e that you're trying to throw
the blame on a boy I've known all my life."

"Who happens to be a brother of Miss Sanderson," Keller let himself
suggest.

Yeager flushed. "That ain't the point."

"The point is that I'm trying to clear this boy, and I want your help."

"Looks to me like you want to clear yourself."

"If I prove to you that I'm not a rustler, will you padlock your tongue
and help me clear young Sanderson?"

"I sure will--if you prove it to my satisfaction."

Keller drew from his pocket the two letters he had just received. "Read
these."

When he had read, Yeager handed them back, and offered his hand. "That
clears you, seh. Truth is, I never was satisfied you was a rustler. My
mind was satisfied; but, durn it, you didn't _look_ like a waddy. It's
lucky I hadn't spoke to the boys yet."

"I want to keep this quiet," the Bear Creek settler explained.

"Sure. I'm a clam, and at your service, seh."

"Then find out the truth about the knife."

Yeager's eye chiselled into that of Keller. "Mind, I ain't going to help
you bring trouble to Phyllie, and I ain't going to stand by and see it,
either."

The other smiled. "I don't ask it of you. What I want is to clear the
boy."

"Good enough," agreed Yeager, and led the way back.

Before they had yet reached the house, a figure dropped from the foliage
of the live oak under which they had been standing, and rolled like a
ball from the fence into the deep dust of the corral. It picked itself
up in a gray cloud, from which shone as a nucleus a black face with
beady eyes and flashing-white teeth. Swiftly it scampered across the
paddock, disappeared into the rear of the stable, and reappeared at the
front door.

"Here you, 'Rastus, where you been?" demanded the wrangler. "Didn't I
tell you to clean Miss Phyl's trap? I've wore my lungs out hollering for
you. Now, you git to work, or I'll wear you to a frazzle."

'Rastus, general alias for his baptismal name of George Washington
Abraham Lincoln Randolph, grinned and ducked, shot out of the stable
like a streak of light, and appeared ten seconds later in the kitchen
presided over by his rotund mother, Becky.

His abrupt entrance disturbed the maternal after-dinner nap. From the
rocking-chair where she sat Becky rolled affronted eyes at him.

"What you doin' here, Gawge Washington? Ain't I done tole you sebenty
times seben to keep outa my kitchen at dis time o' day?"

"I wanter see Miss Phyl."

"Then