CHAPTER XX
YEAGER RIDES TO NOCHES
Jim Yeager had not watched through the long day and night with Phylliswithout discovering how deeply her feelings were engaged. Hisunobtrusive readiness and his constant hopefulness had been to her atower of strength during the quiet, dreadful hours before the doctorcame.
Once, during the night, she had followed him into the dark hall when hewent out to get some fresh cold water, and had broken down completely.
"Is he--is he going to die?" she besought of him, bursting into tearsfor the first time.
Jim patted her shoulder awkwardly. "Now, don't you, Phyl. You got tobuck up and help pull him through. Course he's shot up a heap, but thena man like him can stand a lot of lead in his body. There aren't any ofthese wounds in a vital place. Chief trouble is he's lost so much blood.That's where his clean outdoor life comes in to help build him up. I'llbet Doc Brown pulls him through."
"Are you just _saying_ that, Jim, or do you really think so?"
"I'm saying it, and I think it. There's a whole lot in gaming a thingout. What we've got to do is to _think_ he's going to make it. Once wegive up, it will be all off."
"You are such a help, Jim," she sighed, dabbing at her eyes with herlittle handkerchief. "And you're the _best_ man."
"That's right. I'll be the best man when we pull off that big wedding ofyours and his."
Her heart went out to him with a rush. "You're the only friend both ofus have," she cried impulsively.
With the coming of Doctor Brown, Jim resigned his post of comforter inchief, but he stayed at Seven Mile until the crisis was past and thepatient on the mend. Next day Slim, Budd, and Phil Sanderson rode infrom Noches. They were caked with the dust of their fifty-mile ride, butafter they had washed and eaten, Yeager had a long talk with them. Helearned, among other things, that Healy had telephoned Sheriff Gill thatKeller was lying wounded at Seven Mile, and that the sheriff wasexpecting to follow them in a few hours.
"Coming to arrest Brill for assault with intent to kill, I reckon,"Yeager suggested dryly.
Phil turned on him petulantly. "What's the use of you trying to get awaywith that kind of talk, Jim? This fellow Keller was recognized as one ofthe robbers."
"That ain't what Slim has just been telling, Phil. He says he recognizedthe hawss, and thinks it was Keller in the saddle. Now, I don't thinkanything about it. I _know_ Keller was with me in the hills when thishold-up took place."
"You're his friend, Jim," the boy told him significantly.
"You bet I am. But I ain't a bank robber, if that's what you mean,Phil."
His clear eyes chiselled into those of the boy and dominated him.
"I didn't say you were," Phil returned sulkily. "But I reckon we allrecall that you lied for him once. Whyfor would it be a miracle if youdid again?"
Jim might have explained, but did not, that it was not for Keller he hadlied. He contented himself with saying that the roan with the whitestockings had been stolen from the pasture before the holdup. Hehappened to know, because he was spending the night in Keller's shackwith him at the time.
Slim cut in, with drawling sarcasm: "You've got a plumb perfect alibifigured out for him, Jim. I reckon you've forgot that Brill saw himriding through the Pass with the rest of his outfit."
"Brill says so. I say he didn't," returned Yeager calmly.
Toward evening Gill arrived and formally put Keller under arrest.Practically, it amounted only to the precaution of leaving a deputy atthe ranch as a watch, for one glance had told the sheriff that thewounded man would not be in condition to travel for some time.
It was the following day that Yeager saddled and said good-by toPhyllis.
"I'm going to Noches to see if I cayn't find out something. It don'tlook reasonable to me that those fellows could disappear, bag andbaggage, into a hole and draw it in after them."
"What about Brill's story that he saw them at the Pass?" the girl asked.
"He may have seen four men, but he ce'tainly didn't see Larrabie Keller.My notion is, Brill lied out of whole cloth, but of course I'm not in aposition to prove it. Point is, why did he lie at all?"
Phyllis blushed. "I think I know, Jim."
Yeager smiled. "Oh, I know that. But that ain't, to my way of thinking,motive enough. I mean that a white man doesn't try to hang another justbecause he--well, because he cut him out of his girl."
"I never was his girl," Phyllis protested.
"I know that, but Brill couldn't get it through his thick head till astone wall fell on him and give him a hint."
"What other motive are you thinking of, Jim?"
He hesitated. "I've just been kinder milling things around. Do youhappen to know right when you met Brill the day of the robbery?"
"Yes. I looked at my watch to see if we would be in time for supper. Itwas five-thirty."
"And the robbery was at three. The fellows didn't get out of town tillclose to three-thirty, I reckon," he mused aloud.
"What has that got to do with it? You don't mean that----" She stoppedwith parted lips and eyes dilating.
He shook his head. "I've got no right to mean that, Phyllie. Even if Idid have a kind of notion that way I'd have to give it up. Brill's got asteel-bound, copper-riveted alibi. He couldn't have been at Noches atthree o'clock and with you two hours later, fifty-five miles from there.No hawss alive could do it."
"But, Jim--why, it's absurd, anyway. We've known Brill always. Hecouldn't be that kind of a man. How could he?"
"I didn't say he could," returned her friend noncommittally. "But whenit comes to knowing him, what do you know about him--or about me, say? Imight be a low-lived coyote without you knowing it. I might be all kindsof a devil. A good girl like you wouldn't know it if I set out to keepit still."
"I could tell by looking at you," she answered promptly.
"Yes, you could," he derided good-naturedly. "How would you know it? Mendon't squeal on each other."
"Do you mean that Brill isn't--what we've always thought him?"
"I'm not talking about Brill, but about Jim Yeager," he evaded. "He'dhate to have you know everything that's mean and off color he ever did."
"I believe you must have robbed the bank yourself, Jim," she laughed."Are you a rustler, too?"
He echoed her laugh as he swung to the saddle. "I'm not giving myselfaway any more to-day."
Brill Healy rode up, his arm in a sling. Deep rings of dissipation or ofsleeplessness were under his eyes. He looked first at Yeager and then atthe young woman, with an ugly sneer. "How's your dear patient, Phyl?"
"He is better, Brill," she answered quietly, with her eyes full on him."That is, we hope he is better. The doctor isn't quite sure yet."
"Some of us don't hope it as much as the rest of us, I reckon."
She said nothing, but he read in her look a contempt that stung like thelash of a whip.
"He'll be worse again before I'm through with him," the man cried, witha furious oath.
Phyllis measured him with her disdainful eye, and dismissed him. Shestepped forward and shook hands with Yeager.
"Take care of yourself, Jim, and don't spare any expense that isnecessary," she said.
For a moment she watched her friend canter off, then turned on her heel,and passed into the house, utterly regardless of Healy.
Yeager reached Noches late, for he had unsaddled and let his horse restat Willow Springs during the heat of the broiling day.
After he had washed and had eaten, Yeager drifted to the Log CabinSaloon and gambling house. Here was gathered the varied and turbulentlife of the border country. Dark-skinned Mexicans rubbed shoulders withrange riders baked almost as brown by the relentless sun. Pima Indiansand Chinamen and negroes crowded round the faro and dice tables. Gamesof monte and chuckaluck had their devotees, as had also roulette andpoker.
It was a picturesque scene of strong, untamed, self-reliantfrontiersmen. Some of them were outlaws and criminals, and some were assimple and tender-hearted as children
. But all had become accustomed toa life where it is possible at any moment to be confronted with suddendeath.
A man playing the wheel dropped a friendly nod at Jim. He waited tillthe wheel had stopped and saw the man behind it rake in his chips beforehe spoke. Then, as he scattered more chips here and there over theboard, he welcomed Yeager with a whoop.
"Hi there, Malpais! What's doing in the hills these yere pleasant days?"
"A little o' nothin', Sam. The way they're telling it you been havingall the fun down here."
Sam Wilcox gathered the chips pushed toward him by the croupier andcashed in. He was a heavy-set, bronzed man, with a bleached,straw-colored mustache. Taking his friend by the arm, he led him to oneend of the bar that happened for the moment to be deserted.
"Have something, Jim. Oh, I forgot. You're ridin' the water wagon anddon't irrigate. More'n I can say for some of you Malpais lads. Some ofthem was in here right woozy the other day."
"The boys will act the fool when they hit town. Who was it?"
"Slim and Budd and young Sanderson."
"Was Phil Sanderson drunk?" Yeager asked, hardly surprised, butcertainly troubled.
"I ain't sure he was, but he was makin' the fur fly at the wheel, there.Must have dropped two hundred dollars."
Jim's brows knit in a puzzled frown. He was wondering how the boy hadcome by so much money at a time.
"Who was he trailin' with?"
"With a lad called Spiker, that fair-haired guy sitting in at the pokertable. He's another youngster that has been dropping money rightplentiful."
"Who is he?"
"He's what they call a showfer. He runs one o' these automobiles; takesparties out in it."
"Been here long? Looks kind o' like a tinhorn gambler."
"Not long. He's thick with some of you Malpais gents. I've seen him withHealy a few."
"Oh, with Healy."
Jim regarded the sportive youth more attentively, and presently droppedinto a vacant seat beside him, buying twenty dollars worth of chips.
Spiker was losing steadily. He did not play either a careful or abrilliant game. Jim, playing very conservatively, and just about holdinghis own, listened to the angry bursts and the boastings of the man nexthim, and drew his own conclusions as to his character. After a couple ofhours of play the Malpais man cashed in and went back to the hotel wherehe was putting up.
He slept till late, ate breakfast leisurely, and after an hour oflooking over the paper and gossiping with the hotel clerk about theholdup he called casually upon the deputy sheriff. Only one thing ofimportance he gleaned from him. This was that the roan with the whitestockings had been picked up seven miles from Noches the morning afterthe holdup.
This put a crimp in Healy's story of having seen Keller in the Pass onthe animal. Furthermore, it opened a new field for surmise. _Brill Healysaid that he had seen the horse with a wound in its flank._ Now, how didhe know it was wounded, since Slim had not mentioned this when he hadtelephoned? It followed that if he had not seen the broncho--and that hehad seen it was a sheer physical impossibility--he could know of thewound only because he was already in close touch with what had happenedat Noches.
But how could he be aware of what was happening fifty miles away? Thatwas the sticker Jim could not get around. His alibi was just as good asthat of the horse. Both of them rested on the assumption that neithercould cover the ground between two given points in a given time. Therewas one other possible explanation--that Healy had been in telephoniccommunication with Noches before he met Phyllis. But this seemed to Jimvery unlikely, indeed. By his own story he had been cutting trail allafternoon and had seen nobody until he met Phyllis.
Yeager called on the cashier, Benson, later in the day, and had a talkwith him and with the president, Johnson. Both of these were now back attheir posts, though the latter was not attempting much work as yet. Jimtalked also with many others. Some of them had theories, but none ofthem had any new facts to advance.
The young cattleman put up at the same hotel as Spiker and struck up asort of intimacy with him. They sometimes loafed together during theday, and at night they were always to be seen side by side at the pokertable.