`I reckon yo're good an' dead, Joe,' he said. `Plumb between the eyes, a left-hand shot, an' him plugged too. Sudden shore deserved his reputation. Well, seein' as there ain't no one else, I guess I must be the missin' heir.' He looked malevolently at the girl. `Not that I'm wantin' yu the way Joe was, but I reckon Old Simon'll pay somethin' no get yu back. As for him'--he nodded towards the cowpuncher--`by Gosh! he ain't gone yet --he's breathin'.'
Running to the girl he slashed her bonds with a knife and pulled her from the saddle.
`Help me tie him up--he's worth ten thousand alive,' he ordered. `An' don't try no tricks for I'd as soon shoot yu as not.'
The threat was not necessary, for Noreen's one anxiety was to help the wounded man. An examination of his hurt showed that the bullet had entered the right side of the chest, fairly high up, and had passed clean through. Strips from her underskirt and handkerchiefs supplied bandages, and Laban showed some skill in their adjustment. When this was done to his satisfaction he rose and grinned at her.
`He'll live to decorate a tree yet, if we can get him away from here. Fetch that hoss o' mine, he's quiet; we'll have to tie him on.'
`It will kill him,' the girl said indignantly.
`Do as you're told,' he snarled. `Or--'
His threatening hand was still in the air when a quiet but meaning voice said, `Put the other up too, Seth, an' keep 'em up.'
Laban knew that voice and his biceps were cuddling his ears when he faced round to find Snap Lunt standing, gun in hand, a bare dozen yards away. Busy with the bandaging, neinher he nor the girl had noticed his approach. The little gunman's eyes were blazing and the expression on his face was that of a devil. Laban tried to temporise.
`Hello, Snap, yo're just in time to take Miss Petter home--I was wonderin' what to do with her,' he began. `Joe an' Sudden had a mix up an'
`Step back, an' keep doin' it,' came the cold command, emphasised by the levelled gun.
Laban, thinking the other merely wanted him further from the girl, obeyed, and for each step backward that he took, Lunt took one forward. So they went for perhaps twenty paces, and then Laban said: `What's the idea, Snap? If yu got anythin' to say--' `Keep movin',' was the stern reply.
Some instinct made the rustler glance over his shoulder and he suddenly shrieked. One more pace backward would have sent him over the precipice to crash upon the rocks hundreds of feet below. Shivering with fear he tried to edge forward away from the ghastly chasm.
`Back,' came the inexorable command, and a bullet tore off the upper part of an ear.
Flinging himself on his knees the miserable creature begged for mercy, crying aloud that he had not hurt the outlaw, whose wound he had bound up, that he had always liked Snap, and that he meant no harm to Noreen. He might as well have pleaded to a stone man. Snap took another step forward.
`Seth,' he said. `Yu are agoin' over, dead or alive. Which is it to be?'
He meant it; the lust to kill was upon him, and he well knew that the grovelling wretch before him was as unfit to live as he was to die. But the sight was more than the girl could bear. She laid her hand on the gunman's arm.
`Please let him go, Snap,'-she begged. `He has not harmed me, and whatever his motive, he bound up Mr. Green's wound. Perhaps he will go straight in future.'
`Huh! 'bout as straight as a corkscrew,' Lunt growled. `He's a bad lot an' yo're doin' the world a poor service turnin' him loose on it agin, but yu don't have to ask me twice for anythin', Miss Norry, an' that goes.'
He walked no Laban took away his gun, and pointed up the pass. `Get,' he said. `An' remember this, next time we meet yu better see me first for I'll be shootin' on sight.'
`Yu ain't turnin' me loose afoot an' without grub, are yu?' quavered Laban.
`Make tracks,' ordered the gunman. `Yu got yore life an' that's all I'm givin' yu.'
Having watched the broken rustler stagger up the pass and vanish round a bend, Snap turned his attention to the problem of getting the sick man home. Green was conscious--he even essayed a grin when he saw Lunt--and he also grasped the situation.
`Tie me to the saddle,' he said. `I reckon I can make it.'
With both of them helping, and by making a supreme effort which brought the sweat in beads to his brow, he managed to climb to the back of Laban's pony, which appeared to be the most docile. Then with the girl on one side, and Snap, leading the spare horse, on the other, they began the journey. Never will Noreen forget those hours of torture. Compelled to move at a walking pace, constantly watching that the wounded man did not slip from the saddle, the ordeal seemed endless. Ere a mile had been traversed, Green's head sagged forward and he began to mutter. References to Tarman, Bill Evesham, and to Larry came indistinctly to her ears, and then she heard her own name, and blushed furiously while her heart sang.
`Don't yu heed him, Miss Norry,' said Lunt, when the delirious man ripped out an oath. `He's out of his head, that's all.'
`This ride will kill him,' the girl replied anxiously. 'Do yu think the hurt is very bad?'
`Can't say, Miss Norry, but I've seen wuss,' Snap told her. `I'm hopin' the lead has missed the lungs an' in that case he'll likely be as good as new in a month or two; he's a clean-liver an' tough as rawhide.'
Noreen rode on in silence. Only when she had seen him go down before Tarman's treacherous bullet had she realised what this nameless stranger with the terrible reputation really meant to her. She summed it up in one word--everything, and as she helped to hold the swaying, lurching form, with its death-white face, in the saddle, she prayed as she had never done before. Mile after mile they crawled and the patient drooped more and more over his saddlehorn until Noreen feared that he must collapse entirely.
She herself was little better and only the courage of despair enabled her to endure that terrible ride. At length, when it seemed that she could hold out no longer, came a cheerful word from Lunt :
`Yonder's the house,' he said. `An' I reckon the dance is over.' He was right. When they presently rode into the clearing they found the attackers busy rounding up their mounts and preparing to depart. The shout which greeted their arrival brought Leeming on the run. Green, who had been lifted down and laid on a blanket, had a spell of sanity.
`Did yu get him?' asked the Frying Pan owner.
`Yes,' replied the puncher. `Yu 'pear to have cleaned up here too.'
`All but them, an' they won't take long,' said Job grimly, pointing to a group of five men, sitting on their horses but with their hands bound behind them. One of these was West, and the rustler grinned cheerily when he saw Green looking at him.
`Good-bye, partner,' he called. `Glad yu got her--an' him.' Painfully the hurt man raised himself on an elbow. `That man goes free, Job,' he said. `He saved my life an' turned me loose to follow Tarman.'
`He was in the house with 'em,' Leeming said. `He helped steal my cattle an' mebbe shot some o' my men.'
`Aw, partner, I'll take my medicine with the rest,' the Californian said.
`He goes free,' Green repeated stubbornly. `But for him I'd be cashed, an' Miss Norry'
Leeming gave in, and when the condemned were conducted into the forest by half a dozen of the Frying Pan boys the Californian was not among them. To the surprise of his captors, however, he made no attempt to get away.
`I'm stayin' around,' he explained to Larry. `I reckon I'll be able to thank him when he's good an' well again.'
For having paid his debt to the rustler, Green had lapsed into unconsciousness, and was giving his friends a good deal of anxiety.
Chapter XXIV
SOME three weeks later it was `visiting day' at the Y Z ranch-house; for the first time since he had been carried there, a limp, unconscious form, Green was allowed to see his friends. One at a time the punchers came into the room, chatted for a few moments and then, at a nod from Noreen, who was in charge of the invalid, went out again. Stereotyped as the inquiries and wishes were, the girl sensed the genuine feeling which prompted them, and her pride in her patient grew. The pale-faced man, propped up by pillows, had a smile for all and there was a look in his eyes which told the girl that he too realised the affection beneath the awkwardness. When West came in
