Читать книгу The Arizona Clan - Zane Grey - Страница 5

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Mercer gave a start. The girl was neither tall nor short. She walked with light step, though laggingly. When she came down out of the shade into a patch of softened sunlight he saw that she was bareheaded and barefooted. She passed behind a boulder to emerge out on the low rock ledge under which the water swirled, and kneeling she plunged the bucket into the stream and lifted it brimming full to set it down. The action disclosed a brown arm, round and strong, and supple shoulders.

She sat down on the moss, lifting her linsey skirt to dip her feet in the water. The distance across the stream to Mercer was scarcely thirty feet, yet she didn’t see him. Indeed the great dark blue eyes, blankly tragic, appeared to note nothing there in the quiet woodland. Her face was youthful and clean-cut, too strong to be really what the lad Tom had so rapturously claimed, but it certainly had a strange and compelling beauty. Her hair was thick and clustering, of a chestnut hue where the sunlight caught gleams of gold. The quivering of red lips and the brimming of sad eyes acquainted Mercer with the prospect of being a spectator to grief. While he gazed, rapt and undecided, her expression slowly changed to one of acute distress.

That was the moment in which the rider realized he had at last, by many devious and hard ways, journeyed to the end of his rainbow. Wherefore he must not remain hidden there, a witness to grief not meant for curious and strange eyes.

“Howdy, Nan!” he called, almost gayly.

She heard distinctly, for her pretty head went up like that of a listening deer. Her face flashed brown as she turned it to left and right, while she hastily wiped her eyes. Mercer got the impression that she had been accosted thus before, there in the lonesomeness of her woods. Certainly she evinced neither surprise nor fear.

“Howdy, Nan,” he repeated, just a little less boldly.

Suddenly she saw him.

“Howdy, yourself,” she retorted.

Whereupon Mercer leisurely arose from his recumbent position, and spreading the foliage he sat down on the edge of the rock.

“I was watching the trout,” he said frankly, smiling at her. “You came along to surprise me.”

She took him in from his bare head to the spurs that jingled against the rock. Her look changed from speculation to astonishment.

“Are you sure you were watchin’ only for trout?” she inquired with just a hint of doubt.

“Honest Injun.”

“That trick has been played on me before, right here.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. But I give you my word I wasn’t looking for such good fortune. I left my horse grazing back a ways. I was dreaming along when all at once I saw the trout.”

“Dreamin’ along? You look it, mister,” she said satirically.

“Thanks,” he replied, as if he were complimented, and he smiled again at her. He saw how astonishment was leading to puzzled interest. If he could only prolong the interview!

“Who are you?” she queried, after a long pause.

“Do you mean my name—and what I am?”

“Both, I reckon.”

“Mercer, John Mercer, but I’ve a nickname. Dodge! Funny, isn’t it? Given me by pards because I was always dodging things.”

“Dodgin’ what things?” she went on curiously.

“Oh, everything, but mostly jobs, fights, bullets—and girls. I’m very shy of girls.”

She let out a little peal of incredulous laughter.

“You look that, too. Where you from?”

“Kansas.”

“Kansas!” she flashed, with excitement. “An’ Dodge? That’s where you got the name?”

“No. It was given me before I ever saw Dodge City.”

“I came through Dodge on my way home from Texas. Oh, it sure was a terrible place. But Uncle Bill said it wasn’t as bad then as before the railroad came.”

“Say, did you travel alone all the way out here from Dodge?” asked Mercer severely.

“No. Uncle brought me. He’s visitin’ us. But I shore wouldn’t have been afraid to come.”

“You’re a very brave girl for one so young.”

“I’m eighteen years old,” she rejoined spiritedly.

“You don’t say? I reckoned you couldn’t be hardly fifteen.”

She eyed him dubiously, suddenly alive to her momentary laxity.

“Dodge Mercer, from Kansas?” she queried, returning to the issue.

“Yes, Miss. I was born in Pennsylvania. Ran away from school and home before I was fifteen. Became a cowhand in Kansas. Drifted west, and of late years have seen a lot of hard life on the Texas Panhandle and Kansas plains. I got sick of dodging so I hit out for Arizona. That’s my story, Miss.”

“You sure rode out of the fryin’ pan into the fire. How’d you ever happen to drop into this Rock Rim country?”

“I just rode west. I see luck was with me.”

“Luck? Sure, but it was bad. You better turn right around an’ ride out of Arizona—leastaways, out of this Tonto Basin.”

“After seeing you, Nan?”

“Yes, after seein’ me, Nan!” she retorted pertly, while a little tinge of red showed in her brown cheeks.

“Is that advice, hunch, or threat?” he asked, in earnest good humor.

“Well, not a threat, but all the rest,” she said soberly.

“Then I shall not ride away.”

She had no ready answer for that, which plainly confused her for a moment. She glanced about at her bucket, and moved as if to rise, but she did not. The action, however, made her aware of her bare legs in the water half to her knees, and she hastily withdrew them and covered them.

“Nan, may I come over there and get acquainted with you?” went on Dodge directly.

“You’re doin’ pretty well on your side,” she replied.

“It’s so far I can’t see what you look like,” he complained.

“You’d get all wet. You can ride your horse over presently.”

“Then you’re going to ask me to your home?” queried Dodge eagerly.

“It’s long past mornin’ an’ you’re a long way from any ranch. My dad never lets any rider go by hungry or tired.”

“Your dad? Oh, I see. You’re not concerned about me starving or getting lost. Nan, this is the end of my journey.”

“This? What do you mean? The woods—this brook—my dad’s ranch—or what?”

“I reckon I mean you, Nan,” he said.

If she was not offended she was surely nettled; still surprise and bewilderment had a share in her subtle change of demeanor. Dodge was swift to grasp that only sincerity could save him.

“Please do not take me as too forward with girls,” he went on earnestly.

“How can I help it?” she asked incredulously. “Sure this is only Arizona backwoods an’ I’m a poor backwoodsman’s daughter.”

“I am not playing. I couldn’t be any more respectful if you were the daughter of the richest rancher in Arizona. But I don’t want to wait a day or a week or a month to tell you things. Please let me come over there by you, Nan.”

“How’d you know I was Nan Lilley?” she asked suddenly.

“I knew it when I saw you.”

“How did you?”

“That lad at Ryeson—Tom, who took me to his home—he told me.”

“Tommy Barnes?” she cried, her face relaxing. “The little rascal! When did you see him?”

“Last night. I rode in after dark. I met him and asked for lodging. He took me to his home. I told him I was looking for a job. He said I could get one at Rock Lilley’s. This morning he was hoping I might be a Texas beau of yours, who’d followed you home. The lad was so keen, so eager, he seemed so fond of you, so anxious about you. Then he went on to say you were in trouble—that there was some mixup between your dad and a certain Buck Hathaway—that Hathaway was courting you and had your dad’s favor—and last, that your trouble was you did not love this Buck Hathaway.”

Her face flamed scarlet and she cried out: “The meddlin’ little fool! To tell that to a stranger!”

“Well, his heart picked the right stranger, Nan. Now, can I come over there, so we won’t have to yell at each other?”

“No! No! Oh, this is sure shameful,” she cried, hiding her face in her hands.

Dodge waited a long, tumultuous moment. He had been abrupt, but what other explanation could he have offered? The truth was best. If Tommy had indeed been a little fool and if Nan really cared for this redoubtable Hathaway, then the sooner Dodge knew the better, and he could ride away as he had come. But his heart beat high and thick in his breast.

“Nan, if there’s anything shameful in this you’ll have to tell me, for I can’t see it,” he said finally.

“But I don’t know you,” she almost sobbed.

“I’ll do my best to correct that. Let me come over there, unless, of course—” but he did not conclude that supposition. He waited until her composure returned, and she lifted her head, to look at him somehow differently.

“Why did you—come out—here?” she asked haltingly.

“I asked questions first because I needed a job. I would have come out to see your dad in any case. But to be fair and square with you, I’ve got to confess I took Tom’s story seriously, and I came to get you out of your trouble.”

She stared at him with darkening eyes that stirred his heart. If he had not fallen in love with Nan Lilley before he ever saw her he surely was doing it now. Excitement, however, and his whirling thoughts, and her sweet, disturbing presence obviated any possibility of self-interrogation then.

“You came out here to get me out of trouble?” she called across the stream in a high, sweet voice. Surely no one ever before had offered to help Nan Lilley. If it had not been for doubt and misgiving in her face and words she would have appeared overcome. “Mister Mercer, I’m not sure about you. It’s too sudden—too—too—Why, if it were so, I’d—I’d bless you. But it can’t be so because it can’t be done.”

“Why can’t it? Of course I don’t know what your trouble is. Was your little friend Tom telling me the truth?”

It struck Dodge that her eyes were trying to pierce a supposed disguise about him. She got up and stepped off the ledge from boulder to boulder until she was directly across from him and considerably nearer. She made a most charming picture, despite the suggestion of a forlorn soul struggling in her. Moreover, the perspective he got of her was a true one, and it thrilled him. The water swirled over her feet and up around her shapely ankles; she had forgotten restraint in her curiosity, and her graceful form poised tense, instinct with life; she held her arms outspread to keep her balance, and this accentuated the swelling curve of breast and neck. Dodge got to his feet. It was high time that he rode away from this secluded stream and alluring girl, unless by her own word or act she detained him.

“Go back,” he said abruptly.

“I won’t fall in. An’ what if I did? Every day this hot spell I’ve walked in here—clothes an’ all,” she replied, with the first smile she had given him. It was an exhilarating magic.

“You might slip and strike your head.”

“My poor head’s empty, so it wouldn’t matter.”

“Nan, you’ve got the same devil in you that’s in all women. Listen. Was Tom telling me the truth?”

“How could I admit it if he had—to you—when I only saw you two minutes ago?” she asked, in helpless resentment.

“It looks like you’re holding out your arms to me,” he rejoined curtly.

Then she laughed outright. “Sure it does. But I’m not. Only balancin’.”

“You’ve got me off my balance, too,” he retorted. “Nan, this won’t do. If you’ve intelligence and sense enough to grasp a real friend in me, all right. Only you’d better say so quick, or I’ll ride away.”

“I haven’t any sense or intelligence or—or anythin’,” she replied.

“Well, I don’t believe you’re talking as straight as I am. Girls can’t be honest.”

“I can. But you sure expect a lot on short notice.”

“Either I stay or ride away. So what’s the use of this long-acquaintance excuse?”

Dodge knew he must not linger there, unless she surrendered something that it seemed absurd to hope for. Still, she was on the defensive; she had not given in to the idea of his championship; she had not been roused to earnestness. All of which seemed to prove the futility of his case.

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to ride away,” she replied demurely. Did she imagine that he would not? What hid in the deep shadows of her eyes?

“You can settle that quick,” he replied ringingly. “But you’ll need to excuse a question that no stranger has a right to ask on first sight. All the same, I’ll ask it. Do you love this Buck Hathaway?”

Her breast heaved. A flash of dark passion crossed her face. “I hate him!” she cried.

Then they gazed long into each other’s eyes across the stream.

“Thank you,” replied Dodge presently. “That confidence is more than I deserved—or expected. I will not ride away. Suppose you go back on the bank. I’ll come over.”

“But you’ll get all wet,” she returned dubiously.

Dodge felt there was no help for him. The reaction of relief, owing to her passionate repudiation of Hathaway, led to a conflict of emotions. He was about to drop off the rock when she said: “I’ll come over. We can hide under the branches. Some of the kids may come whoopin’ here any minute.”

She lifted her skirt above her knees as she stepped down into the water. That was an enchanting moment for Dodge and if it had been needed, his utter subjugation would have begun right there. The golden, dark-barred sunlight seemed to whirl above him; the stream murmured on in its infinite solitude, as if to assure him there were no other eyes than his to see Nan Lilley wade the pool. She moved boldly, surely, sometimes with a long step from one deeply submerged rock to another. Dodge gazed down upon her rippling hair, her pensive face bent as she peered for places to step, and he could not believe his eyes. The miraculous was happening. Someone was coming to meet him. He swore in his heart that it would never be anything for her to regret.

Then she uttered a wild little cry and leaping like a nimble goat she gained a stone on the bank below, and let her skirts fall.

Dodge leaned down with outstretched hands. She was off her balance, but caught it in time, and thus supported she sprang up beside him. He spread wide the branching foliage to admit her into the secluded leafy nook and let it swing back.

“You found my hidin’ place,” she said wonderingly. “Strange! It’s all strange—this meetin’, an’ all about you. I used to come here when I was a little girl—hundreds of times—an’ I’ve been here often since I came home.”

Mercer had kept one of her hands, despite gentle efforts on her part to release it. And he still held it as they sat down, both obsessed with the idea of looking at each other. She gained from close observance. He laughed inwardly at a wild desire to kiss the red curved lips. Her eyes appraised him, beautiful in solemn, penetrating strength.

“What do you take me for, anyhow?” she queried suddenly, indicating by a glance her hand imprisoned in his.

“I reckon I’m proving that,” he answered simply.

“You’re a bold fellow—or maybe bad,” she mused.

“I wasn’t much good back there on the Kansas ranges,” he admitted. “All I can ask now is that you give me the benefit of a doubt and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Till I can prove what I’d like you to know.”

“And meanwhile you’ll hold my hand, kiss me, hug me, and all the rest?” she queried, halfway between doubt and scorn.

“Have I offended you?” he asked gently.

“No, and that bothers me. Is it in you or me? Oh, I’ve been run after by most of the boys in this valley. I know them. I’ve kept them off, except Buck Hathaway, who fights me for kisses. I can’t trust him or any of them.”

“Please don’t class me with them,” he said stiffly. “You observe that I haven’t attempted any liberties.”

“You won’t let go my hand,” she protested.

“Are you making any violent effort to get it away?” he asked.

She was not, and she knew it. Evidently she felt in a quandary, though quite self-possessed. It was inexpressibly sweet for Mercer to realize that his presence swayed her, that she wanted to trust him, that there was something fine and moving and fateful in this meeting.

“You are different. And Tommy sent you. But—but—”

“Nan,” he interrupted, “I think it was when you came down the trail that I fell in love with you. If not then, surely when you waded the stream to come to me.”

“Nonsense!” she cried, blushing scarlet. Nevertheless, instead of being nonsense it was something tremendous, that seemed to exercise an irresistible power to agitate her.

“Don’t you believe in love at first sight?” he asked.

“I—I don’t know. But here, I mustn’t let you make love—”

“Nan Lilley, you’re no stranger to me. This hour has been like a year. I was ripe for this adventure. When I tell you my story you’ll believe then that our meeting wasn’t just accident.”

“Then tell me,” she said eagerly.

“Sometime. What I want to get at now is this. Give me time to prove I’m to be trusted. And that’s asking you to marry me then, Nan.”

“Marry you!” she cried, in shame and amaze. “Why, man, my dad has pledged me to Buck Hathaway.”

Mercer in a passion of dismay released her hand and snatched her in his arms. But before he had yielded further to such impulse she braced a strong hand against his breast and held herself back. Still, her face was dangerously close.

“There you go,” she whispered. “Takin’ my breath.” She seemed startled at losing poise, and for the moment imminently near catastrophe.

Mercer took it that the catastrophe would be his falling to the status of these backwoods louts she scorned, and he gave stern rein to his impulses. He let her push herself slowly back to the length of her arm, and there they sat for a space, her hand spread on his breast, her eyes, darkly dilated, fixed on his, as if irresistibly fascinated, and waiting for she knew not what.

“There! That ought to prove I love you,” he said, breathing hard, and let her choose whether he meant his passionate clasp or his equally passionate restraint. Not until he fully released her, a moment later, did he divine that he might have dared further. “You surprised me, Nan. I hope you’ll forgive that. After all my bragging I fell down! But you are what Tommy said. I’ve gone a long way since I first set eyes on you.”

Probably she took his admissions for resignation, for the startled expectation died out of her face. She sank back lax. Little flecks of sunlight filtered through the leaves to brighten her hair. The wet skirt clung to her round limbs and the water ran from it to float pine needles in little pools. She seemed the very breath of the woodland and a cool, subtle allure emanated from her. Mercer thought of the strangeness of them sitting there in this foliage-screened covert. There was no denying it. And the fact was incalculably significant. He did not need to have her tell him that she would meet him there again, even if she realized it. But he knew, and he was not concerned with the strong attraction of such possibility but the right or wrong of it.

“You’ll go away now?” she queried at length.

“Do you think I ought to?”

“I reckon you had.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

“But that’d be wrong. My dad is head of the Lilley clan. We have no law except his word. Somehow the Hathaways can work him to their wishes. They’re gettin’ our cattle, our horses, and now they’ll soon get me. If you stay here I—I’ll be worse off. Because I’ll be sure to—to like you, to want to be with you—to—to—Oh, it’ll just happen! And that’d be wrong.”

“No. It’d be right. The wrong would be for you to let your dad force you to be Hathaway’s wife. If you don’t love him, it’ll be wrong to marry him.”

“Yes. But then it only falls on my head,” she replied mournfully.

“Nan, you’re sacrificing yourself,” he said, suddenly keen again. “This, then, is your trouble?”

“The littler part because it only concerns me. The big trouble is that since I’ve been home I’ve found out terrible things, and they’re breakin’ my heart. Dad has cancer and can’t live long. My brothers are drinkin’, idlin’, while we’re gettin’ poorer. The Hathaways have a lien on our land. We owe a year’s debt to Timms’ store for supplies, my mother is failin’—and, oh, Mister Mercer, us Lilleys are goin’ to hell!”

“Suppose you call me Dodge from now on when we’re alone,” he said eloquently.

“Call you Dodge? Is that the—the way you take my confidence?”

“Yes. Back on the plains I earned that name,” he replied. “I never dodged trouble in all the ten years I rode the range. I never dodged a night’s watch, or a stampede of stock, or a rustling outfit, or cards, or gamblers, or women, or fights, or bullets—nor dealing death. That’s why they called me Dodge. I rode away at last because I wanted to dodge all those damned things—to find a new life among new faces where there wasn’t any trouble. But I guess there’s no such place on earth. I rode a thousand miles or more to run into you and your trouble—which I shall make mine. Now suppose you call me Dodge, just for the fun of it. To see how it sounds from you.”

“Dodge!” she burst out, swayed by his impassioned speech.

“Say! It sounds powerful appealing from you, Nan. Sort of fits when you say it. But I reckon you better not say it again here.”

He arose, and offered his hand to help her up. “Now let’s go tackle your troubles. That about your dad having cancer is bad, but the rest don’t faze me.”

“Oh, you make me hope!” she cried. “You make me want to fight! I—I don’t care—I’m glad you came. I prayed, oh, I prayed!”

“Well, I don’t know if I was ever an answer to prayers,” he drawled, smiling down upon her. “But anything might happen. I’ll go get my horse, Baldy.”

Dodge emerged from the green covert out into the open of sun and shade, and he walked back on the trail as one in a dream. The forest land seemed to wrap him in its warm, fragrant breath; the tall pines sang and the stream murmured on; the solitude found the soul in him that had ever struggled to rise. Whatever befell him there could only leave him better, and he embraced the adventure. He would befriend this little backwoods girl irrespective of any thought of himself.

He found Baldy where he had left him, and mounting he rode back on the trail, which swerved to the left of the rocks where he had encountered Nan. Suddenly he saw her across the stream, waiting for him. Baldy halted in the middle of the wide shallow where the trail crossed and drank like the desert horse that, thirsty or not, would never be turned from pure, cold water. While he drank Mercer looked at Nan. At that distance her dark, deep eyes held a watchful observance.

Soon he joined her on the bank and dismounted.

“What a horse! Baldy, you called him. All for that white face!”

For reply Dodge put his hands under Nan’s arms and in a single heave lifted her to a side seat in the saddle.

“I’ll carry your bucket,” he said, with a laugh. “We’ll make an effective approach. I hope Hathaway is there to see us.”

She eyed him ponderingly, unconscious of her betrayal of mingled admiration and misgiving.

“I reckon you’re a devil,” she replied thoughtfully. “But you’re sure not goin’ to see me fall down. When we get there I’ll introduce you as—as a friend from Kansas.”

“Taking a hunch from Tommy?” he inquired gayly.

“It might be a good one, though it’ll sure upset the Lilleys.”

“Then I’m supposed to have met you in Kansas, say at Dodge City—followed you out here?”

She gazed down upon him with wonderful, thought-provoking eyes. “On your head be it, Dodge.”

He picked up the bucket and started up the trail leading Baldy. Once up on the bank he found that the edge of the forest was near, and that a blue-and-gray space appeared to yawn beneath. He saw a long, low, dark log cabin just below the line of pines. Evidently the stream ran to the right of it.

When Mercer walked out of the woods he was confronted by a great cleared space, rich in green growths, slanting down to where the timber showed dark and ragged again. Beyond was such a magnificent vista of rugged, uneven, colorful valley that he was spellbound. He was looking down upon the bare silver ridges and brush-choked gorges which he had seen from the hilltop some miles to the west, only here, right upon them, as it appeared, the effect was incalculably magnified. Miles of a great, black, shaggy canyon fronted the left wall of the wilderness, and into it all these gorges and ridges fell. The glory and the beauty of the mountain forest land lay all behind him, under the bold Rock Rim. Below stretched a harsh grandeur, a ghastly gashed world the like of which he had never seen before.

He had only time for a glance when a pack of savage hounds burst from under the peach and apple trees that partly obscured the cabin.

“Here, you wild dogs!” called Nan. “Get back! You, Sounder! Here, Moze, Tige, behave yourselves.”

The chorus of bays and barks ceased, and the long-eared hounds trotted to and fro, wagging their tails, but eying Dodge distrustfully. He followed the path, to emerge into a grassy plot before a most picturesque old log cabin, backed by the towering pines, and open all its long-porched front to view of the valley below.

“Here we are,” said Nan, cool and sweet, as Dodge halted before the wide steps that led up to the high porch. Dogs and children peeped out from under the porch rail. He heard a clink of spurs, a deep voice. He saw the peak of a black sombrero. “Dad, Uncle Bill, Ma—all of you come out here an’ meet my friend from Kansas.”

Nan, sitting on Baldy, could see up on the porch, while Dodge was too low. She was gay and audacious, and if the occasion was momentous she had the nerve to meet it. A heavy footfall sounded on the porch.

“Wal, friend of Nan’s, come up an’ show yourself,” called a hearty voice that held a ring Dodge trusted.

“Go up, Dodge, and run the gantlet. It’s what you get for chasin’ after me way out here.”

Dodge would have faced fire or a den of lions for the thrilling and unexpected attitude of the girl in what surely must be a trying if not desperate situation. He mounted the steps, and setting the bucket down he looked up. A superb, craggy-faced man of about fifty years stood there, the black sombrero Dodge had espied from below cocked back on his shaggy, grizzled head. His visage was a remarkable one, and Dodge needed only one look into it to realize that he was safe here. Piercing hazel eyes with dancing flecks that caught the sunlight looked him up and down. He had beetling brows, high cheekbones under which his cheeks sunk in, and a rugged, scantily bearded chin.

“Dad,” called Nan from the saddle, “meet my friend from Kansas—Dodge Mercer. Dodge, that’s my father, Rock Lilley.”

“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Dodge, extending his hand.

“Same to you, young man,” was the robust reply, and then Mercer’s gun hand was subjected to a squeeze that was not good for it.

“Mercer? Ain’t thet name familiar? Whar’d I hear it, Bill?” queried the mountaineer.

“And Dodge,” called up Nan roguishly, “that hard-lookin’ Texas hombre is my Uncle Bill Lilley.”

This individual emerged from behind Lilley, and Nan’s good-humored epithet was felicitous. Texas was written all over that stalwart uncle, and if Dodge had needed a friend he would have wished it to be he. If Dodge could judge men, here was the salt of the earth.

“How do, Uncle Bill Lilley,” said Dodge.

“Dodge Mercer, huh, late of Abilene?” drawled the Texan.

“Oh, Lord, it’s a small world. I reckoned Arizona was far away,” ejaculated Dodge plaintively.

Nan called out again, this time nervously: “Ma, come on out. Sally, Rose, and you boys, where’s your manners?”

Dodge noticed several womenfolk at the back of the porch, where there appeared to be a wide space between two parts of the cabin, both of which were under one wide, shelving roof. He saw some lean, long, still-faced, still-eyed young men who lounged motionless.

“Wal, it shore is a small world,” spoke up Uncle Bill. “Dodge, I was in Abilene last April, with my last trail herd. I saw yore meetin’ with Strickland.”

Dodge’s heart sank. Of all the miserable luck! His past could never be effaced. It would follow him everywhere. His mute gesture of poignant regret was misunderstood by the Texan.

“Wal, I shore know how you feel,” he drawled. “But you needn’t apologize for thet little gunplay. Strickland was a big man in Abilene. But I’ve heahed more’n one say you did the community a service. Thet’s the frontier, Mercer. We cattlemen could never have made out but for you handy boys.”

“Thanks. It’s good of you to take that angle,” replied Dodge, fighting the cold sickness of an old mood. “I got tired being hounded by Strickland’s friends. So I hit out for the West. I’m sure glad to meet you all, but sorry I just couldn’t have been plain nobody.”

“Haw! Haw! Thet cain’t be, son,” declared Uncle Bill lustily, and he turned to his brother. “Rock, wasn’t it only the other day thet I mentioned Mercer’s name to you, along with some others well known in the cattle towns?”

“Shore. I remembered when Nan spoke, an’ I was plumb surprised.”

“Wal, I reckon it’s no bad news for us thet Nan’s friend happens to be from the Kansas and Panhandle country, an’ shore the same breed as King Fisher, Wild Bill, Wess Hardin’, an’ some more of them gun-throwin’ gents.”

“Hell no! Whar’s thet jug?” roared Rock Lilley.

Uncle Bill turned to the bench where he had been sitting and upon which sat a queer little brown jug. He tipped it with one hand, his thumb in the ring.

“To all friends of Texans,” he called out. Then he drank and lowered the jug. “Aagh!” His face was purple.

Rock Lilley took the jug and imbibed with no expression save a singular smacking of his lips. Whereupon he handed the vessel to Mercer.

“Look out, Dodge,” trilled Nan, her voice troubled. “You’re goin’ to be kicked.”

But Mercer, happy at the turn of his introduction there, felt prepared for anything.

“To new friends,” he said, and took a swift pull at the jug. Something happened. A terrific shock, a vitriolic burn, a sudden blindness assailed him simultaneously. A torturing fire seemed to move slowly down inside him and to explode. The impact of searing bullets had done less to him.

“My—God!” he gasped, as he staggered to set down the jug. “What was—that stuff?”

“Haw! Haw! Haw!” laughed the Lilleys in unison.

Nan appeared hazily in Dodge’s returning sight. “I warned you, Dodge,” she said.

Rock Lilley stretched out a long arm to slap a heavy hand on Dodge’s shoulder.

“Son, thet was Arizona white mule!”