And then presently she became aware that there was sound. In the vast silence beyond the cabin door something had moved. She was on her feet instantly, her senses alert. Her fear had left her. Her face was pale, but her lips closed grimly as she went to the rack behind the door and took down a rifle that Ben always kept there. Then she turned the lamp low and cautiously stepped to the door.
A pony whinnied, standing with ears erect at the edge of the porch. In a crumpled heap on the ground lay a man. She caught her breath sharply, but in the next instant was out and bending over him. With a strength that seemed almost beyond her shy dragged the limp form to the door where the light from the lamp shone upon it.
"Ben!" she said sharply. "What has happened?" She shook him slightly, calling again to him.
Aroused, he opened his eyes, recognized her, and raised himself painfully upon one elbow, smiling weakly.
"It ain't anything, sis," he said. "Creased in the back of the head. Knocked me cold. Mebbe my shoulder too—I ain't been able to lift my arm." He smiled again—grimly, though wearily. "From the back too. The damned sneak!"
Her eyes filled vengefully, and she leaned closer to him, her voice tense. "Who, Ben? Who did it?"
"Ferguson," he said sharply. And again, as his eyes closed: "The damned sneak."
She swayed dizzily and came very near dropping him to the porch floor. But no sound came from her, and presently when the dizziness had passed, she dragged him to the door, propped it open with a chair, and then dragged him on through the opening to the kitchen, and from there to one of the adjoining rooms. Then with pale face and determined lips she set about the work of taking care of Ben's wounds. The spot on the back of the head, she found, was a mere abrasion, as he had said. But his shoulder had been shattered, the bullet, she discovered, having passed clear through the fleshy part of the shoulder, after breaking one of the smaller bones.
Getting her scissors she clipped away the hair from the back of his head and sponged the wound and bandaged it, convinced that of itself it was not dangerous. Then she undressed him, and by the use of plenty of clear, cold water, a sponge, and some bandages, stopped the flow of blood in his shoulder and placed him in a comfortable position. He had very little fever, but she moved rapidly around him, taking his temperature, administering sedatives when he showed signs of restlessness, hovering over him constantly until the dawn began to come.
Soon after this he went off into a peaceful sleep, and, almost exhausted with her efforts and the excitement, she threw herself upon the floor beside his bed, sacrificing her own comfort that she might be near to watch should he need her. It was late in the afternoon when Radford opened his eyes to look out through the door that connected his room with the kitchen and saw his sister busying herself with the dishes. His mind was clear and he suffered very little pain. For a long time he lay, quietly watching her, while his thoughts went back to the meeting on the trail with Ferguson. Why hadn't he carried out his original intention of shooting the stray-man down from ambush? He had doubted Leviatt's word and had hesitated, wishing to give Ferguson the benefit of the doubt, and had received his reward in the shape of a bullet in the back—after practically making a peace pact with his intended victim.
He presently became aware that his sister was standing near him, and he looked up and smiled at her. Then in an instant she was kneeling beside him, admonishing him to quietness, smoothing his forehead, giving delighted little gasps over his improved condition. But in spite of her evident cheerfulness there was a suggestion of trouble swimming deep in her eyes; he could not help but see that she was making a brave attempt to hide her bitter disappointment over the turn things had taken. Therefore he was not surprised when, after she had attended to all his wants, she sank on her knees beside him.
"Ben," she said, trying to keep a quiver out of her voice, "are you sure it was Ferguson who shot you?"
He patted her hand tenderly and sympathetically with his uninjured one. "I'm sorry for you, Mary," he returned, "but there ain't any doubt about it." Then he told her of the warning he had received from Leviatt, and when he saw her lips curl at the mention of the Two Diamond range boss's name he smiled.
"I thought the same thing that you are thinking, Mary," he said. "And I didn't want to shoot Ferguson. But as things have turned out I wouldn't have been much wrong to have done it."
She raised her head from the coverlet. "Did you see him before he shot you?" she questioned eagerly.
"Just a little before," he returned. "I met him at a turn in the trail about half a mile from here. I made him get down off his horse and drop his guns. We had a talk, for I didn't want to shoot him until I was sure, and he talked so clever that I thought he was telling the truth. But he wasn't."
He told her about Ferguson's concealed pistol; how they had stood face to face with death between them, concluding: "By that time I had decided not to shoot him. But he didn't have the nerve to pull the trigger when he was looking at me. He waited until I'd got on my horse and was riding away. Then he sneaked up behind."
He saw her body shiver, and he caressed her hair slowly, telling her that he was sorry things had turned out so, and promising her that when he recovered he would bring the Two Diamond stray-man to a strict accounting—providing the latter didn't leave the country before. But he saw that his words had given her little comfort, for when an hour or so later he dropped off to sleep the last thing he saw was her seated at the table in the kitchen, her head bowed in her hands, crying softly.
"Poor little kid," he said, as sleep dimmed his eyes; "it looks as though this would be the end of her story."
Chapter XX. Love and a Rifle
Ferguson did not visit Miss Radford the next morning—he had seen Leviatt and Tucson depart from the ranchhouse, had observed the direction they took, and had followed them. For twenty miles he had kept them in sight, watching them with a stern patience that had brought its reward.
They had ridden twenty miles straight down the river, when Ferguson, concealed behind a ridge, saw them suddenly disappear into a little basin. Then he rode around the ridge, circled the rim of hills that surrounded the basin, and dismounting from his pony, crept through a scrub oak thicket to a point where he could look directly down upon them.
He was surprised into a subdued whistle. Below him in the basin was an adobe hut. He had been through this section of the country several times but had never before stumbled upon the hut. This was not remarkable, for situated as it was, in this little basin, hidden from sight by a serried line of hills and ridges among which no cowpuncher thought to travel—nor cared to—, the cabin was as safe from prying eyes as it was possible for a human habitation to be.
There was a small corral near the cabin, in which there were several steers, half a dozen cows, and perhaps twenty calves. As Ferguson's eyes took in the latter detail, they glittered with triumph. Not even the wildest stretch of the imagination could produce twenty calves from half a dozen cows.
But Ferguson did not need this evidence to convince him that the men who occupied the cabin were rustlers. Honest men did not find it necessary to live in a basin in the hills where they were shut in from sight of the open country. Cattle thieves did not always find it necessary to do so—unless they were men like these, who had no herds of their own among which to conceal their ill-gotten beasts. He was convinced that these men were migratory thieves, who operated upon the herds nearest them, remained until they had accumulated a considerable number of cattle, and then drove the entire lot to some favored friend who was not averse to running the risk of detection if through that risk he came into possession of easily earned money.
There