Mavericks

"I guessed."

Presently, at the entrance to a little cañon, Keller swung down and examined the ground carefully, seemed satisfied, and rode with her into the gully. But she noticed that now he went cautiously, eyes narrowed and wary, with the hard face and the look of a coiled spring she had seen on him before. Her heart drummed with excitement. She was not afraid, but she was fearfully alive.

At the other entrance to the cañon, Larrabie was down again for another examination. What he seemed to find gave him pleasure.

"They've separated," he told Phyllis. "We'll give our attention to the gentleman with the calf, and let his friend go, to-day."

They swung sharply to the north, taking a precipitous trail of shale that Phyllis judged to be a short cut. It was rough going, but their mountain ponies were good for anything less than a perpendicular wall. They clambered up and down like cats, as sure-footed as wild goats.

At the summit of the ridge, Keller pointed out something in the valley below--a rider on horseback, driving a calf.

"There goes Mr. Waddy, as big as coffee."

"He's going to swing round the point. You mean to drop down the hill and cut him off?"

"That's the plan. Better do no more talking after we pass that live oak. See that little wash? We'll drop into it, and hide among the cottonwoods."

The rustler was pushing along hurriedly, driving the calf at a trot, half the time twisted in the saddle, with anxious eyes to the rear. Revolvers and a rifle garnished him, but quite plainly they gave him no sense of safety.

When the summons came to him to "Drop that gun!" it was only a confirmation of his fears. Yet he jumped as a boy jumps under the unexpected cut of a cane.

The rifle went clattering to the stony trail. Without being ordered to do so, the hands of the waddy were thrust skyward.

"Why, it's Tom Dixon! We've made a mistake," Phyllis discovered; and moved forward from her hiding place.

"We've made no mistake. I told you I'd show you the rustler, and I've shown him to you," Keller answered, as he too stepped forward. And to Tom, whose hands dropped at sight of Phyllis: "Better keep them reaching till I get those guns. That's right. Now, you may 'light."

"What's got into you?" demanded Dixon, his teeth still chattering. "Holding up a man for nothing. Take away that gun you got bent on me!"

"You're under arrest for rustling, seh," the cattle detective told him sternly.

"Prove it. Prove it!" Dixon swung from the saddle, and faced the other doggedly.