“WE can’t do nothing more to-night.” Nabours had joined his companions at the fire. “Find a critter if you can, and kill it for supper,” he added, turning to Cinquo, who white and silent, had stood at the side of his mistress through all the late tragic scene.

Stripped, wet and cold, the trail men sat in silence. The sound of a distant shot in the brush promised them food—a straggling yearling from the drag which had been lost among the willows; but they were so dulled with fatigue, regret, sorrow, that they hardly would have cooked for themselves had not Taisie and Cinquo taken a hand.

The night settled down with a certain chill along the water’s edge. The darkness held unusual terrors for the lone girl. Suddenly she dropped her face in her hands, huddling against the wet shoulder of the man who came nearest to being her protector.

“Jim! Jim!” she sobbed. “Take care of me! I am scared!”

“So’m I scared, Miss Taisie,” rejoined Jim Nabours truthfully. “Lord ha’ mercy on me!”

The men of Del Sol slept ill enough, close to the embers of their fire. Cinquo’s saddle blankets, partly dry at least, he gave to their mistress, for whom he had made a bower somewhat apart.

The boy was the first to move in the foggy dawn and to find his horse. He rode down the river bank in the direction of the last tinkling of the lead mare’s bell. He was gone for the best part of an hour before he brought up the remuda. By that time the other men had rebuilt their wastrel fire.

Something seemed on Cinquo’s mind. He approached Nabours, who stood apart, moody and depressed.

“Mr. Jim,” said he, “I met a man down there, and he was riding a blue-crane Fishhook horse.”

The foreman turned to him.

“You are sure?”

“I kin read a brand.”

“Did he say anything to you? What?”

“He was rather quiet. He was a tall man with a little mustache and a gray hat. He told me not to tell you who he was—and I hain’t told you. He told me he seen the place where the mill landed last night. There’s dead cows all along this side the river, and besides was two dead men—that was Bill and Dan. He said he pulled them out and covered up their faces. He said he knew a better crossing down below, and he wished we’d of knowed where it was at. Then he rid back down the river, when he left.”

“A damn good thing he did!” said the trail boss. “Ain’t I had enough without that set of thieves?

“Eat, men,” he added to the half-clad group of stiffened men around the fire. “We have got work to do.”

He made no comment on the news the boy had brought, but led the way. With knives and sharpened sticks, they dug two graves in the sand; stood with hats off for a little time, silent. Some men began to kick dirt in on top of two saddle blankets. They rode away.

In the draggled bivouac at the head of the crossing there remained then only the mistress of Del Sol and the boy Cinquo, who had been ordered to remain. The latter engaged himself in broiling some pieces of meat at the fire, not for himself. His divinity came out at last, having made such toilet as she could.

“Where are the other men?” she asked.

“They’re down a-burying Dan and Bill, ma’am.”

The not infrequent tears came again to Taisie Lockhart’s eyes.

“They come ashore nigh a mile below here, a man told me. He come up from down the river when I was down after the horses. A tall young fellow he was, with a dark mustache. He told me he had found where the mill landed, and the boys and everything.”

“You don’t know who he was?”

“I know he was a-riding a Fishhook horse, ma’am. I’ve saw him afore, yes.”

Taisie Lockheart turned quickly away, with no reply.

“Well,” began Nabours surlily, without much speech to his mistress or to any one of the company, “we’ve got to get the horses acrost. Throw them in, Sinker; drive that old gray mare in first.”

“I don’t have to drive her in; she’ll foller me,” replied the boy. “I ain’t going to let nobody point her lead for me and my remuder. They know me. Old Suze, she’ll foller right in after me. Ef you can swim it, I kin. Besides, she’s six inches lower than she was last night.”

“Huh, six inches would do a heap o’ good out there, wouldn’t it?” grumbled Nabours. “You ain’t running this herd.”

“No, but I’m running the remuder,” said the boy stoutly. His eyes began to fill with tears.

“Oh, well, get in then!” The trail boss looked at him kindly, his own eyes none too dry. “There’s only one way to make a cow hand. If he lives he lives!”

None the less, he and his two lead men flanked the horse herd close behind the plucky boy when he spurred in ahead, followed by the bell mare and the rest of the horse band. The course was much as it had been with the cattle. The horses swam strongly and confidently and in due time made the head of the bar, which now was more exposed.

“Take ’em on out now, Sinker; it’s safe from here on. We’ve got to go back oncet more, to get the boss. Come on, you, Cal and Del. This is the last trip. Hurry! She’ll be scared there by herself.”

To the primitive brain of the old Texan, who trusted nothing so much as a horse, the uncertain raftage of the previous day had made the carts seem riskier than the back of a swimming horse. For that reason he had decreed that Taisie Lockhart should remain until the very last. His plan now was revealed.

“Miss Taisie,” said he, when at length he had regained the take-off, “you’ve seen us all cross there time and again. It’s perfectly safe for a good swimming horse like yours. I’m a-going to cross you like we done everything else. I’m a-going on ahead my own self, and put Del and Cal above and below you, with ropes to your saddle, so’s to steady you if anything should happen. There ain’t no cows now. Just keep your hands off your bridle; don’t try to guide your horse none at all. You mustn’t look down at the water, for if you do you think you are going downstream, when you ain’t. Just you look on ahead, right at the top of my hat; then you’ll be perfectly safe. Us men ain’t going to let nothing happen to you.”

The girl was pale, but the family courage and the traditions of the border were her own. She got into saddle without a word and spurred the snorting Blancocito directly into the curling waters when Nabours gave the word. It seemed to her to be facing death. She resigned her soul.

But suddenly she felt under her a certain lightness, accompanied with a throbbing vibration—movement, progress. She knew her horse was swimming. On ahead, Jim Nabours sat as though upon the surface of the tawny water, the top of his saddle cantle showing over the streaming tail of his horse, which swam on, steadily and confidently, after the gallant fashion of the Texas strain. She looked right and left. Two other men were advancing also strangely over the water, only the upper portion of their bodies visible. It was like some fantastic dream.

In absolute silence they crossed the swimming channel, saw the face of the sand bar come nearer, as though it were approaching upstream across the swirling flood. Fifty yards, thirty yards, twenty yards—they would be safe! And then came one more jest of the immortal gods! It was an accident made more readily possible by the mistaken attempt of using guide ropes on a swimming horse.

A great tree, uprooted somewhere unknown miles to the westward, came rolling and dipping its snaggled branches. The men saw it perfectly well, and coolly made ready to meet the danger, each man with hand at his reata.

Impossible to predict the freak of the changing current! A bared root of the tree caught at the edge of the bar. The heavy trunk swung down toward Dalhart, who had the upstream side. Nabours was now ahead, on the bar. His back was turned. He was looking curiously at the man they all had seen approaching through the shallow water from the farther bank.

The cool-headed plainsman, Dalhart, gave length to his rope, flipped it to free it of the one menace, an upstanding snag which would not allow the rope to clear. But in some way, no one could tell how, a roll of the menacing leviathan threw the snag a little higher. The drag of the rope in the water did the rest. The rope fouled on the snag. As a consequence, the horse of Taisie was drawn directly in front of the log as it swept downstream. A scream, shouts. In a flash the girl’s pony was trying to get his forelegs over the log. The girl herself, thrown or slipping out of the saddle, was in the water; and all of them, horses, riders, with the giant log, were steadily swept down below the head of the bar.

The sudden disaster concentrated all the world into an immediate surface of eddying, onward water, coffee colored, and the narrow strip of wet sand edging it. The scene was not fifty feet across, so near were the swimmers to the one trace of land. Beyond that limit, for the participants existed no horizon and no use for eye or ear. Nabours had some indefinite, vague sense that the wet noise of a horse’s advance through the shallow back of him was close, now directly at his back; but to turn his head from the tragedy at his hand was not possible as even an instant’s thought; so that when the hurrying horseman appeared at his side, as though dropped from the sky, it seemed quite natural enough.

The quick cast of his own rope fell short from where he sat his horse, with footing on the bar. Those in the water had only their own powers now. There was no conscious plan on Taisie Lockhart’s part, or that of the two swimming men; no one could tell how it all had happened, or what now must happen. But suddenly the girl felt herself caught in the strong grasp of Del Williams, himself dismounted, swimming. He dragged her into the swinging branches—across them. By then Dalhart’s rope was free, and Taisie’s pony, dropping back from its struggle to surmount the log, also was free, as the ponderous tree trunk swept on by. So by renewed freak of fortune, all three of the horses made the edge of the bar before it was too late. By this very fact the lives of those caught in the current were set in more instant danger.

It all was in silence. No one called for aid, supplicated; no one shouted advice, instruction; there was not a sound to the advance of death. Nabours, perhaps, held his breath thrice the usual space as he jerked in his rope, cast again.

The loop fell wide, sank; but Williams missed it, was swept down, encumbered by the current, here very strong in its rebound. The water had cut off the slope of the bar a few yards below and left a gouged channel, sharp, swift. But Dalhart’s hand fell on the loop. With a groan, unable to cast again for the white face of the girl, Nabours returned, whirling his horse, gathering slack, feeling his whole life a failure now, since he had saved only a man.

Now into his consciousness came identification of the horseman who had plunged across the shallows to the harder footing of the bar, well trampled by the cattle which had passed. Of course, vaguely, generally, he had known at first loose sight that it was not any of his own men.

It was McMasters, his pistol belt wrapped around his saddle horn, his coat off and held under a leg, his reata free. He pushed down the bar—off the bar; but before his horse swam, a whirling back cast had spread the loop over the heads of the two swimmers, who, plainly, never could have made the bar.

He would have dragged them out by the neck, choked, yea or nay, had his horse held footing. As it was, he was the one of the three who had some plus power, even as his horse swam. With a desperate struggle the gallant brute got his feet on holding ground, floundered out, up. By then the loop had narrowed to the hondo. But the bit of rawhide there was gripped in Del Williams’ clutch. He still held in his other arm the heavy drag of the girl’s body. He did not know whether or not her eyes were closed; hoped only he had been able to keep her face high.

After that, it was quick, simple, silent. The essential thing had been done. McMasters used the horse to drag out the take of the rope. He saw Del Williams come to his knees on the wet sand, crawling, the limp form of the girl still supported by his arm as he staggered up.

He saw her stand alone, her arms feeling out, dazed, central figure now on a stage which was a wide sea of whirling water. Whether or not she knew him he could not tell. Taisie herself could feel little of definite plan. But what McMasters saw, result of her impulse to reach the one point of safety she could sense, was her stumbling, hurrying, arms spread, to the saddle skirts of Jim Nabours, who was on the narrow strip of sand exposed by the lowered waters, hardened by the trampling it had had.

The girl, scarce able to stand, flung an arm across the old foreman’s saddle front. Upon the other side Del Williams, following, suddenly reached out and caught her hand, even as Jim laid hand upon her arm to steady her. Her eyes, until now closed in terror, opened and looked straight into those of Del Williams, the man who from his own boyhood days had loved her, as she knew; who had risked his life for her now.

“I reckon you saved my life,” said she weakly.

She did not specify. The man who had done the essential thing was fifty feet away. But Dalhart heard the words.

Now the tense silence of the drama’s action was resolved into hurly-burly, horses plunging, splashing, snorting, men coiling ropes, all voluble in speech, undifferentiated calls, shouting, accusations.

“Come here, you!” Nabours called, beckoning to the tall rider, apart, who was coiling his wet reata, looping securely his pistol belt, pulling a latigo around his wet coat to hold it better. But McMasters flung a hand in salutation, deprecation, for what not, or for it all.

“But come on, man!” the foreman again commanded, with what intent was not plain. The laughing voice of McMasters came, clear and seemingly not much perturbed.

“See you at Abilene!” he called. Almost the next instant he had spurred bodily into the flood.

They watched him steadily carried out and down and across by the set of the current, following the same system Nabours had first used in crossing back to the south bank. None of them knew that McMasters had from his own chosen spot watched the whole crazy operation of crossing the Red in freshet, had crossed at a better ford below, and had within the hour taken position near the camp on the far shore, whence he had seen the last departure from the south bank—and done some thinking and reasoning of his own about it.

“He’ll make it all right, damn him!” said Nabours, in mixed emotions, as he watched the strange sight of a man’s body, half out of water, plowing across, following a small object dark and flat ahead, surmounting a dark broken line, a V of ripples, even so, visible in the tawny descending flood.

“Well!”

He did not explain. No one explained. No one made comment. Perhaps a sort of chagrin now held them more or less, a feeling that glory lacked, that life itself had lacked here, but for the casual, unrequited aid of a man who had come and gone after doing the essential thing.

“Help her up, Del,” said Nabours. “Can you ride, child?”

Taisie nodded, got into saddle when her horse was brought across the wet bar. So she was not yet to die? The thought was curious to her, bringing not elation but surprise. She had not once spoken, had never once cried out, appealed—not so much courage as resignment to the wish of fate. And now fate had selected a certain agency to give her back to life and its lackings. She had neither joy nor sorrow in such thoughts as came.

Nabours, his hand on Blancocito’s cheek strap, rode with face held down, his mouth grim. He sighed so deep it was well-nigh a groan, knowing that under his leadership two human lives had been lost, a third almost lost. Had that last consequence of his own folly ensued, what then? It had come so close he now had no perspective other than that it would have been the end of the world. And the draggled figure at his side, passive center of all the action, as woman is in all the great crises of the world, had no better perspective. The edge of the world lay at the south bank of the Red. Well, he had reached that horizon, passed once more beyond the edge of her world—that strange man.

The other two men dropped to the rear as Nabours led Taisie’s horse out at the landing place. Del Williams had ridden silent. Dalhart began to abuse him.

“That’ll do! The whole thing was your fault,” said Williams after a time. “You let your rope foul in that log. It’s a wonder you didn’t drownd her. If you say it was any part my fault, you’re a damned liar, and you know it! Even thataway she’d have drownded, and me, too, if it wasn’t for him.” He jerked his head toward the opposite shore.

Neither man was armed, both were nearly naked. They wheeled their horses head to head and sat looking each into the other’s face.

“The world ain’t big enough for both us two,” said Dalhart slowly.

“It shore ain’t,” answered the other man in even tones. “What you say suits me. We’ve all promised Jim there wouldn’t none of us make no break until we had delivered the cows. Does that suit you?”

“Yes, till Abilene!”

“Till Abilene!”

THIRTY miles down the Red River, where it originally was crossed by the old Arbuckle Trail, early known as the Whisky Trail, Rudabaugh and his men lay encamped. They were and for some days had been impatiently a-waiting news from the south. Mr. Jameson, cattle inspector for the northern district of Texas, brought them news; but Mr. Jameson, for reasons of his own, preferred to preserve his dignity; so his news was highly censored, expurgated. He declared that his horse had thrown him into a cactus patch. Moreover, he declared that the Del Sol herd was already across the river and bound north; whereas the truth was that he only had guessed that the herd soon would cross, provided that the waters fell. He had not tarried. Rudabaugh was irritated.

“You ought to have got two bits a head straight through for those cows,” said he.

“They’re out of our jurisdiction now,” defended the thornful fugitive.

“They ain’t never out of my jurisdiction!” rejoined the leader savagely. “I’ll follow that outfit till hell freezes. Where there ain’t no law is where Sim Rudabaugh’s jurisdiction runs.

“I wish I knew where that fellow McMasters is,” he added. “I’m only waiting for him.”

That evening at dusk McMasters did come into camp. Rudabaugh welcomed him with as much graciousness as he could muster, but did not spare complaints over the long delay.

“None of you Texans seem to know the value of time,” he began. “You can’t look ahead. The herd that breaks trail for five million Texas cows ruins every plan for us if it gets to the railroad. If that herd gets through, cows will be worth ten dollars a head in Texas this fall, next year twenty dollars—and they have been costing me twenty-five cents! When cows go to twenty a head, land goes up with them. Now, it don’t take any watchmaking to figure why I don’t want those things to happen just yet.

“McMasters, that herd must never get out of the Nations. We’ve got to have this season to finish our plans. I don’t intend to have my hand forced by any red-head girl and her red-neck cow hands, I can tell you that. Let that bunch trail north this summer, and they’ll make a market for every cow in Texas! If they don’t get north Sim Rudabaugh’ll be the richest man that ever set foot on Texas soil. And what do you suppose Texas will do for a man who can prove that he has doubled and trebled and quadrupled the price of every acre and every cow inside the lines of Texas? In that case, Mr. Rudabaugh might be able to look wider than the lines of Texas, eh?”

“Your plans do seem large,” said McMasters quietly. “How can I help you in them?”

“Every way in the world. Scout out on ahead. It’s hard for me to keep my fingers on you, you shift about so much; but if you help me break up the T. L. herd there’ll be everything in it for you that you will ever want in life.

“Of course, you know I kept awful quiet. It’s a long way out to the edge of the Staked Plains, and only a few cowmen are in there now. But the lands I have got my eye on are covered with vine mesquite like a carpet, or with bunch grass almost as good. That’s the coming cattle range, once the Comanches are off of it. That’s where I am locating our lands. I want a million acres more of scrip.

“And to think,” he added, “what all of that hangs on! Leave them alone and they may find Abilene, for all I know. I am taking no chances about that—that’s why I want you. I want you to go on north and find that outfit.

“We’ll cross the river in the morning.”

Again he resumed his pacing and his cursing, in one of the moods during which he really was out of his own mind. He was well in his cups almost all the time.

McMasters turned toward him suddenly.

“You carry fire a long time, don’t you?” said he.

“I never had any one oppose me yet that didn’t get the worst of it,” replied the outlaw, ever serene in his conceit.

McMasters smiled.

“Not even Burleson Lockhart?”

“Not even Burleson Lockhart,” rejoined Rudabaugh savagely. “He did!”

He pulled up. Something chill seemed to sit in the air about him. “Well, come into camp,” said he, “and let’s have a snort of liquor. I have got some left.”

RUDABAUGH and his band, early on the following morning, broke camp and crossed the Red River, finding no difficulty in making the ford at the old Whisky Trail. They rode a dozen strong, alcoholically buoyant, defiling the air with their boastful blasphemies.

McMasters had suggested that they keep together and follow the old Arbuckle Trail up the Washita, their course making one side of a triangle whose other leg probably would be covered by the Del Sol herd. The two courses naturally would converge somewhere to the north and west, at some point on the Washita. He pointed out that in no case could they miss the Del Sol men, because certainly they would see the northbound trail if they came to it, and could wait if they did not. The logic of this appealed sufficiently to Rudabaugh.

At the end of their first day’s march they stopped at the edge of a walnut grove through which ran a little stream. All that country was full of game, and Rudabaugh took up his rifle, promising soon to come back with meat for the company. McMasters himself, unobserved, followed not far behind him.

Rudabaugh had been gone perhaps a quarter of an hour or so when his mates heard two reports of his rifle in the direction of the stream. He came in not long after, but without any game.

“Well, Dave,” said one of his men, “did you get your meat?”

“I certainly did,” answered the ruffian.

“You didn’t bring it in?”

“It ain’t that kind of meat.”

They stood looking at him. His smile was distorted. He began to work himself into one of his rages.

“Well, you heard my promise!” he broke out. “Down yonder I told you that I intended to kill the first Indian I saw in the Nations. I don’t bluff and I don’t miss—there’s two Indians laying in there. If you don’t believe it go and look. I told you I’d show those people how to steal my horses.”

A man or two slipped out of the camp, moved over toward the edge of the little stream. Hard men they were, and used to rough deeds; but what they saw made them start back shuddering.

Two Indian women, one young, lay upon the farther bank. Their clothing remained upon the nearer shore. They had been bathing, and hearing the approach of an intruder had started up the farther bank. There they had been overtaken by the aim of the most heartless ruffian that ever crossed even that dark and bloody land. The older woman now lay dead, the younger even yet was struggling to reach the cover of the thicket. Hearing the sound of yet others coming, she fell forward on her face. . . . They both were women, and had the younger woman lived——

McMasters, following close behind Rudabaugh, was not close enough to see him when he fired, but soon he saw what had been done. Horrified, he turned away, leaving the men he met to see for themselves. He picked up the moccasins the women had left on the hither bank.

His step was light as that of a panther when he entered the camp. He crossed the grass to where Rudabaugh now sat, and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Get up, you damned hound!” he said. “Get up and look a man in the face, you beastly, murdering coward!”

Rudabaugh reached for his weapon before he struggled upright, but stayed his hand in time. The two hands of the younger man were raised above the dark revolver stocks. But he did not fire.

“The man who would do a thing like that is no part of a man at all!” Rudabaugh and all his remaining men heard the words. “I’ll not ride a foot with a murderer like you. Now take my advice—get out of here fast as you can! If these people catch up with you they’ll even things with you—their village can’t be far from here. Those women never harmed you.”

“You all heard my word!” Rudabaugh’s voice broke hoarsely.

“You’ve heard mine! I ought to kill you now, but I am going to leave you.”

“The lousy thieves!” Rudabaugh tried to work up his vanished rage. “You think I’ll let them steal my horses and get away with it? It’s two less of them. Besides, there’s no law in here. Besides, you’re going to break your own word.”

The eye of McMasters narrowed.

“Don’t say that again,” said he. “I am saving you for a later day. Those were Comanches that you killed.”

“They’re not Comanches!” asserted Rudabaugh. “The Comanches don’t range in here. It’s all Chickasaws above here. They were Chickasaws, or maybe Wacos.”

Dan McMasters held up two moccasins before he replaced them in his pocket.

“I know Comanche moccasins when I see them,” said he. “Those women left these when they went into the water.

“There is no use your trying to trail me,” he added, as he backed to the edge of the wood where his horse was tethered. “I tell you, the best thing you can do is to get out of here as fast as you can!”

There was not a man in all that armed band that had courage to reach hand to weapon as he passed. Perhaps a sullen contempt for their leader had come to them. Rudabaugh’s own blasphemies, his sudden recovery of his weapons came too late. McMasters was in saddle and riding, hid by the cover of the wood.

At first they thought he had headed for the north, as they later trailed his horse. But half a mile farther on they saw where he had turned in his tracks and headed directly south.

“I don’t know where he went,” remarked one trailer, “but I wish I did. He’s likely to be mad enough to set the Rangers after us again. I more’n half believe right now that he had a hand in their catching us down at Del Sol. If we’d got away with all that scrip Rudabaugh says there was we’d have been out of this, maybe.”

“The Rangers can’t work anywhere outside the state of Texas,” his associate reminded him.

“No, that’s so; they can’t. But the Comanches can!”

IT was high noon of the third day north of the Red River; a frank spring noon on the prairies. All the morning nothing except the countless wild game had offered life and motion to the eye of Jim Nabours, scouting carefully ahead of the herd. But now, as he topped a gentle rise, he saw coming toward him from the cover of a clump of distant timber the figure of a rider whom soon he knew to be a white man. He pulled up, sat intent. The rider seemed a not unfamiliar figure.

The horseman advanced directly toward him, evidently seeing him. As he approached more closely in his steady trot he flung up his right hand in the sign of peace.

Nabours himself rode out to meet the stranger. All at once he halted sharply, his hand on his gun. But the other paid no attention to the hostile movement, came up at the same pace.

“How are you, Jim Nabours?” said he quietly. He dropped both his hands to his own saddle horn.

A scowl came over the foreman’s face.

“You have broke your word, Mr. McMasters,” said he. “You are in a risky place right now.”

“I come with my hands up,” said McMasters. “I’m in no more risk than you are. But I am going back with you to your own camp.”

“No! We want no truck with you.” Then a sense of the proprieties coming to him, he added, “You’re counting too damn much on what you done down at the Red. No one ast you.”

“Look at my horse,” said McMasters quietly. “He’s a Fishhook, isn’t he? Yes. And I have been back of this herd or alongside of it for three hundred and fifty miles. You know that you got my letter, and you seem to have followed my advice. You’ve done very well by it. You’d have done a lot better if I’d been with you before you tried that crossing.”

“Well, we put you out of our camp oncet. We meant it. We hain’t held no trial sence then. I haven’t ast you in, no time.”

“Yes; but you don’t seem to be able to keep me out. I’ll ride this country the way I like, and not even Texans can keep me from it. I have come now because I think you need me again, and need me very much.”

He told his news. The features of Nabours changed as he listened.

“My God!” said he. Then, suspicion dominant again: “But you was traveling with them people. You went right from us to them. Now here you’re back.”

“I need travel with them no more. I have got what I was after. I know who killed my father and Miss Lockhart’s father. I am coming into your camp, and I am going to talk with Miss Lockhart.”

“She sont you out oncet. We tried you. She won’t talk to you—no, not even after what you done. She’s never mentioned your name about that.” Nabours still sat looking at him uneasily. “Besides, my men won’t let you in again.”

“No? I have been in your camp more than once since you first put me out.”

“Not that I know of, you haven’t.”

“No? Jim, who killed that man near the women’s carts the night of the big run on the Colorado?”

“I don’t know who killed him; I only know he was dead.”

“Well, that man was after the trunk you thought that I had stolen. Rudabaugh wants that trunk. He sent his boldest man after it that night. I was a little ahead of him, that was all. You know what happened to him. Now you know who did it. Yes, you might say I stole Miss Lockhart’s trunk and put it in my wagon. But I stole it from Rudabaugh, not from her. What I said at the trial was true. Theft from her—why, good Heavens!”

He suddenly spread out his hands.

“I’m a killer now, Jim!” said he, his face strangely drawn by a smile that could not come to it. “I can’t turn back now. The man who says I ever was a friend of Rudabaugh is a liar, and a fool besides. I call that to you here. I will call it to your whole campful just the same.”

“Them’s right strong words,” said Jim Nabours quietly. “I only listen because I more’n half believe you’re right. I can’t answer what you say. But why in hell didn’t you say all this at the trial?”

“Trial! Who gave you any right to try a McMasters of Gonzales? I took what you-all gave me because I thought it might make it easier for me to stay away.”

“Well, I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“No; and I don’t know that I can make you understand. Let me say, I realized that my path and hers could never run together.

“But you’re in the Indian Nations now. There are three hundred Comanches in here somewhere north of you that have come in from the Plains to visit with the Kiowas. That’s Yellow Hand’s band. If you meet those Comanches after what they surely will hear—why, I suppose, you might maybe be willing to have a good killer along with you.

“I supposed maybe you’d be thankful to get this word in time. So, to that extent, you see, my path does once more run for a little way not far from hers. Maybe she’ll talk to me. I’m going to see. You can’t any of you stop me. You’ve all been ignorant fools. You deserve nothing.”

“I used to read my Bible, in Sunday school,” said Nabours after a long silence. “I done read about that there, now, Rachel—was it?—same name, she had, as Cohen’s wife down to Gonzales, of the Golden Eagle Store. Now Jacob, he was a good cow hand, and he worked seven years night wrangling for said Rachel—maybe her name was Rebecca, I don’t know. Well, anyhow, I reckon, maybe it was all right about Jacob and the ranch boss. The trouble with me is, I got too damned many Jacobs along already in this here outfit. I wasn’t studying to take on no more.

“Still, when the men hear about old Yellow Hand it’s more’n likely they’ll be glad to pick up a hand that can throw lead if he has to. Come on in. I won’t let nobody start nothing. We can dig into this further along.”

McMasters paid no attention to the other men about the camp that evening, who, even after the foreman’s explanation, remained sullen and aloof. Without asking consent, he walked to the cook-cart plunder, unearthed his own bed roll and war bag and chose a place for himself outside the circle appropriated by the other hands. He made such toilet as he could, helped himself at the cook’s kettle and pans—breaking a two days’ fast—all without converse with the men who once had adjudged him unfit for their association. And in the twilight he walked without any by-your-leave directly to the camp of Taisie Lockhart and her servants. They watched him go. She saw him coming in the dusk; she felt her heart leap strangely. How could she keep her face calm, her eyes severe?

“It is Mr. McMasters?” she spoke coldly, did not put out her hand. He had remained silent, his own face sad enough. “Why do you come—how dare you come?”

She had not asked him to be seated; was treating him as though he were one of the hands; as though he were her enemy, not her hereditary friend or ally, not a man who had saved her life but now. It was hard even for his courage to endure. Something at last gave way. When he spoke a resonance was in his voice which she had never known before.

“Dare? Why did I dare come? I dared not stay away!”

“You always presume on obligations I never asked of you. But I can’t see—I don’t know——”

“You know I love you; that’s the thing I can’t help. You couldn’t help knowing it. I am the man who kissed you that night in the dark—yes, I did that. You knew! I won’t tell you why I was there that night, or why I am here now. Forget what happened the other day at the river—you’d as well. The woman who doubts me once is done with me forever.”

She could not speak to this new man, savage, impetuous, the chill all gone from him.

“Dare? I do dare! I dare tell you that there will never be any other woman in the world for me. I’ll never be even the last man in the world for you.”

Doubt, contrition, fear—a horrible fear that she had been cruelly unjust, a yet more terrible fear that he was going away—all mingled in the mind of the girl who heard him.

“I cannot possibly understand how you could come. I don’t know why you should. Always you put a load on me.” Her own voice had been more certain at other times.

His answer came very slowly.

“A man has an indefeasible right to tell the one woman in the world that he cares for her, even if he is going to the gallows. I might as well be on my way to the gallows, so far as any chance with you is concerned. Chance? Why, a chance with you? I’d not give myself one if I could. Look at my hands!”

He extended his hands, long, slender, well kept, so that she might see.

“I am a killer!” said Dan McMasters bitterly. “That’s what I have become for sake of Texas, for sake of the law, for sake of women and children, I suppose. But no woman or child for me! It’s worse to be a killer than it is to be killed. Well I know that. But I was mad that night. I just thought of what might have happened to you.”

“Sir, this is not easy to listen to!” She sank back on her rude fireside seat, trembling. “I wish you had not come! I wish I had never seen you!”

“I can say the same! But why do you wish that? It’s easy to forget me. But I cannot forget.”

He stepped closer, his voice low. She only shook her head from side to side and would not speak.

“Why?” he demanded again fiercely; and still she answered not at all.

“You have nothing to forget,” he went on. “It may be easy for women to forget—I don’t know. But it is my curse that I can never change—I can’t forget. What I want I must have—I can’t change!” He sighed. His hands dropped, still crooked to clasp her, to grasp her arms, and hold her fast.

“Well, say that I come to you now only as a peace officer to-night. I have used my own methods. That’s all the life work there is for Daniel McMasters. There is no possible reward for me except to come to you some time and tell you that I have finished the work I started out to do.”

She sat, her head bowed forward in her hands. A cricket was calling loudly in the grass. Presently she heard the man’s even voice go on.

“I know who killed your father and mine. I could have killed Rudabaugh three days ago. I ought to have done so. I was on the point of killing him. What kept me from it? I knew that some one of his men would kill me if I did, but that ought not to have mattered—I don’t think it would have mattered; we have to take those chances in my business. Why did I hold back? Why did I wait for another time? I’ll have to tell you! Suddenly I thought, ‘If these men kill me now I’ll never see her face again!’ Wasn’t it silly?

“I reckon I wanted to see your face again. I’d not be honest if I did not tell you that. I, McMasters of the Rangers, held back—for that! But this will be the last time. I came to your camp—it was a hard thing for a proud man to do. Well, now you know why I dared.”

“Won’t you be seated, sir?” Taisie’s voice came faintly.

“No; you speak too late. I must go. But before I go I shall tell you once more, so you may remember it always—I love you more than anything else and everything else in all the world. There’ll never be any other woman for me.”

“Then, why, why?” she demanded hoarsely. “What is it that you mean when you say that you must go—that you never will——”

The cricket in the grass was asserting himself loudly, insistently.

“Life is short for me,” he answered. “It may be long for you. Why should I pretend, who am about to die?”

His voice was relentless. He carried always the feeling of relentlessness, of an unemotional, unconditional coldness in purpose. An icy man, a terrible man, even now.

Again the cricket, for a little space. The firelight was but faint.

Suddenly he sank on his knees beside her, one hand on the bed roll that made her seat, so that he could look into her face. But her hands covered it. He touched her hand. It was wet with tears. Slowly he drew back.

“What have I said? What have I done?”

“Ah, you should be content!” she broke out presently. “You have your revenge!”

“What do you mean? I can’t well stand to hear you say that. Revenge?”

“Yes! Very well, I called you a thief once. Let that go. You are one now.”

He was entirely silent for a long space, trying to understand. Then she felt her fingers caught in a clasp like steel.

“Have I stolen anything I ought not to have taken? Tell me! Believe me, that one thing I never dreamed! I never thought that you—that you did—that you ever could! You don’t! You cannot! That can never be! That’s not possible! There are many men in the world for you—all of them—for you. I said only that there was no other woman but you in all the world for me. I didn’t ask or expect even justice, even mercy, from you!”

“You are avenged!” said Anastasie Lockhart again. “It is noble of you! You—you reason well! You come in the night!”

After all, how could they avoid youth, evade love? In some way, when or how, neither of them knew, they were standing. He had caught her up, they were face to face, body to body. Their arms found themselves about each other. He felt her arms about his neck, his shoulders; to her his clasp was like steel. He saw her face, pale, wet, wholly adorable, irresistible, a woman of a million. She saw his eyes, studious, marveling, frowning, his face one she never had seen before. It was done. It was too late.

He struggled as though to put off a mask, as though some armor coat oppressed him. Their lips met as though they dreamed; they did not know of plan at all, were as two dazed, beyond volition, beyond right or wrong.

It was he who drew back, half sobbing, still wrestling with that something, now that it was too late. He felt the swift rush of her awakened impetuous woman emotion, strong and sudden as though some dam had been disrupted to let an unmeasured torrent through; felt her arms slide back along the sides of his neck, her hands catch the sides of his face as they parted. Her face was not that of a country girl kissed merrily by some swain, or evilly; it was high, serious, not illusioned, calm; the face of a great soul in a splendid beauty, a woman of a million; a face terrible and young, as was his own.

There were no tears now. The great hour, the one instant for two strong natures had arrived—had passed. If any theft were done it had been done.

“You were a savage, a criminal!” said she after a time, voicing that. “But what is done is done, and what is written is written. Many men? Where? And I think I shall hate you now.”

She heard his voice as of a man musing, chanting to himself: “I was strong! You are taking my strength away.

“Do you want me to break my vow to my state?” He groaned after a time. “Would you ruin a man? Do you want me killed before my day’s over? I love you, and it cannot be.”

“I suppose not.” Her voice dreamed. “I said, you are avenged. But I suppose I was wrong about—about calling you a thief. That trial—I suppose I ought to tell you——”

“That’s too late! I told you, I can never change. That’s my curse—I can’t change. My honor is as good as you are good, and I know you are. But you doubted me once. It was forever. I don’t know how to forgive that, for man or woman. And even if you hadn’t, I’m not for you. Unclean! Unclean! Look at my hands—they’re red, I say. Look at yours—white, sweet, good.”

He choked, struggled; could no more than crush her hands to his lips.

“It’s not for us!” he said at last. “Yes, I’m a thief. I’m almost a coward. I did not know. I’ll never ask you to forgive me. Let me go. Let me finish my work. If I live, when I’m old and done and crippled, let me come and kiss the hem of your garment. There are—there must be—other men. They say there’s more than one love, for a woman. I don’t know. I reckon that’s not true. Oh, if I could only change!”

But even so he could not go. Frowning, he caught her face in his steel-like hands once more, and at the flame ripple of her hair above her temple kissed her again and again and yet again where he had seen her cup her hand over the first kiss he gave her—stolen also—in the dark.

He was gone. What comfort for her now? Or what for him? There is no such thing as fairness in love between man and woman.