LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 3.

       The Sheriff Introduces Himself

       Table of Contents

      Bear-trap Collins, presuming on the new intimacy born of an exciting experience shared in common, stepped across the aisle, flung aside Miss Wainwright's impedimenta, and calmly seated himself beside her. She was a young woman capable of a hauteur chillier than ice to undue familiarity, but she did not choose at this moment to resent his assumption of a footing that had not existed an hour ago. Picturesque and unconventional conduct excuses itself when it is garbed in picturesque and engaging manners. She had, besides, other reasons for wanting to meet him, and they had to do with a sudden suspicion that flamed like tow in her brain. She had something for which to thank him—much more than he would be likely to guess, she thought—and she was wondering, with a surge of triumph, whether the irony of fate had not made his pretended consideration for her the means of his undoing.

      “I am sorry you lost so much, Miss Wainwright,” he told her.

      “But, after all, I did not lose so much as you. Her dark, deep-pupiled eyes, long-lashed as Diana's, swept round to meet his coolly.

      “That's a true word. My reputation has gone glimmering for fair, I guess.” He laughed ruefully. “I shouldn't wonder, ma'am, when election time comes round, if the boys ain't likely to elect to private life the sheriff that lay down before a bunch of miscreants.”

      “Why did you do it?”

      His humorous glance roamed round the car. “Now, I couldn't think it proper for me to shoot up this sumptuous palace on wheels. And wouldn't some casual passenger be likely to get his lights put out when the band began to play? Would you want that Boston church to be shy a preacher, ma'am?”

      Her lips parted slightly in a curve of scorn. “I suppose you had your reasons for not interfering.”

      “Surely, ma'am. I hated to have them make a sieve of me.”

      “Were you afraid?”

      “Most men are when Wolf Leroy's gang is on the war path.”

      “Wolf Leroy?”

      “That was Wolf who came in to see they were doing the job right. He's the worst desperado on the border—a sure enough bad proposition, I reckon. They say he's part Spanish and part Indian, but all pisen. Others say he's a college man of good family. I don't know about that, for nobody knows who he really is. But the name is a byword in the country. People lower their voices when they speak of him and his night-riders.”

      “I see. And you were afraid of him?”

      “Very much.”

      Her narrowed eyes looked over the strong lines of his lean face and were unconvinced. “I expect you found a better reason than that for not opposing them.”

      He turned to her with frank curiosity. “I'd like real well to have you put a name to it.”

      But he was instantly aware that her interest had been side tracked. Major Mackenzie had entered the car and was coming down the aisle. Plainer than words his eyes asked a question, and hers answered it.

      The sheriff stopped him with a smiling query: “Hit hard, major?”

      Mackenzie frowned. “The scoundrels took thirty thousand from the express car, I understand. Twenty thousand of it belonged to our company. I was expecting to pay off the men next Tuesday.”

      “Hope we'll be able to run them down for you,” returned Collins cheerfully. “I suppose you lay it to Wolf Leroy's gang?”

      “Of course. The work was too well done to leave any doubt of that.” The major resumed his seat behind Miss Wainwright.

      To that young woman the sheriff repeated his unanswered question in the form of a statement. “I'm waiting to learn that better reason, ma'am.”

      She was possessed of that spice of effrontery more to be desired than beauty. “Shall we say that you had no wish to injure your friends?”

      “My friends?”

      Her untender eyes mocked his astonishment. “Do I choose the wrong word?” she asked, with an audacity of a courage that delighted him. “Perhaps they are not your friends—these train robbers? Perhaps they are mere casual acquaintances?”

      His bold eyes studied with a new interest her superb, confident youth—the rolling waves of splendid Titian hair, the lovely, subtle eyes with the depths of shadowy pools in them, the alluring lines of long and supple loveliness. Certainly here was no sweet, ingenuous youth all prone to blushes, but the complex heir of that world-old wisdom the weaker sex has shaped to serve as a weapon against the strength that must be met with the wit of Mother Eve.

      “You ce'tainly have a right vivid imagination, ma'am,” he said dryly.

      “You are quite sure you have never seen them before?” her velvet voice asked.

      He laughed. “Well, no—I can't say I am.”

      “Aren't you quite sure you have seen them?”

      Her eyes rested on him very steadily.

      “You're smart as a whip, Miss Wainwright. I take off my hat to a young lady so clever. I guess you're right. About the identity of one of those masked gentlemen I'm pretty well satisfied.”

      She drew a long breath. “I thought so.”

      “Yes,” he went on evenly, “I once earmarked him so that I'd know him again in case we met.”

      “I beg pardon. You—what?”

      “Earmarked him. Figure of speech, ma'am. You may not have observed that the curly-headed person behind the guns was shy the forefinger of his right hand. We had a little difficulty once when he was resisting arrest, and it just happened that my gun fanned away his trigger finger.” He added reminiscently:

      “A good boy, too, Neil was once. We used to punch together on the Hashknife. A straight-up rider, the kind a fellow wants when Old Man Trouble comes knocking at the door. Well, I reckon he's a miscreant now, all right.”

      “They knew YOU—at least two of them did.”

      “I've been pirootin' around this country, boy and man, for fifteen years. I ain't responsible for every yellow dog that knows me,” he drawled.

      “And I noticed that when you told them not to rob the children and not to touch me they did as you said.”

      “Hypnotism,” he suggested, with a smile.

      “So, not being a child, I put two and two together and draw an inference.”

      He seemed to be struggling with his mirth. “I see you do. Well, ma'am, I've been most everything since I hit the West, but this is the first time I've been taken for a train robber.”

      “I didn't say that,” she cried quickly.

      “I think you mentioned an inference.” The low laugh welled out of him and broke in his face. “I've been busy on one, too. It's a heap nearer the truth than yours, Miss Mackenzie.”

      Her startled eyes and the swift movement of her hand toward her heart showed him how nearly he had struck home, how certainly he had shattered her cool indifference of manner.

      He leaned forward, so close that even in the roar of the train his low whisper reached her. “Shall I tell

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