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Melissy did not speak, scarce dared to draw breath, for the man beneath them was Boone. There was something furtive and lupine about him that suggested the wild beast stalking its kill. No doubt he had become impatient to see the end of his foe and had ridden forward. He had almost crossed the path before he looked up and caught sight of them standing together in the fireglow of the sunset.
Abruptly he came to a standstill.
"By God! you slipped through, did you?" he said in a low voice of concentrated bitterness.
Bellamy did not answer, but he separated himself from the girl by a step or two. He knew quite well what was coming, and he looked down quietly with steady eyes upon his foe.
From far below there came the faint sound of a horse breaking its way through brush. Boone paused to listen, but his eye never wandered from the bareheaded, motionless figure silhouetted against the skyline in the ruddy evening glow. He had shifted his rifle so that it lay in both hands, ready for immediate action.
Melissy, horror-stricken, had sat silent, but now she found her voice.
"He is unarmed!" she cried to the cowpuncher.
He made no answer. Another sound in the brush, close at hand, was distracting his attention, though not his gaze.
Just as he whipped up his rifle Melissy sprang forward. She heard the sound of the explosion fill the draw, saw Bellamy clutch at the air and slowly sink to the ground. Before the echoes had died away she had flung herself toward the inert body.
The outlaw took a step or two forward, as if to make sure of his work, but at the sound of running footsteps he changed his mind, swung to the saddle and disappeared among the rocks.
An instant later Bob Farnum burst into view.
"What's up?" he demanded.
Melissy looked up. Her face was perfectly ashen. "Phil Norris ... he shot Mr. Morse."
Farnum stepped forward. "Hurt badly, Mr. Morse?"
The wounded man grinned faintly. "Scared worse, I reckon. He got me in the fleshy part of the left arm."
CHAPTER XIII
OLD ACQUAINTANCES
"You wanted to see me?"
The voice had the soft, slow intonation of the South, and it held some quality that haunted the memory. Or so Melissy thought afterward, but that may have been because of its owner's appeal to sympathy.
"If you are Miss Yarnell."
"Ferne Yarnell is my name."
"Mr. Bellamy asked me to call on you. He sent this letter of introduction."
A faint wave of color beat into the cheek of the stranger. "You know Mr. Bellamy then?"
"Yes. He would have been here to meet you, but he met with an accident yesterday."
"An accident!" There was a quick flash of alarm in the lifted face.
"He told me to tell you that it was not serious. He was shot in the arm."
"Shot. By whom?" She was ashen to the lips.
"By a man called Duncan Boone."
"I know him. He is a dangerous man."
"Yes," Melissy nodded. "I don't think we know how very dangerous he is. We have all been deceived in him till recently."
"Does he live here?"
"Yes. The strange thing is that he and Mr. Bellamy had never met in this country until a few days ago. There used to be some kind of a feud between the families. But you must know more about that than I do."
"Yes. My family is involved in the feud. Mr. Bellamy is a distant cousin of mine."
"So he told me."
"Have you known him long?"
Melissy thought that there was a little more than curiosity in the quick look the young woman flung at her.
"I met him when he first came here. He was lost on the desert and I found him. After that we became very unfriendly. He jumped a mining claim belonging to my father. But we've made it up and agreed to be friends."
"He wrote about the young lady who saved his life."
Melissy smiled. "Did he say that I was a cattle and a stage rustler?"
"He said nothing that was not good."
"I'm much obliged to him," the Western girl answered breezily. "And now do tell me, Miss Yarnell, that you and your people have made up your mind to stay permanently."
"Father is still looking the ground over. He has almost decided to buy a store here. Yet he has been in the town only a day. So you see he must like it."
Outside the open second story window of the hotel Melissy heard a voice that sounded familiar. She moved toward the window alcove, and at the same time a quick step was heard in the hall. Someone opened the door of the parlor and stood on the threshold. It was the man called Boone.
Melissy, from the window, glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze was upon Ferne Yarnell.
That young woman looked up from the letter of introduction she was reading and a startled expression swept into her face.
"Dunc Boone," she cried.
The man doffed his hat with elaborate politeness. "Right glad to meet up with you again, Miss Ferne. You was in short dresses when I saw you last. My, but you've grown pretty. Was it because you heard I was in Arizona that you came here?"
She rose, rejecting in every line of her erect figure his impudent geniality, his insolent pretense of friendliness.
"My brother is in the hotel. If he learns you are here there will be trouble."
A wicked malice lay in his smiling eyes. "Trouble for him or for me?" he inquired silkily.
His lash flicked her on the raw. Hal Yarnell was a boy of nineteen. This man had a long record as a gunfighter to prove him a desperate man. Moreover, he knew how hopelessly heart sick she was of the feud that for many years had taken its toll of blood.
"Haven't you done us enough harm, you and yours? Go away. Leave us alone. That's all I ask of you."
He came in and closed the door. "But you see it ain't all I ask of you, Ferne Yarnell. I always did ask all I could get of a girl as pretty as you."
"Will you leave me, sir?"
"When I'm through."
"Now."
"No, I reckon not," he drawled between half shuttered eyes.
She moved toward the door, but he was there before her. With a turn of his wrist he had locked it.
"This interview quits at my say-so, honey. Think after so many years of absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder you're going to trample over me like I was a kid? Guess again."
"Unlock that door," she ordered.
"When I get good and ready. We'll have our talk out first."
Her eyes blazed. She was white as paper though she faced him steadily. But her heart wavered. She dared not call out for fear her brother might hear and come to her assistance. This she must forestall at all costs.
A heel clicked in the alcove. For the first time Norris, or Boone as the Southern girl had called him, became aware of a third party in the room. Melissy was leaning out of the window. She called down to a man standing on the street.
"Jack, come up here quick. I want you."
Boone took a step forward. "You here, 'Lissie Lee?"
She laughed scornfully.