Mavericks | Page 8

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 duty," he soliloquized aloud. "Just the same as if I had been a mangy coyote that was suffering."
"Exactly."
He let his cool eyes rest on her with a hint of amusement. "And what were you thinking of doing with me now, ma'am?"
"I'm going to take you up to Jim Yeager's mine. He is doing his assessment work now, and he'll look out for you for a day or two."
"Look out for me in a locked room?" he wanted to know casually.
"I didn't say so. It isn't my business to arrest criminals," she told him icily.
His eyes gleamed mischief. "Is it your business to help them to escape?"
"I'm not helping you to escape. I'll not risk your dying in the hills alone. That is all."
"Jim Yeager is your friend?"
"Yes."
"And you guarantee he'll keep his mouth padlocked and not betray me?"
"He'll do as he pleases about that," she said indifferently.
"Then I don't reckon I'll trouble his hospitality. Good-by, Miss Sanderson. I've enjoyed meeting you very much."
He checked his pony and bowed.
"Where are you going?" the girl exclaimed.
"Up Bear Creek."
"It's twenty miles. You can't do it."
"Sure I can. Thanks for your kindness, Miss Sanderson. I'll return the handkerchief some day," and with a touch swung round his pony.
"You're not going. I won't have it, and you wounded!"
He turned in the saddle, smiling at her with jaunty insouciance.
"I'll answer for Jim. He won't betray you," she promised, subduing her pride.
"Thanks. I'll take your word for it, but I won't trouble your