ded insolently.

There are men who have to look at each other only once to know that
there is born between them a perpetual hostility. Each of these men had
felt it at the first shock of meeting eyes. They would feel it again as
often as they looked at each other.

"No," the nester answered.

"Why not?"

"I didn't care to. You may carry your own messages."

"When I do I'll carry them with a gun."

"Interesting if true." Keller's gaze passed derisively over him and
dismissed the man.

"And I hope when I come I'll meet Mr. Keller first."

The nester's attention was focused indolently upon the hills. He seemed
to have forgotten that the cattleman was in Arizona.

Healy ripped out a sudden oath, drove the spurs in, and went down the
trail with his broncho on the buck.

Keller looked at Yeager and laughed, but that young man met him with a
frosty eye.

"I've got some questions to ask you, Mr. Keller," he said.

"Unload 'em."

Yeager led the way inside, offered his guest the chair, and sat down on
the bed with his arms on the table which had been drawn close to it.

"In the first place, I'll announce myself. I don't hold with rustlers or
waddies. I'm a white man. That being understood, I want to know where
we're at."

"Meaning?"

"Miss Phyllis unloads a story on me about you shooting yourself up
accidental. Soon as I looked at you that looked fishy to me. You ain't
that kind of a durn fool. Would you mind handing me a dipper of water?
Thanks." Yeager tossed the water out of the window, and the dipper back
into the pail. "I noticed you handed me that water with your right hand.
Your gun is on your right side. Then how in Mexico, you being
right-handed, did you manage to shoot yourself _in the right arm below
the elbow?_"

Keller laughed dryly, and offered no information. "Quite a Sherlock
Holmes, ain't you?"

"Hell, no! I got eyes in my head, though. Moreover, that bullet went in
at right angles to your arm. How did you make out to do that?"

"Sleight of hand," suggested the other.

"No powder marks, either. And, lastly, it was, a rifle did it, not a
revolver."

"Anything more?"

"Some. That side talk between you and Miss Phyllis wasn't over and above
clear to me then. I _savez_ it now. She hates you like p'ison, but
she's too tender-hearted to give you up. Ain't that it?"

"That's it."

"She lied for you to me. She lied again to Phil. So did I. Oh, we didn't
lie in words, but it's the same th