within her.

Buck patted her shoulders with awkward tenderness.

"Don't you! Don't you!" he implored.

Her collapse lasted only a short time. She dried her tears, and stilled
her sobs. "I must see my father," she said.

The old man was already hurrying forward, and as he ran he called to his
boys not to shoot. Phyl would not move a single step of the way to meet
him, lest they take advantage of her absence to keep up the firing.

"How under heaven did you get here?" Buck asked her.

"Mr. Keller came to meet me. I took his horse, and he is bringing the
buggy. I heard firing, so I cut straight across," she explained.

"You shouldn't have come. You might have been hit."

She wrung her hands in distress. "It's terrible--terrible! Why will you
do such things--you and them?" she finished, forgetting the careful
grammar that becomes a schoolmarm.

Buck might have told her--but he did not--that he had carefully avoided
hitting any of her people; that he had determined not to do so even if
he should pay for his forbearance with his life. What he did say was an
apologetic explanation, which explained nothing.

"We were settling a difference of opinion in the old Arizona way, Miss
Phyl."

"In what way? By murdering my father?" she asked sharply.

"He's covering ground right lively for a dead one," Buck said dryly.

"I'm speaking of your intentions. You can't deny you would have done
it."

"Anyhow, I haven't denied it."

Sanderson, almost breathless, reached them, caught the girl by the
shoulders, and shook her angrily.

"What do you mean by it? What are you doing here? Goddlemighty, girl!
Are you stark mad?"

"No, but I think all you people are."

"You'll march home to your room, and stay there till I come."

"No, father."'

"Yes, I say!"

"I must see you--alone."

"You can see me afterward. We'll do no talking till this business is
finished."

"Why do you talk so? It won't be finished--it can't," she moaned.

"We'll attend to this without your help, my girl."

"You don't understand." Her voice fell to the lowest murmur. "He came
here for me."

"For you-all?"

"Oh, don't you see? He brought me back here because he--cared for me." A
tide of shame flushed her cheeks. Surely no girl had ever been so
cruelly circumstanced that she must tell such things before a lover,
who had not declared himself explicitly.

"Cared for you? As a wolf does for a lamb!"

"At first, maybe--but not afterward. Don't