A Texas Ranger | Page 3

intending to arrange the trade from behind that gun. I expect you needed a team right bad."
His steady eyes rested on her, searched her, appraised her, while he meditated aloud in a low easy drawl.
"Yes, you ce'tainly must need the team. Now I wonder why? Well, I'd hate to refuse a lady anything she wants as bad as you do that." He swiftly swooped down and caught up her revolver from the ground, tossed it into the air so as to shift his hold from butt to barrel, and handed it to her with a bow. "Allow me to return the pop-gun you dropped, ma'am,"
She snatched it from him and leveled it at him so that it almost touched his forehead. He looked at her and laughed in delighted mockery.
"All serene, ma'am. You've got me dead to rights again."
His very nonchalance disarmed her. What could she do while his low laughter mocked her?
"When you've gone through me complete I think I'll take a little pasear over the hill and have a look at your hawss. Mebbe we might still do business."
As he had anticipated, his suggestion filled her with alarm. She flew to bar the way.
"You can't go. It isn't necessary."
"Sho! Of course it's necessary. Think I'm going to buy a hawss I've never seen?" he asked, with deep innocence.
"I'll bring it here."
"In Texas, ma'am, we wait on the ladies. Still, it's your say-so when you're behind that big gun."
He said it laughing, and she threw the weapon angrily into the seat of the rig.
"Thank you, ma'am. I'll amble down and see what's behind the hill."
By the flinch in her eyes he tested his center shot and knew it true. Her breast was rising and falling tumultuously. A shiver ran through her.
"No-- no. I'm not hiding-- anything," she gasped.
"Then if you're not you can't object to my going there."
She caught her hands together in despair. There was about him something masterful that told her she could not prevent him from investigating; and it was impossible to guess how he would act after he knew. The men she had known had been bound by convention to respect a woman's wishes, but even her ignorance of his type made guess that this steel-eyed, close-knit young Westerner-- or was he a Southerner?-- would be impervious to appeals founded upon the rules of the society to which she had been accustomed. A glance at his stone-wall face, at the lazy confidence of his manner, made her dismally aware that the data gathered by her experience of the masculine gender were insufficient to cover this specimen.
"You can't go."
But her imperative refusal was an appeal. For though she hated him from the depths of her proud, untamed heart for the humiliation he had put upon her, yet for the sake of that ferocious hunted animal she had left lying under a cottonwood she must bend her spirit to win him.
"I'm going to sit in this game and see it out," he said, not unkindly.
"Please!"
Her sweet slenderness barred the way about as electively as a mother quail does the road to her young. He smiled, put his big hands on her elbows, and gently lifted her to one side. Then he strode forward lightly, with the long, easy, tireless stride of a beast of prey, striking direct for his quarry.
A bullet whizzed by his ear, and like a flash of light his weapon was unscabbarded and ready for action. He felt a flame of fire scorch his cheek and knew a second shot had grazed him.
"Hands up! Quick!" ordered the traveler.
Lying on the ground before him was a man with close-cropped hair and a villainous scarred face. A revolver in his hand showed the source of the bullets.
Eye to eye the men measured strength, fighting out to the last ditch the moral battle which was to determine the physical one. Sullenly, at the last, the one on the ground shifted his gaze and dropped his gun with a vile curse.
"Run to earth," he snarled, his lip lifting from the tobacco-stained upper teeth in an ugly fashion.
The girl ran toward the Westerner and caught at his arm. "Don't shoot," she implored
Without moving his eyes from the man on the ground he swept her back.
"This outfit is too prevalent with its hardware," he growled. "Chew out an explanation, my friend, or you're liable to get spoiled."
It was the girl that spoke, in a low voice and very evidently under a tense excitement.
"He is my brother and he has-- hurt himself. He can't ride any farther and we have seventy miles still to travel. We didn't know what to do, and so--"
"You started out to be a road-agent and he took a pot-shot at the first person he saw. I'm surely obliged to you both for taking so much interest