Yeager's eyes were like a stone wall. "Yep. This mo'ning. I needed some husky guy to help me, so I got him."
"Funny you had to get a fellow from Bear Creek to help you, Jim."
"Are you looking for a job, Brill?"
"No. Why?"
"Because I ain't noticed any stampede this way among the boys to preempt this job. I take a man where I can find him, Brill, and I don't ask you to O.K. him."
"I see you don't, Jim. The boys aren't going to like it very well, though."
"Then they know what they can do about it," Yeager answered evenly, level eyes steadily on those of his critic.
"What time did this nester get here, Jim?" broke in Phil.
Yeager's opaque eyes passed from Healy to Sanderson. "It might have been about eight."
"Then he couldn't be the man," the boy said to Healy, almost in a whisper.
"What man?" Jim asked.
"We ran on a rustler branding a C.O. calf. We got close enough to take a shot at him. Then he slid into some arroyo, and we lost him," Phil exclaimed.
"How long ago was this?" asked Yeager.
"About an hour since we first saw him. Beats all how he ever made his getaway. We were right after him when he gave us the slip."
"Oh, he gave you the slip, did he?"
"Dropped into some hole and pulled it in after him. These hills are built for hide and seek, looks like."
"Notice the color of his horse?"
"It was a roan, Jim. Something like that nester's." Phil nodded toward the animal Keller had ridden.
All eyes focused hard on the horse with the white stockings.
"What brand was he putting on the calf? That'll tell you who the man was."
Phil and Healy looked at each other, and the latter laughed. "That's one on us. We didn't stay to look, but got right out for Mr. Rustler."
"Did he kill the cow?"
Phil nodded.
"Then you'll find the calf still hanging around there unless he had a pal to drive it away."
"That's right. We'll go back now and look. Ready, Phyl?"
"Yes." She stepped to her horse, and swung to the saddle.
Meanwhile Healy rode forward to the cabin. Through narrowed lids he looked down at the man standing in the doorway. "Give that message to your friends?" he demanded insolently.
There are men who have to look at each other only once to know that there is born between them a perpetual hostility. Each of these men had felt it at the first shock of meeting eyes. They would feel it again as often as they looked at each other.
"No," the nester answered.
"Why not?"
"I didn't care to. You may carry your own messages."
"When I do I'll carry them with a gun."
"Interesting if true." Keller's gaze passed derisively over him and dismissed the man.
"And I hope when I come I'll meet Mr. Keller first."
The nester's attention was focused indolently upon the hills. He seemed to have forgotten that the cattleman was in Arizona.
Healy ripped out a sudden oath, drove the spurs in, and went down the trail with his broncho on the buck.
Keller looked at Yeager and laughed, but that young man met him with a frosty eye.
"I've got some questions to ask you, Mr. Keller," he said.
"Unload 'em."
Yeager led the way inside, offered his guest the chair, and sat down on the bed with his arms on the table which had been drawn close to it.
"In the first place, I'll announce myself. I don't hold with rustlers or waddies. I'm a white man. That being understood, I want to know where we're at."
"Meaning?"
"Miss Phyllis unloads a story on me about you shooting yourself up accidental. Soon as I looked at you that looked fishy to me. You ain't that kind of a durn fool. Would you mind handing me a dipper of water? Thanks." Yeager tossed the water out of the window, and the dipper back into the pail. "I noticed you handed me that water with your right hand. Your gun is on your right side. Then how in Mexico, you being right-handed, did you manage to shoot yourself in the right arm below the elbow?"
Keller laughed dryly, and offered no information. "Quite a Sherlock Holmes, ain't you?"
"Hell, no! I got eyes in my head, though. Moreover, that bullet went in at right angles to your arm. How did you make out to do that?"
"Sleight of hand," suggested the other.
"No powder marks, either. And, lastly, it was, a rifle did it, not a revolver."
"Anything more?"
"Some. That side talk between you and Miss Phyllis wasn't over and above clear to me then. I savez it now. She hates you like p'ison, but she's too tender-hearted to give you up. Ain't that it?"
"That's it."
"She lied for you to me. She lied again to Phil. So did I. Oh, we didn't lie in words, but it's the same thing. Now, I wouldn't lie to save my own skin. Why then should I for yours, and you a rustler and a thief?"
"I'm a rustler and a thief, am I?"
"Ain't you?"
"Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?"
Yeager debated an instant before he answered flatly, "No."
"Then I won't say it."
The wounded man tossed his answer off so flippantly that Yeager scowled at him. "Mr. Keller, you're a newcomer here. I wonder if you know what the Malpais country would be liable to do to a man caught rustling now."
"I can guess."
"Let me tell what I know and your life wouldn't be worth a plugged quarter."
"Why didn't you tell?"
Yeager brought his big fist down heavily on the table. "Because of Phyl Sanderson. That's why. She put it up to me, and I played her game. But I ain't sure I'm going to keep on playing it. I'm a Malpais man. My father has a ranch down there, and I've rode the range all my life. Why should I throw down my friends to save a rustler caught in the act?"
"You've already tried and convicted me, I see."
"The facts convict you, seh."
"Your understanding of the facts, I reckon you mean."
"I haven't noticed that you're giving me any chance to understand them different," Yeager cut back dryly.
The nester took from his pocket a little pearl-handled knife, picked up a potato from a basket beside him, and began to whittle on it absently. He looked across the table at the man sitting on the bed, and debated a question in his mind. Was it best to confess the whole truth? Or should he keep his own counsel?
"I see you've got Miss Sanderson's knife. Did you forget to return it?" Yeager made comment.
For just an instant Keller's eye confessed amazement. "Miss Sanderson's knife! Why—how did you know it was hers?" he asked, gathering himself together lamely.
"I ought to know, seeing as I gave it to her for a Christmas present. Sent to Denver for that knife, I did. Best lady's knife in the market, I'm told. Made in Sheffield, England."
"Ye-es. It's sure a good knife. I'll ce'tainly return it next time I see her."
"Funny she ever let you get away with it. She's some particular who she