A Texas Ranger Part 31

"Yes."

"And did you ever have such an enemy before? Don't answer me if I oughtn't to ask that," she added quickly.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"In Texas. Why, here we are at a ranch!"

"Yes. It's ours, and yours as long as you want to stay. Did you feel that you were enemies the moment you saw this man in Texas?"

"I knew we were going to have trouble as soon as we looked at each other. I had no feeling toward him, but he had toward me."

"And did you have trouble?"

"Some, before I landed him. The way it turned out he had most of it."

She glanced quickly at him. "What do you mean by 'landed'?"

"I am an officer in the Texas Rangers."

"What are they? Something like our forest rangers?"

"No. The duty of a Texas Ranger is to enforce the law against desperadoes. We prevent crime if we can. When we can't do that, we hunt down the criminals."

Arlie looked at him in a startled silence.

"You are an officer of the law--a sort of sheriff?" she said, at last.

"Yes, in Texas. This is Wyoming." He made his distinction, knowing it was a false one. Somehow he had the feeling of a whipped cur.

"I wish I had known. If you had only told me earlier," she said, so low as to be almost a whisper.

"I'm sorry. If you like, I'll go away again," he offered.

"No, no. I'm only thinking that it gives Jed a hold, gives him something to stir up his friends with, you know. That is, it would if he knew. He mustn't find out."

"Be frank. Don't make any secret of it. That's the best way," he advised.

She shook her head. "You don't know Jed's crowd. They'd be suspicious of any officer, no matter where he came from."

"Far as I can make out, that young man is going to be loaded with suspicions of me anyhow," he laughed.

"It isn't anything to laugh at. You don't know him," she told him gravely.

"And can't say I'm suffering to," he drawled.

She looked at him a little impatiently, as if he were a child playing with gunpowder and unaware of its potentialities.

"Can't you understand? You're not in Texas with your friends all around you. This is Lost Valley--and Lost Valley isn't on the map. Men make their own law here. That is, some of them do. I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for your life if the impression spread that you are a spy. It doesn't matter that I know you're not. Others must feel it, too."

"I see. And Mr. Briscoe will be a molder of public opinion?"

"So far as he can he will. We must forestall him."

"Beat him to it, and give me a clean bill of moral health, eh?"

She frowned. "This is serious business, my friend."

"I'm taking it that way," he said smilingly.

"I shouldn't have guessed it."

Yet for all his debonair ease the man had an air of quiet competence.

His strong, bronzed face and neck, the set of his shoulders, the light poise of him in the saddle, the steady confidence of the gray eyes, all told her as much. She was aware of a curiosity about what was hidden behind that stone-wall face of his.

"You didn't finish telling me about that enemy in Texas," she suggested suddenly.

"Oh, there ain't much to tell. He broke out from the pen, where I had put him when I was a kid. He was a desperado wanted by the authorities, so I arrested him again."

"Sounds easy."

"He made some trouble, shot up two or three men first." Fraser lifted his hand absently.

"Is that scar on your hand where he shot you?" Arlie asked.

He looked up in quick surprise. "Now, how did you know that?"

"You were talking of the trouble he made and you looked at your hand,"

she explained. "Where is he now? In the penitentiary?"

"No. He broke away before I got him there."

She had another flash of inspiration. "And you came to Wyoming to get him again."

"Good gracious, ma'am, but you're ce'tainly a wizard! That's why I came, though it's a secret."

"What is he wanted for?"

"Robbing a train, three murders and a few other things."

As she swung from her pony in front of the old-fas.h.i.+oned Southern log house, Artie laughed at him over her shoulder.

"You're a fine officer! Tell all you know to the first girl you meet!"

"Well, you see, the girl happened to be--you!"

After the manner of the old-fas.h.i.+oned Southern house a wide "gallery"

bisected it from porch to rear. Saddles hung from pegs in the gallery.