Mavericks

"Better light, Mr. Keller. If you come in we'll have a look at your arm. An accident like that is a mighty awkward thing to happen to a man on the trail. It's right fortunate Miss Sanderson found you so soon after it happened."

The nester knew a surge of triumph in his blood, but it did not show in the impassive face which he turned upon his host.

"It was right fortunate for me," he said, swinging from the saddle. Incidentally he was wondering what story had been narrated to Yeager, but he took a chance without hesitation. "A fellow oughtn't to be so careless when he's got a gun in his hand."

"You're right, seh. In this country of heavy underbrush a man's gun is liable to go off and hit somebody any time if he ain't careful. You're in big luck you didn't shoot yourself up a heap worse."

Yeager led the way to his cabin, and offered Phyllis the single chair he boasted, and the nester a seat on the bed. Sitting beside him, he examined the wound and washed it.

"Comes to being an invalid I'm a false alarm," Keller said apologetically. "I didn't want to come, but Miss Sanderson would bring me."

"She was dead right, too. Time you had ridden twenty miles through the hot sun with that wound you would have been in a raging fever."

"One way and another I'm quite in her debt."

"That's so," agreed Yeager, intent on his work.

She refused to meet the nester's smile. "Fiddlesticks! You talk mighty foolish, Jim. I wouldn't go away and leave a wounded dog if I could help it."

"Suppose the dog were a sheep-killer?" Keller asked with his engaging, impudent smile.

A dust cloud rose from her skirt under a stroke of the restless quirt. "I'd do my best for it and let it settle with the law afterward."

"Even if it were a wolf caught in a trap?"

"I should put it out of its pain. No matter how much I detested it, I wouldn't leave it there to suffer."

"I'm quite sure you wouldn't," the wounded man agreed.

Yeager looked from one to the other, not quite catching the drift of the underlying meaning. Another thing puzzled him, too. But, like most men of the unfenced Southwest, Yeager had a large capacity for silence. Now he attended strictly to his business, without mentioning what he had noticed.

The wound dressed, Phyllis rose to leave. "You'll be down for your mail to-morrow, Jim," she suggested, as she sauntered toward the door.

"Sure. I'll let you know how our patient is getting along."