[Illustration: THE RIDER SLEWED IN THE SADDLE WITH HIS WHOLE ATTENTION
UPON POSSIBLE PURSUIT. _Frontispiece. Page 33_]
MAVERICKS
BY
WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
AUTHOR OF
WYOMING, RIDGWAY OF MONTANA, BUCKY O'CONNOR, A TEXAS RANGER, ETC.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CLARENCE ROWE
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
1911 STREET & SMITH
1912 G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
TO MY MOTHER
"In vain men tell us time can alter
Old loves, or make old memories falter."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PHYLLIS 9
II. THE NESTER 18
III. CAUGHT RED-HANDED 28
IV. "I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?" 43
V. AN AIDER AND ABETTOR 53
VI. A GOOD FRIEND 76
VII. A SHOT FROM AMBUSH 84
VIII. MISS GOING-ON-EIGHTEEN 103
IX. PUNISHMENT 117
X. INTO THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY 126
XI. TOM DIXON 144
XII. THE ESCAPE 157
XIII. A MISTAKE 168
XIV. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION 183
XV. THE BRAND BLOTTER 200
XVI. A WATERSPOUT 214
XVII. THE HOLD-UP 226
XVIII. BRILL HEALY AIRS HIS SENTIMENTS 233
XIX. THE ROAN WITH THE WHITE STOCKINGS 241
XX. YEAGER RIDES TO NOCHES 253
XXI. BREAKING DOWN AN ALIBI 263
XXII. SURRENDER 276
XXIII. AT THE RODEO 289
XXIV. MISSING 296
XXV. LARRY TELLS A BEAR STORY 304
XXVI. THE MAN HUNT 323
XXVII. THE ROUND-UP 329
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The rider slewed in the saddle with his whole
attention upon possible pursuit. _Frontispiece_ 33
She drew back as if he had struck her, all the
sparkling eagerness driven from her face. 110
"Drop that gun!" 205
They grappled in silence save for the heavy panting
that evidenced the tension of their efforts. 340
MAVERICKS
CHAPTER I
PHYLLIS
Phyllis leaned against the door-jamb and looked down the long road which
wound up from the valley and lost itself now and again in the land
waves. Miles away she could see a little cloud of dust travelling behind
the microscopic stage, which moved toward her almost as imperceptibly as
the minute-hand of a clock. A bronco was descending the hill trail from
the Flagstaff mine, and its rider announced his coming with song in a
voice young and glad.
"My love has breath o' roses,
O' roses, o' roses,
And cheeks like summer posies
All fresh with morning dew,"
floated the words to her across the sunlit open.
If the girl heard, she heeded not. One might have guessed her a sullen,
silent lass, and would have done her less than justice. For the storm in
her eyes and the curl of the lip were born of a mood and not of habit.
They had to do with the gay vocalist who drew his horse up in front of
her and relaxed into the easy droop of the experienced rider at rest.
"Don't see me, do you?" he asked, smiling.
Her dark, level gaze came round and met his sunniness without response.
"Yes, I see you, Tom Dixon."
"And you don't think you see much then?" he suggested lightly.
She gave him no other answer than the one he found in the rigor of her
straight figure and the flash of her dark eyes.
"Mad at me, Phyl?" Crossing his arms on the pommel of the saddle he
leaned toward her, half coaxing, half teasing.
The girl chose to ignore him and withdrew her gaze to the stage, still
creeping antlike toward the hills.
"My love has breath o' roses,
O' roses, o' roses,"
he hummed audaciously, ready to catch her smile when it came.
It did not come. He thought he had never seen her carry her dusky good
looks more scornfully. With a movement of impatience she brushed back a
rebellious lock of blue-black hair from her temple.
"Somebody's acting right foolish," he continued jauntily. "It was all in
fun, and in a game at that."
"I wasn't playing," he heard, though the profile did not turn in the
least toward him.
"Well, I hated to let you stay a wall-flower."
"I don't play kissing games any more," she informed him with dignity.
"Sho, Phyl! I told you 'twas only in fun," he justified himself. "A kiss
ain't anything to make so much fuss over. You ain't the first girl that
ever was kissed."
She glanced quickly at him, recalling stories she had heard of his
boldness with girls. He had taken off his hat and the golden locks of
the boy gleamed in the sunlight. Handsome he surely was, though a critic
might have found weakness in the lower part of the face. Chin and mouth
lacked firmness.
"So I've been told," she answered tartly.
"Jealous?"
"No," she exploded.
Slipping to the ground, he trailed his rein.
"You don't need to depend on hearing," he said, moving toward her.
"What do you mean?" she flared.
"You remember well enough--at the social down to Peterson's."
"We were children then--or I was."
"And you're not a kid now?"
"No, I'm not."
"Here's congratulations, Miss Sanderson. You've put away childish things
and now you have become a woman."
Angrily the girl struck down his outstretched hand.
"After this, if a fellow should kiss you, it would be a crime, wouldn't
it?" he bantered.
"Don't you dare try it, Tom Dixon," she flashed fiercely.
Hitherto he had usually thought of her as a school girl, even though she
was teaching in the Willow's district. Now it came to him with what
dignity and unconscious pride her head was poised, how little the
home-made print could conceal the long, free lines of her figure, still
slender with the immaturity of youth. Soon now the woman in her would
awaken and would blossom abundantly as the spring poppies were doing on
the mountain side. Her sullen sweetness was very close to him. The rapid
rise and fall of her bosom, the underlying flush in her dusky cheeks,
the childish pout of the full lips, all joined in the challenge of her
words. Mostly it was pure boyishness, the impish desire to tease, that
struck the audacious sparkle to his eyes, but there was, too, a
masculine impulse he did not analyse.
"So you won't be friends?"
If he had gone about it the right way he might have found forgiveness
easily enough. But this did not happen to be the right way.
"No, I won't." And she gave him her profile again.
"Then we might as well have something worth while to quarrel about," he
said, and slipping his arm round her neck, he tilted her face toward
him.
With a low cry she twisted free, pushing him from her.
Beneath the fierce glow of her eyes his laughter was dashed. He forgot
his expected trivial triumph, for they flashed at him now no childish
petulance, but the scorn of a woman, a scorn in the heat of which his
vanity withered and the thing he had tried to do stood forth a bare
insult.
"How dare you!" she gasped.
Straight up the stairs to her room she ran, turned the lock, and threw
herself passionately on the bed. She hated him...hated him...hated him.
Over and over again she told herself this, crying it into the pillows
where she had hidden her hot cheeks. She would make him pay for this
insult some day. She would find a way to trample on him, to make him eat
dirt for this. Of course she would never speak to him again--never so
long as she lived. He had insulted her grossly. Her turbulent Southern
blood boiled with wrath. It was characteristic of the girl that she did
not once think of taking her grievance to her hot-headed father or to
her brother. She could pay her own debts without involving them. And it
was in character, too, that she did not let the inner tumult interfere
with her external duties.
As soon as she heard the stage breasting the hill, she was up from the
bed as swift as a panther and at her dressing-table dabbing with a
kerchief at the telltale eyes and cheeks. Before the passengers began
streaming into the house for dinner she was her competent self, had
already cast a supervising eye over Becky the cook and Manuel the
waiter, to see that everything was in readiness, and behind the official
cage had fallen to arranging the mail that had just come up from Noches
on the stage.
From this point of vantage she could cast an occasional look into the
dining-room to see that all was going well there. Once, glancing through
the window, she saw Tom Dixon in conversation with a half-grown
youngster in leathers, gauntlets, and spurs. A coin was changing hands
from the older boy to the younger, and as soon as the delivery window
was raised little Bud Tryon shuffled in to get the family mail and that
of Tom. Also he pushed through the opening a folded paper evidently torn
from a notebook.
"This here is for you, Phyl," he explained.
She pushed it back. "I'm too busy to read it."
"It's from Tom," he further volunteered.
"Is it?"
She took the paper quietly but with a swift, repressed passion, tore it
across, folded the pieces together, rent them again, and tossed the
fragments through the window to the floor.
"Do you want the mail for the Gordons, too, Mr. Purdy?" she coolly asked
the next in line over the tow head of Bud.
The boy grinned and ducked from his place through the door. Through the
open window there drifted to her presently the sound of a smothered
curse, followed by the rapid thud of a horse's hoofs. Phyllis did not
look, but a wicked gleam came into her black eyes. As well as if she had
seen him she beheld a picture of a sulky youth spurring home in dudgeon,
a scowl of discontent on his handsome, boyish face. He had come down the
mountain trail singing, but no music travelled with him on his return
journey. Nor had she alone known this. Without deigning to notice it,
she caught a wink and a nod from one vaquero to another. It was certain
they would not forget to "rub it in" when next they met Master Tom. She
promised herself, as she handed out newspapers and letters to the
cowmen, sheep-herders, and miners who had ridden in to the stage station
for their mail, to teach that young man his place.
"I'll take a dollar's worth of two's."
Phyllis turned her head in the slow, disdainful fashion she had
inherited from her Southern ancestors and without a word pushed the
sheet of stamps through the window. That voice, with its hint of
sardonic amusement, was like a trumpet call to battle.
"Any mail for Buck Weaver?"
"No," she answered promptly without looking.
"Sure?"
"Yes."
"Couldn't be overlooking any, could you?"
Her eyes met his with the rapier steel of hostility. He was mocking her,
for his mail all came to Saguaro. The man was her father's enemy. He had
no business here. His coming was of a piece with all the rest of his
insolence. Phyllis hated him with the lusty healthy hatred of youth. She
had her father's generosity and courage, his quick indignation against
wrong and injustice, and banked within her much of his passionate
lawlessness.
"I know my business, sir."
Weaver turned from the window and came front to front with old Jim
Sanderson. The burning black eyes of the Southerner, set in sockets of
extraordinary depths, blazed from a grim, hostile face. Always when he
felt ugliest Sanderson's drawl became more pronounced. His daughter,
hearing now the slow, gentle voice, ran quickly round the counter and
slipped an arm into that of her father.
"This hyer is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Weaver," he was saying. "It's
been quite some time since I've seen you all in my house before, makin'
you'self at home so pleasantly. It's ce'tainly an honor, seh."
"Don't get buck ague, Sanderson. I'm here because I'm here. That's
reason a-plenty for me," Weaver told him contemptuously.
"But not for me, seh. When you come into my house----"
"I didn't come into your house."
"Why--why----"
"Father!" implored the girl. "It's a government post-office. He has a
right here as long as he behaves."
"H'm!" the old fire-eater snorted. "I'd be obliged just the same, Mr.
Weaver, if you'd transact your business and then light a shuck."
"Dad!" the girl begged.
He patted her head awkwardly as it lay on his arm. "Now don't you worry,
honey. There ain't going to be any trouble--leastways none of my making.
I ain't a-forgettin' my promise to you-all. But I ain't sittin' down
whilst anybody tromples on me neither."
"He wouldn't try to do that here," Phyllis reminded him.
Weaver laughed in grim irony. "I'm surely much obliged to you for
protecting me." And to the father he added carelessly: "Keep your shirt
on, Sanderson. I'm not trying to break into society. And when I do I
reckon it won't be with a sheep outfit I'll trail."
With which parting shot he turned on his heel, arrogant and imperious to
the last virile inch of him.