"I'm not liable to bring trouble to those you love, girl. I stand by my friends."
Her pony began to move toward the house, and he strode beside, as debonair and gallant a figure as ever filled the eye and the heart of a woman. The morning sun glow irradiated him, found its sparkling reflection in the dark curls of his bare head, in the bloom of his tanned cheeks, made a fit setting for the graceful picture of lingering youth his slim, muscular figure and springy stride personified. Small wonder the untaught girl beside him found the merely physical charm of him fascinating. If her instinct sometimes warned her to beware, her generous heart was eager to pay small heed to the monition except so far as concerned her father.
After breakfast he came into the office to see her before he left.
"Good-by for a day or two," he said, offering his hand.
"You're coming back again, are you?" she asked quietly, but not without a deeper dye in her cheeks.
"Yes, I'm coming back. Will you be glad to see me?"
"Why should I be glad? I hardly know you these days."
"You'll know me better before we're through with each other."
She would acknowledge no interest in him, the less because she knew it was there. "I may do that without liking you better."
And suddenly his swift, winning smile flashed upon her. "But you've got to like me. I want you to."
"Do you get everything you want?" she smiled back.
"If I want it enough, I usually do."
"Then since you get so much, you'll be better able to do without my liking."
"I'm going to have it too."
"Don't be too sure." She had a feeling that things were moving too fast, and she hailed the appearance of her father with relief. "Good morning, dad. Did you sleep well? Mr. Norris is just leaving."
"Wait till I git a bite o' breakfast and I'll go with you, Phil," promised Lee. "I got to ride over to Mesa anyhow some time this week."
The girl watched them ride away, taking the road gait so characteristic of the Southwest. As long as they were in sight her gaze followed them, and when she could see nothing but a wide cloud of dust travelling across the mesa she went up to her room and sat down to think it out. Something new had come into her life. What, she did not yet know, but she tried to face the fact with the elemental frankness that still made her more like a boy than a woman. Sitting there before the looking-glass, she played absently with the thick braid of heavy, blue-black hair which hung across her shoulder to the waist. It came to her for the first time to wonder if she was pretty, whether she was going to be one of the women that men desire. Without the least vanity she studied herself, appraised the soft brown cheeks framed with ebon hair, the steady, dark eyes so quick to passion and to gaiety, the bronzed throat full and rounded, the supple, flowing grace of the unrestrained body.
Gradually a wave of color crept into her cheeks as she sat there with her chin on her little doubled hand. It was the charm of this Apollo of the plains that had set free such strange thoughts in her head. Why should she think of him? What did it matter whether she was good-looking? She shook herself resolutely together and went down to the business of the day.
It was not long after midnight the next day that Champ Lee reached the ranch. His daughter came out from her room in her night-dress to meet him.
"What kept you, Daddy?" she asked.
But before he could answer she knew. She read the signs too clearly to doubt that he had been drinking.
CHAPTER VI
"HANDS UP"
Melissy had been up the Ca del Oro for wild poppies in her runabout and had just reached the ranch. She was disposing of her flowers in ollas when Jim Budd, waiter, chambermaid, and odd jobs man at the Bar Double G, appeared in the hall with a frightened, mysterious face.
"What's the matter, Jim? You and Hop Ling been quarrelling again?" she asked carelessly.
"No'm, that ain't it. It's wusser'n that. I got to tell you-all su'thin' I hearn yore paw say."
The girl looked up quickly at him. "What do you mean, Jim?"
"That Mistah Norris he come back whilst you wus away, and him and yore paw wus in that back room a-talkin' mighty confidential."
"Yes, and you listened. Well?"
Jim swelled with offended dignity. "No'm, I didn't listen neither. I des natcherally hearn, 'count of that hole fer the stovepipe what comes through the floor of my room."
"But what was it you heard?" she interrupted impatiently.
"I wus a-comin' to that. Plum proverdenshul, I draps into my room des as yore paw wus sayin', 'Twenty thousand dollars goin' down to the Fort on the stage to-day?' 'Cose I pricks up my ears then and tuk it all in. This yere Norris had foun' out that Mistah Morse was shippin' gold from his mine to-day on the Fort Allison stage, and he gits yore paw to go in with him an' hold it up. Yore paw cussed and said as how 't wus his gold anyhow by rights."
The girl went white and gave a little broken cry. "Oh, Jim! Are you sure?"
"Yas'm, 'cose I'm suah. Them's his ve'y words. Hope to die if they ain't. They wus drinkin', and when 't wus all fixed up that 't wus to be at the mouth of the Box Caon they done tore an old black shirt you got for a dust-rag and made masks out of it and then rode away."
"Which way did they go?"
"Tow'ds the Box Caon Miss M'lissy."
A slender, pallid figure of despair, she leaned against the wall to support the faintness that had so suddenly stolen the strength from her limbs, trying desperately to think of some way to save her father from this madness. She was sure he would bungle it and be caught eventually, and she was equally sure he would never let himself be taken alive. Her helplessness groped for some way out. There must be some road of escape from this horrible situation, and as she sought blindly for it the path opened before her.
"Where is Hop?" she asked quickly.
"A-sleepin' in his room, ma'am."
"Go to the store and tend it till I come back, Jim. I may be an hour, or mebbe two, but don't you move out of it for a moment. And don't ever speak of any of this, not a word, Jim."
"No'm, 'cose I won't."
His loyalty she did not doubt an instant, though she knew his simple wits might easily be led to indiscretion. But she did not stay to say more now, but flew upstairs to the room that had been her brother's before he left home. Scarce five minutes elapsed before she reappeared transformed. It was a slim youth garbed as a cowpuncher that now slipped along the passage to the rear, softly opened the door of the cook's room, noiselessly abstracted the key, closed the door again as gently, and locked it from the outside. She ran into her own room, strapped on her revolver belt, and took her empty rifle from its case. As she ran through the room below the one Jim occupied, she caught sight of a black rag thrown carelessly into the fireplace and stuffed it into her pocket.
"That's just like Dad to leave evidence lying around," she said to herself, for even
