Mavericks

It was on such an occasion that Jim Yeager dropped in on them upon his return from Noches. He let his eyes travel humorously over the room before he spoke.

"Why for don't I ever have the luck to be shot up?" he drawled.

"Oh, you Jim!" Keller called a greeting from the bed. Phyllis came forward, and, with a heightened color, shook hands with him.

"You'll sit down with us and have some tea, Jim," she told him.

"Me? I'm no society Willie. Don't know the game at all, Phyl. Besides, I'm carrying half of Arizona on my clothes. It's some dusty down in the Malpais."

Nevertheless he sat down, and, over the biscuits and jam, told the meagre story of what he had found out.

The finding of the stocking-footed roan near Noches so soon after the robbery disposed of Healy's lie, though it did not prove that Keller had not been riding it at the time of the holdup. As for Healy, Yeager confessed he saw no way of implicating him. His alibi was just as good as that of any of them.

But there was one person his story did involve, and that was Spiker, the tinhorn, tenderfoot sport of Noches. During the absence of this young man at the gaming table, Jim and his friend, Sam Weaver, had got into his room with a skeleton key and searched it thoroughly. They had found, in a suit case, a black mask, a pair of torn and shiny chaps, a gray shirt, a white, dusty sombrero, much the worse for wear, and over three hundred dollars in bills.

"What does he pretend his business is?" Keller asked, when Jim had finished.

"Allows he's a showfer. Drives folks around in a gasoline wagon. That's the theory, but I notice he turned down a mining man who wanted to get him to run him into the hills on Monday. Said he hadn't time. The showfer biz is a bluff, looks like."

The nester made no answer. His eyes, narrowed to slits, were gazing out of the window absently. Presently he came from deep thought to ask Yeager to hand him the map he would find in his inside coat pocket. This he spread out on the bed in front of him. When at last he looked up he was smiling.

"I reckon it's no bluff, Jim. He's a chauffeur, all right, but he only drives out select outfits."

"Meaning?"

The map lying in front of Keller was one of Noches County. The nester located, with his index finger, the town of that name, and traced the road from it to Seven Mile. Then his finger went back to Noches, and followed the old military road to Fort Lincoln, a route which almost paralleled the one to the ranch.