Bucky O'Connor Part 38

"Afraid, perhaps, he might be the one left for the coyotes and the buzzards?"

She was white to the lips, but at his next word the blood came flaming back to her cheeks.

"Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you; say you love him, and be done with it? Say it and I'll take him back to Tucson with you safe as if he were a baby."

She covered her face with her hands, but with two steps he had reached her and captured he hands.

"The truth," he demanded, and his eyes compelled.

"It is to save his life?"

He laughed harshly. "Here's melodrama for you! Yes--to save your lover's life."

She lifted her eyes to his bravely. "What you say is true. I love him."

Leroy bowed ironically. "I congratulate Mr. Collins, who is now quite safe, so far as I am concerned. Meanwhile, lest he be jealous of your absence, shall we return now?"

Some word of sympathy for the reckless scamp trembled on her lips, but her instinct told her would hold it insult added to injury, and she left her pity unvoiced.

"If you please."

But as he heeled away she laid a timid hand on his arm. He turned and looked grimly down at the working face, at the sweet, soft, pitiful eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. She was pure woman now, all the caste pride dissolved in yearning pity.

"Oh, you lamb--you precious lamb," he groaned, and clicked his teeth shut on the poignant pain of his loss.

"I think you're splendid," she told him. "Oh, I know what you've done--that you are not good. I know you've wasted your life and lived with your hand against every man's. But I can't help all that. I look for the good in you, and I find it. Even in your sins you are not petty.

You know how to rise to an opportunity."

This man of contradictions, forever the creature of his impulses, gave the lie to her last words by signally failing to rise to this one. He s.n.a.t.c.hed her to him, and looked down hungry-eyed at her sweet beauty, as fresh and fragrant as the wild rose in the copse.

"Please," she cried, straining from him with shy, frightened eyes.

For answer he kissed her fiercely on the cheeks, and eyes, and mouth.

"The rest are his, but these are mine," he laughed mirthlessly.

Then, flinging her from him, he led the way into the next room. Flushed and disheveled, she followed. He had outraged her maiden instincts and trampled down her traditions of caste, but she had no time to think of this now.

"If you're through explaining the mechanism of that Winchester to Sheriff Collins we'll reluctantly dispense with your presence, Mr.

Reilly. We have arranged a temporary treaty of peace," the chief outlaw said.

Reilly, a huge lout of a fellow with a lowering countenance, ventured to expostulate. "Ye want to be careful of him. He's quicker'n chain lightning."

His chief exploded with low-voiced fury. "When I ask your advice, give it, you fat-brained son of a brand blotter. Until then padlock that mouth of yours. Vamos."

Reilly vanished, his face a picture of impotent malice, and Leroy continued:

"We're going to the Rocking Chair in the morning, Mr. Collins--at least, you and Miss Mackenzie are going there. I'm going part way. We've arranged a little deal all by our lones, subject to your approval. You get away without that hole in your head. Miss Mackenzie goes with you, and I get in return the papers you took off Scott and Webster."

"You mean I am to give up the hunt?" asked Collins.

"Not at all. I'll be glad to death to see you blundering in again when Miss Mackenzie isn't here to beg you off. The point is that in exchange for your freedom and Miss Mackenzie's I get those papers you left in a safety-deposit vault in Epitaph. It'll save me the trouble of sticking up the First National and winging a few indiscreet citizens of that burgh. Savvy?"

"That's all you ask?" demanded the surprised sheriff.

"All I ask is to get those papers in my hand and a four-hour start before you begin the hunt. Is it a deal?"

"It's a deal, but I give it to you straight that I'll be after you as soon as the four hours are up," returned Collins promptly. "I don't know what magic Miss Mackenzie used. Still, I must compliment her on getting us out mighty easy."

But though the sheriff looked smilingly at Alice, that young woman, usually mistress of herself in all emergencies, did not lift her eyes to meet his. Indeed, he thought her strangely embarra.s.sed. She was as flushed and tongue-tied as a country girl in unaccustomed company. She seemed another woman than the self-possessed young beauty he had met a month before on the Limited, but he found her shy abashment charming.

"I guess you thought you had come to the end of the pa.s.sage, Mr.

Collins," suggested the outlaw, with listless curiosity.

"I didn't know whether to order the flowers or not, but 'way down in my heart I was backing my luck," Collins told him.

"Of course it's understood that you are on parole until we separate,"

said Leroy curtly.

"Of course."

"Then we'll have supper at once, for we'll have to be on the road early." He clapped his hands together, and the Mexican woman appeared.

Her master flung out a command or two in her own language.

"--poco tiempo,--" she answered, and disappeared.

In a surprisingly short time the meal was ready, set out on a table white with Irish linen and winking with cut gla.s.s and silver.

"Mr. Leroy does not believe at all in doing when in Rome as the Romans do," Alice explained to Collins, in answer to his start of amazement.

"He's a regular Aladdin. I shouldn't be a bit surprised to see electric lights come on next."

"One has to attempt sometimes to blot out the forsaken desert," said Leroy. "Try this cut of slow elk, Miss Mackenzie. I think you'll like it."

"Slow elk! What is that?" asked the girl, to make talk.

"Mr. Collins will tell you," smiled Leroy.

She turned to the sheriff, who first apologized, with a smile, to his host. "Slow elk, Miss Mackenzie, is veal that has been rustled. I expect Mr. Leroy has pressed a stray calf into our Service."

"I see," she flashed. "Pressed veal."

The outlaw smiled at her ready wit, and took on himself the burden of further explanation. "And this particular slow elk comes from a ranch on the Aravaipa owned by Mr. Collins. York shot it up in the hills a day or two ago."

"Shouldn't have been straying so far from its range," suggested Collins, with a laugh. "But it's good veal, even if I say it that shouldn't."

"Thank you," burlesqued the bandit gravely, with such an ironic touch of convention that Alice smiled.

After dinner Leroy produced cigars, and with the permission of Miss Mackenzie the two men smoked while the conversation ran on a topic as impersonal as literature. A criticism of novels and plays written to ill.u.s.trate the frontier was the line into which the discussion fell, and the girl from the city, listening with a vivid interest, was pleased to find that these two real men talked with point and a sense of dexterous turns. She felt a sort of proud proprietors.h.i.+p in their power, and wished that some of the tailors' models she had met in society, who held so good a conceit of themselves, might come under the spell of their strong, tolerant virility. Whatever the difference between them, it might be truly said of both that they had lived at first hand and come in touch closely with all the elemental realities. One of them was a romantic villain and the other an unromantic hero, but her pulsing emotions morally condemned one no more than the other.