She had carried it off to the last without breaking down, but, once in her own room, the girl's face showed haggard in the moonlight. It was one thing to jest about it with him; it was another to face the facts as they stood. She was in the power of her father's enemy, the man whose proffer of friendship they had rejected with scorn. Her pride cried out that she could not endure mercy from him even if he wished to extend it. Surely there must be some other way out than the humiliation of begging him not to prosecute. She could see none but one, and that was infinitely worse. Yet she knew it would be her father's first impulsive instinct to seek to fight her out of her trouble, the more because it was through him that it had fallen upon her. At all hazards she must prevent this.
CHAPTER XI
A CONVERSATION
Not five minutes after Melissy had left the deputy sheriff, another rider galloped up the road. Jack, returning from his room, where he had left the box of gold locked up, waited on the porch to see who this might be.
The horseman proved to be the man Norris, or Boone, and in a thoroughly bad temper, as Jack soon found out.
"Have you see anything of 'Lissie Lee?" he demanded immediately.
"Miss Lee has just left me. She has gone to her room," answered Flatray quietly.
"Well, I want to see her," said the other hoarsely.
"I reckon you better postpone it to to-morrow. She's some played out and needs sleep."
"Well, I'm going to see her now."
Jack turned, still all gentleness, and called to Jim Budd, who was in the store.
"Oh, Jim! Run upstairs and knock on Miss Melissy's door and tell her Mr. Norris is down here. Ask if she will see him to-night."
"You're making a heap of formality out of this, Mr. Buttinsky," sneered the cowpuncher.
Jack made no answer, unless it were one to whistle gently and look out into the night as if he were alone.
"No, seh. She doan' wan' tuh see him to-night," announced Jim upon his return.
"That seems to settle it, Mr. Norris," said Jack pleasantly.
"Not by a hell of a sight. I've got something to say to her, and I'm going to say it."
"To-morrow," amended the officer.
"I said to-night."
"But your say doesn't go here against hers. I reckon you'll wait."
"Not so's you could notice it." The cowpuncher took a step forward toward the stairway, but Flatray was there before him.
"Get out of the way, you. I don't stand for any butting-in," the cowboy blustered.
"Don't be a goat, Norris. She's tired, and she says she don't want to see you. That's enough, ain't it?"
Norris leaped back with an oath to draw his gun, but Jack had the quickest draw in Arizona. The puncher found himself looking into the business end of a revolver.
"Better change your mind, seh," suggested the officer amiably. "I take it you've been drinking and you're some excited. If you were in condition to _savez_ the situation, you'd understand that the young lady doesn't care to see you now. Do you need a church to fall on you before you can take a hint?"
"I reckon if you knew all about her, you wouldn't be so anxious to stand up for her," Norris said darkly.
"I expect we cayn't any of us stand the great white light on all our acts; but if any one can, it's that little girl upstairs."
"What would you say if I told you that she's liable to go to Yuma if I lift my hand?"
"I'd say I was from Missouri and needed showing."
"Put up that gun, come outside with me, and if I take a notion I'll show you all right."
Jack laughed as his gun disappeared. "I'd be willing to bet high that there are a good many citizens around here haided straighter for Yuma than Miss Melissy."
Without answering, Norris led the way out and stopped only when his arm rested on the fence of the corral.
"Nobody can hear us now," he said brusquely, and the ranger got a whiff of his hot whisky breath. "You've put it up to me to make good. All right, I'll do it. That little girl in there, as you call her, is the bad man who held up the Fort Allison stage."
The officer laughed tolerantly as he lit a cigarette.
"I hear you say it, Norris."
"I didn't expect you to believe it right away, but it's a fact just the same."
Flatray climbed to the fence and rested his feet on a rail. "Fire ahead. I'm listenin'."
"The first men on the ground after that hold-up were me and Lee. We covered the situation thorough and got hold of some points right away."
"That's right funny too. When I asked you if you'd been down there you both denied it," commented the officer.
"We were protecting the girl. Mind you, we didn't know who had done it then, but we had reasons to think the person had just come from this ranch."
"What reasons?" briefly demanded Flatray.
"We don't need to go into them. We had them, anyhow. Then I lit on a foot-print right on the edge of the ditch that no man ever made. We didn't know what to make of it, but we wiped it out and followed the ditch, one on each side. We'd figured that was the way he had gone. You see, though water was running in the ditch now, it hadn't been half an hour before."
"You don't say!"
"There wasn't a sign of anybody leaving the ditch till we got to the ranch; then we saw tracks going straight to the house."
"So you got a bunch of sheep and drove them down there to muss things up some."
Norris looked sharply at him. "You got there while we were driving them back. Well, that's right. We had to help her out."
"You're helping her out now, ain't you?" Jack asked dryly.
"That's my business. I've got my own reasons, Mr. Deputy. All you got to do is arrest her."
"Just as soon as you give me the evidence, seh."
"Haven't I given it to you? She was seen to drive away from the house in her rig. She left footprints down there. She came back up the ditch and then rode right up to the head-gates and turned on the water. Jim Little saw her cutting across country from the head-gates hell-to-split."
"Far as I can make out, all the evidence you've given me ain't against her, but against you. She was out drivin' when it happened, you say, and you expect me to arrest her for it. It ain't against the law to go driving, seh. And as for that ditch fairy tale, on your own say-so you wiped out all chance to prove the story."
"Then you won't arrest her?"
"If you'll furnish the evidence, seh."
"I tell you we know she did it. Her father knows it."
"Is it worryin' his conscience? Did he ask you to lay an information against her?" asked the officer sarcastically.
"That isn't the point."
"You're right. Here's the point." Not by the faintest motion of the body had the officer's indolence been lifted, but the quiet ring of his voice showed it was gone. "You and Lee were overheard planning that robbery the day after you were seen hanging around the 'Monte Cristo.' You started out to hold up the stage. It was held up. By your own story you were the first men on the ground after the robbery. I tracked you straight from there here along the ditch. I found a black mask in Lee's coat. A dozen people saw you on that fool sheep-drive of yours. And to sum up, I found the stolen gold right here where you must have hidden it."
"You found the gold? Where?"
"That ain't the point either, seh. The point