Brand Blotters

The rancher answered with impatient annoyance. "You're 'way off, Norris. I

don't care anything about your evidence. The idea is plumb ridiculous.

Twenty odd years I've known him. He's the best they make, a pure through

and through. Not a crooked hair in his head. I've eat out of the same

frying pan too often with that boy not to know what he is. You go bury

those suspicions of yours immediate. There's nothing to them."

Norris grumbled objections as they moved toward the stable. Melissy drew a

long breath and brought herself back to the tenderfoot.

He stood like a coiled spring, head thrust far forward from the shoulders.

The look in his black eyes was something new to her experience. For hate,

passion, caution were all mirrored there.

"You know Mr. Norris," she said quickly.

He started. "What did you say his name was?" he asked with an assumption

of carelessness.

"Norris--Philip Norris. He is a cattle detective."

"Never heard of Mr. Norris before in my life," he answered, but it was

observable that he still breathed deep.

She did not believe him. Some tie in their buried past bound these two men

together. They must have known each other in the South years ago, and one

of them at least was an enemy of the other. There might come a day when

she could use this knowledge to save Jack Flatray from the punishment

dogging his heels. Melissy filed it away in her memory for future

reference.

"You wanted to speak to me," she suggested.

"I'm going away."

"What for?"

"Because I'm not a hound. I can't blackmail a woman."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that you've found work here for me because I saw what you did over

by Antelope Pass. We made a bargain. Oh, not in words, but a bargain just

the same! You were to keep my secret because I knew yours. I release you

from your part of it. Give me up if you think it is your duty. I'll not

tell what I know."

"That wasn't how you talked the other day."

"No. It's how I talk now. I'm a hunted man, wanted for murder. I make you

a present of the information."

"You make me a present of what I already know, Mr. Diller, alias Morse,

alias Bellamy."

"You guessed it the first day?"

"Yes."

"And meant to keep quiet about it?"

"Yes, I meant to shelter you from the punishment you deserve." She added

with a touch of bitter self-scorn: "I was doing what I had to do."