Mavericks | Page 8

in the
saddle and waved a derisive hand at the shooters, then plunged into a
wash and disappeared.
What inspired her she could never tell. Perhaps it was her indignation
at the thing he had done, perhaps her anger at that mocking wave of the
hand with which he had vanished. She wheeled her horse, and put it at
a canter down the nearest draw so as to try to intercept him at right
angles. Her heart beat fast with excitement, but she was conscious of no
fear.
Before she had covered half the distance, she knew she was going to be
too late to cut off his retreat. Faintly, she heard the rhythm of hoofs
striking the rocky bottom of the draw. Abruptly they ceased.

Wondering what that could mean, she found her answer presently. For
the pounding of the galloping broncho had renewed itself, and closer.
The man was riding up the gulch toward her. He had turned into its
mesquite-laced entrance for a hiding place. Phyllis drew rein, and
waited quietly to confront him, but with a pulse that hammered the
moments for her.
A white-stockinged roan, plowing a way through heavy sand, labored
into view round the bend, its rider slewed in the saddle with his whole
attention upon the possible pursuit. Not until he was almost upon her
did the man turn. With a startled exclamation at sight of the motionless
figure, he pulled up sharply. It was the nester, Keller.
"You," she cried.
"Happy to meet you, Miss Sanderson," he told her jauntily.
His revolver slid into its holster, and his hat came off in a low bow.
White, even teeth gleamed in a sardonic smile.
"So you are a--rustler," she told him scornfully.
"I hate to contradict a lady," he came back, with a kind of bitter irony.
She saw something else, a deepening stain that soaked slowly down his
shirt sleeve.
"You are wounded."
"Am I?"
"Aren't you?"
"Come to think of it, I believe I am," he laughed shortly.
"Badly?"
"I haven't got the doctor's report yet." There was a gleam of whimsical
gayety in his eyes as he added: "I was going to find him when I had the

good luck to meet up with you."
He was a hunted miscreant, wounded, riding for his life as a hurt wolf
dodges to shake off the pursuit, but strangely enough her gallant heart
thrilled to the indomitable pluck of him. Never had she seen a man who
looked more the vagabond enthroned. His crisp bronze curls and his
superb shoulders were bathed in the sunpour. Not once, since his eyes
had fallen on her, had he looked back to see if his hunters had picked
up the lost trail. He was as much at ease as if his whole thought at
meeting her were the pleasure of the encounter.
"Can you ride?" she demanded.
"I can stick on a hawss if it's plumb gentle. Leastways I've been trying
to for twenty years," he drawled.
Her impatient gesture waved his flippancy aside. "I mean, are you too
much hurt to ride? I'm not going to leave you here like a wounded
coyote. Can you follow me if I lead the way?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She turned. He followed her obediently, but with a ghost of a smile still
flickering on his face.
"Am I your prisoner, Miss Sanderson?" he presently wanted to know.
"I'm not thinking of prisoners just now," she answered shortly, with an
anxious backward glance.
Presently she pulled up and wheeled her horse, so that when he halted
they sat facing each other.
"Let me see your arm," she ordered.
Obediently he held out to her the one that happened to be nearest. It
was the unwounded one. An angry spark gleamed in her eye.
"This is no time to be fresh. Give me the other."

"Yes, ma'am." he answered, with deceptive meekness.
Without comment, she turned back the sleeve which came to the wrist
gauntlet, and discovered a furrow ridged by a rifle bullet. It was a clean
flesh wound, neither deep nor long enough to cause him trouble except
for the immediate loss of blood. To her inexperience it looked pretty
bad.
"A plumb scratch," he explained.
She took the kerchief from her neck, and tied it about the hurt, then
pulled down the sleeve and buttoned it over the brown forearm. All this
she did quite impersonally, her face free of the least sympathy.
"Thank you, ma'am. You're a right friendly enemy."
"It isn't a matter of friendship at all. One couldn't leave a wounded jack
rabbit in pain," she retorted coldly, taking up the trail again.
There was room for two abreast, and he chose to ride beside her. "So
you tied me up because it was your Christian