"Still, I'm going. I won't have your death on my hands," she told him defiantly.
"Sho! I ain't aimin' to pass over the divide on account of a scratch like this. There's no danger but what I can look out for myself."
She waited in silence for him to start, looking straight ahead of her.
He tried in vain to argue her out of it. She had nothing to say, and he saw she was obstinately determined to carry her point.
Finally, with a little chuckle at her stubbornness, he gave in and turned round.
"All right. Yeager's it is. We're acting like a pair of kids, seems to me." This last with a propitiatory little smile toward her which she disdained to answer.
Yeager saw them from afar, and recognized the girl.
"Hello, Phyllis!" he shouted down. "With you in a minute."
The girl slipped to the ground, and climbed the steep trail to meet him. Her crisp "Wait here," flung over her shoulder with the slightest turn of the head, kept Keller in the saddle.
Halfway up she and the man met. The one waiting below could not hear what they said, but he could tell she was explaining the situation to Yeager. The latter nodded from time to time, protested, was vehemently overruled, and seemed to leave the matter with her. Together they retraced their way. Young Yeager, in flannel shirt and half-leg miner's boots, was a splendid specimen of bronzed Arizona. His level gaze judged the man on horseback, approved him, and met him eye to eye.
"Better light, Mr. Keller. If you come in we'll have a look at your arm. An accident like that is a mighty awkward thing to happen to a man on the trail. It's right fortunate Miss Sanderson found you so soon after it happened."
The nester knew a surge of triumph in his blood, but it did not show in the impassive face which he turned upon his host.
"It was right fortunate for me," he said, swinging from the saddle. Incidentally he was wondering what story had been narrated to Yeager, but he took a chance without hesitation. "A fellow oughtn't to be so careless when he's got a gun in his hand."
"You're right, seh. In this country of heavy underbrush a man's gun is liable to go off and hit somebody any time if he ain't careful. You're in big luck you didn't shoot yourself up a heap worse."
Yeager led the way to his cabin, and offered Phyllis the single chair he boasted, and the nester a seat on the bed. Sitting beside him, he examined the wound and washed it.
"Comes to being an invalid I'm a false alarm," Keller said apologetically. "I didn't want to come, but Miss Sanderson would bring me."
"She was dead right, too. Time you had ridden twenty miles through the hot sun with that wound you would have been in a raging fever."
"One way and another I'm quite in her debt."
"That's so," agreed Yeager, intent on his work.
She refused to meet the nester's smile. "Fiddlesticks! You talk mighty foolish, Jim. I wouldn't go away and leave a wounded dog if I could help it."
"Suppose the dog were a sheep-killer?" Keller asked with his engaging, impudent smile.
A dust cloud rose from her skirt under a stroke of the restless quirt. "I'd do my best for it and let it settle with the law afterward."
"Even if it were a wolf caught in a trap?"
"I should put it out of its pain. No matter how much I detested it, I wouldn't leave it there to suffer."
"I'm quite sure you wouldn't," the wounded man agreed.
Yeager looked from one to the other, not quite catching the drift of the underlying meaning. Another thing puzzled him, too. But, like most men of the unfenced Southwest, Yeager had a large capacity for silence. Now he attended strictly to his business, without mentioning what he had noticed.
The wound dressed, Phyllis rose to leave. "You'll be down for your mail to-morrow, Jim," she suggested, as she sauntered toward the door.
"Sure. I'll let you know how our patient is getting along."
"Oh, he's yours. I don't want any of the credit," she returned carelessly.
Then, the words scarce off her lips, she gave a little cry of alarm, and stepped quickly back into the room. What she had seen had sapped the color from her face. Yeager started forward, but she waved him back.
"It's Phil and Brill Healy. You've got to hide us, Jim," she told him tensely.
The nester began to grin. He always did when he faced a difficulty apparently insurmountable. Also his fingers slid toward the butt of his revolver.
Chapter IV
"I'm a Rustler and a Thief, Am I?"
Jim swept the cabin with a gesture. "Where can I hide you? Anyhow, there are the horses in plain sight."
Phyllis took imperious control. "Get a coat on him, Jim," she ordered.
At the same time she caught up the basin of bloodstained water and flung its contents through the open window. The torn linen and the stained handkerchief she tossed into a corner and covered with a gunny sack.
"Not a word about the wound, Jim. Mr. Keller is here to help you do your assessment work, remember. And whatever I say, don't give me away."
Yeager nodded. He had manoeuvred the wounded arm through the coat sleeve and was straightening out the shoulders. The nester's eyes were shining with excitement. Alone of the three, he was enjoying himself.
"Remember now. Don't talk too much. Let me run this," the girl cautioned, and with that she stepped to the door, caught sight of her brother with a glad little cry of apparent relief, and ran swiftly to him.
"Oh, Phil!" she almost sobbed, and the stress of her emotion was genuine enough, even if she dissembled as to the cause.
The boy patted her dark hair gently. They were twins, without other near relatives except their father, and the tie between them was close.
"What is it, Phyllie? Why didn't you stay where we left you?"
"I was afraid for you. And I rode a little nearer. Then he came straight toward me—and I rode away. I could hear him crashing through the mesquite. When I reached the trail of Jim's mine, I followed it, for I knew he would be here."
"Sure. Course she was scared. What woman wouldn't be? We oughtn't both to have left her. But there wasn't one chance in a thousand of his stumbling on the very spot where she was," said Healy.
Phil gentled her with a caressing hand. "It's all right now, sis. Did you happen to see the fellow at all?"
"Yes. At a distance."
"I don't suppose you would know him," Healy said.
She gave a strained little laugh. "I didn't wait to get a description of him. Didn't you boys recognize him?"
After Phil's answer she breathed freer. "We did not get near enough, though Brill got two shots at him as he pulled out. He was going hell-for-leather and Brill missed both times." He lowered his voice and asked angrily: "What's he doing here?"
For Keller had followed Yeager from the cabin and was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He wore no hat, and had the manner of one very much at home.
"He's helping Jim with his assessment work," she answered in the same low tone. "It's too bad you lost the rustler. He must have broken for the hills."
Healy's eyes had narrowed to slits. Now he murmured a question: "What about this man Keller? Was he here when you came, Phyl?"
The girl turned to Yeager, who had