“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 a position 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 just because 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 a stone 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 you happen 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.  It was five-thirty.”

“And the robbery was at three.  The fellows didn’t get out of town till close to three-thirty, I reckon,” he mused aloud.

“What has that got to do with it?  You don’t mean that——­” She stopped with parted lips and eyes dilating.

He shook his head.  “I’ve got no right to mean that, Phyllie.  Even if I did have a kind of notion that way I’d have to give it up.  Brill’s got a steel-bound, copper-riveted alibi.  He couldn’t have been at Noches at three 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.  He couldn’t be that kind of a man.  How could he?”

“I didn’t say he could,” returned her friend noncommittally.  “But when it comes to knowing him, what do you know about him—­or about me, say?  I might be a low-lived coyote without you knowing it.  I might be all kinds of a devil.  A good girl like you wouldn’t know it if I set out to keep it still.”

“I could tell by looking at you,” she answered promptly.

“Yes, you could,” he derided good-naturedly.  “How would you know it?  Men don’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’d hate 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 myself away any more to-day.”

Brill Healy rode up, his arm in a sling.  Deep rings of dissipation or of sleeplessness were under his eyes.  He looked first at Yeager and then at the 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.”