“No—­ no.  I’m not hiding—­ anything,” she gasped.

“Then if you’re not you can’t object to my going there.”

She caught her hands together in despair.  There was about him something masterful that told her she could not prevent him from investigating; and it was impossible to guess how he would act after he knew.  The men she had known had been bound by convention to respect a woman’s wishes, but even her ignorance of his type made guess that this steel-eyed, close-knit young Westerner—­ or was he a Southerner?—­ would be impervious to appeals founded upon the rules of the society to which she had been accustomed.  A glance at his stone-wall face, at the lazy confidence of his manner, made her dismally aware that the data gathered by her experience of the masculine gender were insufficient to cover this specimen.

“You can’t go.”

But her imperative refusal was an appeal.  For though she hated him from the depths of her proud, untamed heart for the humiliation he had put upon her, yet for the sake of that ferocious hunted animal she had left lying under a cottonwood she must bend her spirit to win him.

“I’m going to sit in this game and see it out,” he said, not unkindly.

“Please!”

Her sweet slenderness barred the way about as electively as a mother quail does the road to her young.  He smiled, put his big hands on her elbows, and gently lifted her to one side.  Then he strode forward lightly, with the long, easy, tireless stride of a beast of prey, striking direct for his quarry.

A bullet whizzed by his ear, and like a flash of light his weapon was unscabbarded and ready for action.  He felt a flame of fire scorch his cheek and knew a second shot had grazed him.

“Hands up!  Quick!” ordered the traveler.

Lying on the ground before him was a man with close-cropped hair and a villainous scarred face.  A revolver in his hand showed the source of the bullets.

Eye to eye the men measured strength, fighting out to the last ditch the moral battle which was to determine the physical one.  Sullenly, at the last, the one on the ground shifted his gaze and dropped his gun with a vile curse.

“Run to earth,” he snarled, his lip lifting from the tobacco-stained upper teeth in an ugly fashion.

The girl ran toward the Westerner and caught at his arm.  “Don’t shoot,” she implored

Without moving his eyes from the man on the ground he swept her back.

“This outfit is too prevalent with its hardware,” he growled.  “Chew out an explanation, my friend, or you’re liable to get spoiled.”

It was the girl that spoke, in a low voice and very evidently under a tense excitement.

“He is my brother and he has—­ hurt himself.  He can’t ride any farther and we have seventy miles still to travel.  We didn’t know what to do, and so—­”

“You started out to be a road-agent and he took a pot-shot at the first person he saw.  I’m surely obliged to you both for taking so much interest in me, or rather in my team.  Robbery and murder are quite a family pastime, ain’t they?”