eputy at
the ranch as a watch, for one glance had told the sheriff that the
wounded man would not be in condition to travel for some time.

It was the following day that Yeager saddled and said good-by to
Phyllis.

"I'm going to Noches to see if I cayn't find out something. It don't
look reasonable to me that those fellows could disappear, bag and
baggage, into a hole and draw it in after them."

"What about Brill's story that he saw them at the Pass?" the girl asked.

"He may have seen four men, but he ce'tainly didn't see Larrabie Keller.
My notion is, Brill lied out of whole cloth, but of course I'm not in a
position to prove it. Point is, why did he lie at all?"

Phyllis blushed. "I think I know, Jim."

Yeager smiled. "Oh, I know that. But that ain't, to my way of thinking,
motive enough. I mean that a white man doesn't try to hang another just
because he--well, because he cut him out of his girl."

"I never was his girl," Phyllis protested.

"I know that, but Brill couldn't get it through his thick head till a
stone wall fell on him and give him a hint."

"What other motive are you thinking of, Jim?"

He hesitated. "I've just been kinder milling things around. Do you
happen to know right when you met Brill the day of the robbery?"

"Yes. I looked at my watch to see if we would be in time for supper. It
was five-thirty."

"And the robbery was at three. The fellows didn't get out of town till
close to three-thirty, I reckon," he mused aloud.

"What has that got to do with it? You don't mean that----" She stopped
with parted lips and eyes dilating.

He shook his head. "I've got no right to mean that, Phyllie. Even if I
did have a kind of notion that way I'd have to give it up. Brill's got a
steel-bound, copper-riveted alibi. He couldn't have been at Noches at
three o'clock and with you two hours later, fifty-five miles from there.
No hawss alive could do it."

"But, Jim--why, it's absurd, anyway. We've known Brill always. He
couldn't be that kind of a man. How could he?"

"I didn't say he could," returned her friend noncommittally. "But when
it comes to knowing him, what do you know about him--or about me, say? I
might be a low-lived coyote without you knowing it. I might be all kinds
of a devil. A good girl like you wouldn't know it if I set out to keep
it still."

"I could tell by looking at you," she answered promptly.

"Yes, you could," he derided good-naturedly. "How would you know it? Men