“You are such a help, Jim,” she sighed, dabbing at her eyes with her little handkerchief.  “And you’re the best man.”

“That’s right.  I’ll be the best man when we pull off that big wedding of yours and his.”

Her heart went out to him with a rush.  “You’re the only friend both of us have,” she cried impulsively.

With the coming of Doctor Brown, Jim resigned his post of comforter in chief, but he stayed at Seven Mile until the crisis was past and the patient on the mend.  Next day Slim, Budd, and Phil Sanderson rode in from Noches.  They were caked with the dust of their fifty-mile ride, but after they had washed and eaten, Yeager had a long talk with them.  He learned, among other things, that Healy had telephoned Sheriff Gill that Keller was lying wounded at Seven Mile, and that the sheriff was expecting 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 away with that kind of talk, Jim?  This fellow Keller was recognized as one of the robbers.”

“That ain’t what Slim has just been telling, Phil.  He says he recognized the hawss, and thinks it was Keller in the saddle.  Now, I don’t think anything about it.  I know Keller was with me in the hills when this hold-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 all recall that you lied for him once.  Whyfor would it be a miracle if you did again?”

Jim might have explained, but did not, that it was not for Keller he had lied.  He contented himself with saying that the roan with the white stockings had been stolen from the pasture before the holdup.  He happened to know, because he was spending the night in Keller’s shack with him at the time.

Slim cut in, with drawling sarcasm:  “You’ve got a plumb perfect alibi figured out for him, Jim.  I reckon you’ve forgot that Brill saw him riding 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 at the ranch as a watch, for one glance had told the sheriff that the wounded man would not be in condition to travel for some time.

It was the following day that Yeager saddled and said good-by to Phyllis.

“I’m going to Noches to see if I cayn’t find out something.  It don’t look reasonable to me that those fellows could disappear, bag and baggage, into a hole and draw it in after them.”

“What about Brill’s story that he saw them at the Pass?” the girl asked.