The Arizona sun was setting in its accustomed blaze of splendor, when Val Collins and Alice Mackenzie put their horses again toward the ranch and the rainbow-hued west. In his contented eyes were reflected the sunshine and a serenity born of life in the wide, open spaces. They rode in silence for long, the gentle evening breeze blowing in soughs.
“Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? He might have been anything—and it has come to this, that he is hunted like a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would give anything to save him.”
He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. “Can't be done. Good qualities bulge out all over him, but they don't count for anything. 'Unstable as water.' That's what's the matter with him. He is the slave of his own whims. Hence he is only the splendid wreck of a man, full of all kinds of rich outcropping pay-ore that pinch out when you try to work them. They don't raise men gamer, but that only makes him a more dangerous foe to society. Same with his loyalty and his brilliancy. He's got a haid on him that works like they say old J. E. B. Stuart's did. He would run into a hundred traps, but somehow he always worked his men out of them. That's Leroy, too. If he had been an ordinary criminal he would have been rounded up years ago. It's his audacity, his iron nerve, his good horse-sense judgment that saves his skin. But he's certainly up against it at last.”
“You think Sheriff Forbes will capture him?”
He laughed. “I think it more likely he'll capture Forbes. But we know now where he hangs out, and who he is. He has always been a mystery till now. The mystery is solved, and unless he strikes out for Sonora, Leroy is as good as a dead man.”
“A dead man?”
“Does he strike you as a man likely to be taken alive? I look to see a dramatic exit to the sound of cracking Winchesters.”
“Yes, that would be like him,” she confessed with shudder. “I think he was made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won't be one worthy of the best in him.”
“I guess he does have more moments set to music than most of us, and I'll bet, too, he has hidden way in him a list of 'Thou shalt nots.' I read a book once by a man named Stevenson that was sure virgin gold. He showed how every man, no matter how low he falls, has somewhere in him a light that burns, some rag of honor for which he is still fighting I'd hate to have to judge Leroy. Some men, I reckon, have to buck against so much in themselves that even failure is a kind of success for them.”
“Yet you will go out to hunt him down?” she' said, marveling at the broad sympathy of the man.
“Sure I will. My official duty is to look out for society. If something in the machine breaks loose and goes to ripping things to pieces, the engineer has to stop the damage, even if he has to smash the rod that's causing the trouble.”
The ponies dropped down again into the bed of the wash, and plowed across through the heavy sand. After they had reached the solid road, Collins resumed conversation at a new point.
“It's a month and a day since I first met you Miss Mackenzie,” he said, apparently apropos of nothing.
She felt her blood begin to choke. “Indeed!”
“I gave you a letter to read when I was on the train.”
“A letter!” she exclaimed, in well-affected surprise.
“Did you think it was a book of poems? No, ma'am, it was a letter. You were to read it in a month. Time was up last night. I reckon you read it.”
“Could I read a letter I left at Tucson, when it was a hundred miles away?” she smiled with sweet patronage.
“Not if you left it at Tucson,” he assented, with an answering smile.
“Maybe I DID lose it.” She frowned, trying to remember.
“Then I'll have to tell you what was in it.”
“Any time will do. I dare say it wasn't important.”
“Then we'll say THIS time.”
“Don't be stupid, Mr. Collins. I want to talk about our desert Villon.”
“I said in that letter—”
She put her pony to a canter, and they galloped side by side in silence for half a mile. After she had slowed down to a walk, he continued placidly, as if oblivious of an interruption:
“I said in that letter that I had just met the young lady I was expecting to marry.”
“Dear me, how interesting! Was she in the smoker?”
“No, she was in Section 3 of the Pullman.”
“I wish I had happened to go into the other Pullman, but, of course, I couldn't know the young lady you were interested in was riding there.”
“She wasn't.”
“But you've just told me—”
“That I said in the letter you took so much trouble to lose that I expected to marry the young woman passing under the name of Miss Wainwright.”
“Sir!”
“That I expected—”
“Really, I am not deaf, Mr. Collins.”
“—expected to marry her, just as soon as she was willing.”
“Oh, she is to be given a voice in the matter, is she?”
“Ce'tainly, ma'am.”
“And when?”
“Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time.”
“It can't be too soon for me,” she flashed back, sweeping him with proud, indignant eyes.
“But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait.”
“No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all.”
He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.
“Aren't you going to speak?” she flamed.
“I've decided to wait.”
“Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you.”
“Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you—”
“No, sir, I won't—not if you were the last man on earth,” she interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. “I never was so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so—so outrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seated certainty you can't get away from.”
He had her fairly. “Then you DID read the letter.”
“Yes, sir, I read it—and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never seen its like.”
“Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think,” he drawled.
Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her bronco the spur.
When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the alley.
“It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumble life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expect they could put some of these romances out of business.” Miss Mackenzie's covert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.
“All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to the roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too—the best in the territory,” he continued patriotically. “She ain't so great as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the git-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morn till dine.”
He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they