He held up as a trophy of his prowess two cottontails.  “Who says I can’t shoot?” he wanted to know boisterously.

“Where did you buy them?” she scoffed, faintly trying for sauciness.

“That’s a fine reward for honest virtue, after I tramped five miles to get them for your supper,” protested Keller.

She recovered her composure quickly, as women will.

“If they are for my supper, we’ll have to ask him to ride home with us—­won’t we, Jimmie?  It would never do to have them reach the ranch too late,” she said, making room for Keller in the seat beside her.

It was after she had driven several hundred yards that he said, with a smile:  “I met a young man on horseback as I was coming up.  He went by me like a streak of light.  Looked like he found this a right mournful world.  You had ought to scatter sunshine and not gloom, Miss Phyllis.”

“Am I scattering gloom?” she asked demurely.

“Not right now,” he laughed.  “But looks like you have been.”

She flicked a fly from the flank of her horse before she answered:  “Some people are so noticing.”

“It was hanging right heavy on him.  Had the look of a man who had lost his last friend,” the young man observed meditatively.

“Dear me!  How pathetic!”

“Yes—­he sure looked like he’d rejoice to plug another cattleman.  I ’most arranged to send for Buck Weaver again,” said Keller calmly.

Phyllis turned on him eyes brilliant with amazement.  “What’s that you say?”

“I said he looked some like he’d admire to go gunning again.”

“Yes, but you said too——­”

“Sho!  I’ve been using my eyes and ears.  I never did find that story of yours easy to swallow.  When I discovered from your brother that you was riding with Tom Dixon the day Buck was shot, and when I found out from ’Rastus that the gun that did the shooting was Dixon’s, I surely smelt a mouse.  Come to mill the thing out, I knew you led Buck’s boys off on a blind trail, while the real coyote hunted cover.”

“He isn’t a coyote,” she objected.

Larrabie thought of the youth with a faint smile of scorn.  He knew how to respect an out-and-out villain; but there was no bottom to a man who would shoot from cover without warning, and then leave a girl to bear the blame of his wrongdoing.  “No—­I reckon coyote is too big a name for him,” he admitted.

“Buck Weaver ruined his father and drove him from his homestead.  It was natural he should feel a grudge.”

“That’s all right, too.  We’re talking about the way he settled it.  How come you to let him do it?”

“I was riding about twenty yards behind him.  Suddenly I saw his gun go up, and stopped.  I thought it might be an antelope.  As soon as he had fired, he turned and told me he had shot Weaver.  The poor boy was crazy with fear, now that he had done it.  I took his gun and made him hide in the big rocks, while I cut across toward the canon.  The men saw me, and gave chase.”