"You're right, seh. In this country of heavy underbrush a man's gun is
liable to go off and hit somebody any time if he ain't careful. You're
in big luck you didn't shoot yourself up a heap worse."

Yeager led the way to his cabin, and offered Phyllis the single chair he
boasted, and the nester a seat on the bed. Sitting beside him, he
examined the wound and washed it.

"Comes to being an invalid I'm a false alarm," Keller said
apologetically. "I didn't want to come, but Miss Sanderson would bring
me."

"She was dead right, too. Time you had ridden twenty miles through the
hot sun with that wound you would have been in a raging fever."

"One way and another I'm quite in her debt."

"That's so," agreed Yeager, intent on his work.

She refused to meet the nester's smile. "Fiddlesticks! You talk mighty
foolish, Jim. I wouldn't go away and leave a wounded dog if I could help
it."

"Suppose the dog were a sheep-killer?" Keller asked with his engaging,
impudent smile.

A dust cloud rose from her skirt under a stroke of the restless quirt.
"I'd do my best for it and let it settle with the law afterward."

"Even if it were a wolf caught in a trap?"

"I should put it out of its pain. No matter how much I detested it, I
wouldn't leave it there to suffer."

"I'm quite sure you wouldn't," the wounded man agreed.

Yeager looked from one to the other, not quite catching the drift of the
underlying meaning. Another thing puzzled him, too. But, like most men
of the unfenced Southwest, Yeager had a large capacity for silence. Now
he attended strictly to his business, without mentioning what he had
noticed.

The wound dressed, Phyllis rose to leave. "You'll be down for your mail
to-morrow, Jim," she suggested, as she sauntered toward the door.

"Sure. I'll let you know how our patient is getting along."

"Oh, he's yours. I don't want any of the credit," she returned
carelessly.

Then, the words scarce off her lips, she gave a little cry of alarm, and
stepped quickly back into the room. What she had seen had sapped the
color from her face. Yeager started forward, but she waved him back.

"It's Phil and Brill Healy. You've got to hide us, Jim," she told him
tensely.

The nester began to grin. He always did when he faced a difficulty
apparently insurmountable. Also his fingers slid toward the butt of his
revolver.

CHAPTER IV

"I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?"

Jim swept the cabin with a gesture. "Where