There was nobody to whom she could talk about it, for Phil and her father were away at Noches. Restless as a caged panther, she twice had her horse brought to the door, and rode into the hills to meet her posse. But she could not be sure which way they would come, and after venturing a short distance she would return for fear they might arrive in her absence. Night had fallen over the country, and the stars were out long before she got back the second time. Nine—ten—eleven o'clock struck, and still no sign of those for whom she waited.
At last they came, their prisoner riding in the midst, bareheaded and with his hands tied.
"I've got him, Phyl!" Healy cried in a voice that told the girl he was riding on a wave of triumph.
"I see you have."
Nevertheless she looked not at the victor, but at the vanquished, and never had she seen a man who looked more master of his fate than this one. He was smiling down at her whimsically, and she saw they had not taken him without a struggle. The marks of it were on them and on him. Healy's cheek bone was laid open in a nasty cut, and Slim had a handkerchief tied round his head.
As for Keller, his shirt was in ribbons and dyed with the stains of blood from the wound that had broken out again in the battle. The hair on the left side of his head was clotted with dried blood, and his cheeks were covered with it. Both eyes were blacked, and hands and face were scratched badly. But his mien was as jaunty, his smile as gallant, as if he had come at the head of a conquering army.
"Good evenin', Miss Sanderson," he bowed ironically.
She looked at him, and turned away without answering. She heard Healy curse softly and knew why. This man contrived somehow to rob him of his triumph.
"You are none of you hurt, Brill?" the girl asked in a low voice.
"No. He fought like a wild cat, but we took him by surprise. He had only his bare fists."
"How about him? Is he hurt?"
"I don't know—or care," the man answered sullenly.
"But he must be looked to."
"I don't know why. It ain't my fault we had to beat him up."
"I didn't say it was your fault, Brill," she answered gently. "But any one can see he has lost a lot of blood, and his wounds are full of dust. They must be washed. I want him brought into the house. Aunt Becky and I will look after him."
"No need of that. Slim will fix him up."
She shook her head. "No, Brill."
His eyes gave way first, but his surrender came with a bad grace.
"All right, Phyl. But he's going to be covered by a gun all the time. I'm not taking chances on him."
"Then have him taken into my den. I'll wake Aunt Becky and we'll be there in a few minutes."
When Phyllis arrived with Aunt Becky she found the nester sitting on the lounge, Healy opposite him with a revolver close to his hand. The prisoner's arms had been freed. His sardonic smile still twitched at the corners of his mouth.
"You've ce'tainly begun your practice on a disreputable patient, Doctor Sanderson. I haven't had time to comb my hair since that little séance with your friends. We sure did have a sociable time. They're all good mixers." He looked into the long glass opposite, laughed at sight of his swollen face, then rattled into a misquotation of some verses he remembered:
"There's many a black black eye, they say,
but none so bright as mine;
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother,
I'm to be Queen o' the May."
"Put the water and things down on that table, Becky," her mistress told her, ignoring the man's blithe folly.
"I'm giving you lots of chances to do the Good Samaritan act," he continued. "Honest, I hate to be so much trouble. You'll have to blame Mr. Healy. He's the responsible party for these little accidents of mine."
"I'm going to be responsible for one more," the stockman told him darkly.
"I understand your intentions are good, but I've noticed that sometimes expectation outruns performance," his prisoner came back promptly.
"Not this time, I think."
Phyllis understood that Brill was threatening the nester and that the latter was defying him lightly, but what either meant precisely she did not know. She proceeded to business without a word except the necessary directions to Becky. Not until the arm was dressed and the wound on the head washed and bandaged did she address Keller.
"I'll send you a powder that will help you get to sleep. The doctor left it here for Phil, and he did not need it," she said.
"Mebbe I won't need it, either." Keller laughed hardily, at his enemy it seemed to the girl, and with some hint of a sinister understanding between them from which she was excluded. "Thanks just the same, for that and for everything else you've done for me."
Phyllis said "Good night" stiffly, and followed the old negress out. She went directly to her bedroom, but not to sleep. The night was hot, and it had been to her a day full of excitement. She had much to think of. Going to the open window, she sat down in a low chair with her arms across the sill.
Two men met beneath her window.
"Gimme the makings, Slim," one said to the other.
While he was shaking the tobacco from the pouch to the paper, Slim spoke. "The boys ought all to be here in another hour, Budd. After that, it won't take us long."
"Not long," the fat man answered uneasily.
There was a silence. Slim broke it. "We got to do it, o' course."
"Looks like. Got to make an example. No peace on the range till we do."
"I hate like sin to, Budd. He's so damn game."
"Me, too. But we got to. No two ways about it."
"I reckon. Brill says so. But I wish the cuss had a chanct to fight for his life."
They moved off together in troubled silence, Budd's cigarette glowing red in the darkness. Behind them they left a girl shocked and rigid. They were going to lynch him! She knew it as certainly as if she had been told it in set words. Her blood grew cold, and she shivered. While the confused horror of it raced through her brain, she noticed subconsciously that her fingers on the sill were trembling violently.
What could she do? She was only a girl. These men deferred to her in the trivial pleasantries, but she knew they would go their grim way no matter how she pleaded. And it would be her fault. She had betrayed the rustler to them. It would be the same as if she had murdered him. He had known while she was tending his wounds that she had delivered him to death, and he had not even reproached her.
Courage flowed back to her heart. She would save him if it were possible. It must be by strategy if at all. But how? For of course he was guarded.
She stepped out into the corridor. All was dark there. She tiptoed along it to the guest room, and found the door unlocked. Nobody was inside. She canvassed in her mind the possibilities. They might have him outdoors or in the men's bunk house with them under a guard, or they might have locked him up somewhere until the arrival of the others. If the latter, it must be in the store, since that was the only safe place under lock and key.
Phyllis slipped out of the back door into the darkness, and skirted the house at a distance. There were lights in the bunk house of the ranch riders, and through the window she could see a group gathered. Creeping close to the window, she looked in. Their prisoner was not with them. In front of the store two men were seated in the darkness. She was almost upon them before she saw them. Each of them carried a rifle.
"Hello! Who's that?" one of them cried sharply.
It