with tender pity.
She observed that he did not wolf his food, voracious though he was. While he ate she returned to the fire with the running iron and heaped live coals around the end of it.
"You've had a pretty tough time of it," she called across to him gently.
"It hasn't been exactly a picnic, but I'm all right now."
The girl liked the way he said it. Whatever else he was--and already faint doubts were beginning to stir in her--he was not a quitter.
"You were about all in," she said, watching him.
"Just about one little kick left in me," he smiled.
"That's what I thought."
She busied herself over the fire inspecting the iron. The man watched her curiously. What could it mean? A cow killed wantonly, a calf bawling with pain and fear, and this girl responsible for it. The tenderfoot could not down the suspicion stirring in his mind. He knew little of the cattle country. But he had read books and had spent a week in Mesa not entirely in vain. The dead cow with the little stain of red down its nose pointed surely to one thing. He was near enough to see a hole in the forehead just above the eyes. Instinctively his gaze passed to the rifle lying in the sand close to his hand. Her back was still turned to him. He leaned over, drew the gun to him, and threw out an empty shell from the barrel.
At the click of the lever the girl swung around upon him.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
He put the rifle down hurriedly. "Just seeing what make it is."
"And what make is it?" she flashed.
He was trapped. "I hadn't found out yet," he stammered.
"No, but you found out there was an empty shell in it," she retorted quickly.
Their eyes fastened. She was gray as ashes, but she did not flinch. By chance he had stumbled upon the crime of crimes in Cattleland, had caught a rustler redhanded at work. Looking into the fine face, nostrils delicately fashioned, eyes clear and deep, the thing was scarce credible of her. Why, she could not be a day more than twenty, and in every line of her was the look of pride, of good blood.
"Yes, I happened to throw it out," he apologized.
But she would have no evasion, would not let his doubts sleep. There was superb courage in the scornful ferocity with which she retorted.
"Happened! And I suppose you _happened_ to notice that the brand on the cow is a Bar Double G, while that on the calf is different."
"No, I haven't noticed that."
"Plenty of time to see it yet." Then, with a swift blaze of feeling, "What's the use of pretending? I know what you think."
"Then you know more than I do. My thoughts don't go any farther than this, that you have saved my life and I'm grateful for it."
"I know better. You think I'm a rustler. But don't say it. Don't you dare say it."
Brought up in an atmosphere of semi-barbaric traditions, silken-strong, with instincts unwarped by social pressure, she was what the sun and wind and freedom of Arizona had made her, a poetic creation far from commonplace. So he judged her, and in spite of the dastardly thing she had done he sensed an innate refinement strangely at variance with the circumstances.
"All right. I won't," he answered, with a faint smile.
"Now you've got to pay for your sandwiches by making yourself useful. I'm going to finish this job." She said it with an edge of self-scorn. He guessed her furious with self-contempt.
Under her directions he knelt on the calf so as to hold it steady while she plied the hot iron. The odor of burnt hair and flesh was already acrid in his nostrils. Upon the red flank F was written in raw, seared flesh. He judged that the brand she wanted was not yet complete. Probably the iron had got too cold to finish the work, and she had been forced to reheat it.
The little hand that held the running iron