“Course you don’t believe it.  That proves just what I was saying.”

“Jim doesn’t believe it, either.”

“Yeager’s opinion don’t have any weight with me.  I want to tell you right now that the boys are getting mighty leary of Jim.  He’s getting too thick with that Bear Creek bunch.”

“Brill Healy, I never saw anybody so bigoted and pig-headed as you are,” the girl spoke out angrily.  “Any one with eyes in his head could see that Jim is as straight as a string.  He couldn’t be crooked if he tried.  Long as you’ve known him I should think you wouldn’t need to be told that.”

“Oh, you say so,” he growled sullenly.

“Everybody says so.  Jim Yeager of all men,” she scoffed.  Then, with a flash of angry eyes at him, “How would you like it if your friends rounded on you?  By all accounts, you’re not quite a plaster saint.  I’ve heard stories.”

“What about?”

“Oh, gambling and drinking.  What of it?  That’s your business.  One doesn’t have to believe all the talk that is flying around.”  She spoke with a kind of fine scorn, for she was a girl of large generosities.

“We’ve all got enemies, I reckon,” he said sulkily.

“You’re Phil’s friend, and mine, too, of course.  I dare say you have your faults like other men, but I don’t have to listen to people while they try to poison my mind against you.  What’s more, I don’t.”

She had been agile-minded enough to shift the attack and put him upon the defensive, but now Healy brought the question back to his original point.

“That’s all very well, Phyl, but we weren’t talking about me, but about you.  When you found this Keller making his escape you buckled in and helped him.  You tied up his wound and took him to Yeager’s and lied for him to us.  That’s bad enough, but later you did a heap worse.”

“In saving him from being lynched by you?”

“Before that you made a fuss about him and had to tie up his wounds.  I had a cut on my cheek, but I notice you didn’t tie it up!”

“I’m surprised at you, Brill.  I didn’t think you were so small; and just because I didn’t let a wounded man suffer.”

“You can put it that way if you want to,” he laughed unpleasantly.

Her passion flared again.  “You and your insinuations!  Who made you the judge over my actions?  You talk as if you were my father.  If you’ve got to reform somebody, let it be yourself.”

“I’m the man that is going to be your husband,” he said evenly.  “That gives me a right.”

“Never!  Don’t think it,” she flung back.  “I’d not marry you if you were the last man on earth.”

“You’ll see.  I’ll not let a scoundrel like Keller come between us.  No, nor Yeager, either.  Nor Buck Weaver himself.  I notice he was right attentive before he went home.”

Resentment burned angrily on her cheek.  “Anybody else?” she asked quietly.