Mavericks | Page 6

homestead the natural parks in the
hills.
Brill Healy laughed. "The fat's in the fire now, sure enough. Just the
same, I back your play, Phil."
He turned recklessly to the man in the doorway. "You may tell your
friends up on Bear Creek that we own this range and mean to hold it.
We don't aim to let our cattle be starved, and we don't aim to lie down
before rustlers. Understand?"
The nester smiled, but there was no gayety in his eyes. They met those
of the cattleman with a grip of steel, and measured strength with him.
Each knew the other would go the limit before Keller made quiet
answer:
"I think so."
And with that he dismissed the subject and his unfriendly audience.
With perfect ease, he read his letter, pocketed it, and whistled softly as
he impassively took stock of the scenery. Apparently he had wiped

Public Opinion from his map, and was interested only in the panorama
before him.
Seven Mile Ranch lay rooted at the desert terminus among the foothills,
a gateway between the mountains and the Malpais Plain. Below was a
shimmering stretch of sand and cactus tortured beneath a blazing sun.
Into that caldron with its furnace-cracked floor the sun had poured itself
torridly for countless eons. It was a Sahara of mirage and desolation
and death.
To the left was a flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some
bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty
miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed
range now painted with orange and mauve and a hint of deepening
purple. For dusk was already slipping down over the peaks.
"Mail's been open half an hour, boys," Phyllis announced through the
open window.
They dropped in to the store, as noisy as schoolboys, but withal
deferential. It was clear the young postmistress reigned a queen among
the younger ones, but a queen that deigned to friendship with her
subjects. Some of them called her Miss Sanderson, one or two of them
Phyllie.
Among these last was Healy, who appeared on very good terms with
her indeed. He appointed himself a sort of master of ceremonies, and
handed to each man his mail with appropriate jocular comments
designed to embarrass the recipient. He knew them all, and his hits
were greeted with gay laughter. To the man standing in the doorway
with his back to them, they seemed all one happy family--and himself a
rank outsider. He trailed down the steps and swung himself to the
saddle. As he loped away the sound of her warm, clear laughter floated
after him.
CHAPTER III
CAUGHT RED-HANDED

From a cleft in the hills two riders emerged, following a little gulch to
the point where it widened into a draw. The alkali dust of Arizona lay
thick upon their broad-brimmed Stetsons and every inch of exposed
surface, but through the gray coating bloomed the freshness of youth. It
rang from their voices, was apparent in the modelling and carriage of
their figures. The young man was sinewy and hard as nails, the girl
supple and wiry, of a slender grace, straight-backed as an Indian in the
saddle.
Just where the draw dipped down into the grassy park they drew rein an
instant. Faint and far a sound drifted to them. Somebody down in the
park had fired a rifle.
"I don't agree with you, Phil," the girl said, picking up the thread of
their conversation where they had dropped it some minutes earlier.
"The nesters have as much right here as we have. They come here to
settle, and they take up government land. Why shouldn't they?"
"Because we got here first," he retorted impatiently. "Because our cattle
and sheep have been feeding on the land they are fencing. Because they
close the water holes and the creeks and claim they are theirs. It means
the end of the open range. That's what it means."
"Of course that's what it means. We'll have to adapt ourselves to it. You
talk foolishness when you make threats to drive out the nesters. That is
the sort of thing Buck Weaver has been trying to do. It's absurd. The
law is back of them. You would only come to trouble, and if you did
succeed others would take their places."
"And rustle our cattle," he added sullenly.
"It isn't proved they are the rustlers. You haven't a shred of evidence.
Perhaps they are, but you should prove it before you make the charge."
"If they aren't, who is?" he flared up.
"I don't know. But whoever it is will be caught and punished some day.
There is no doubt at all about that."

"You talk a heap of foolishness, Phyl," he answered resentfully. "My
notion is