: "Is it
Harrison, Steve?"

Amazement sparkled for a moment in his eyes. "With your imagination,
Daisy,--" he was beginning when she cut him short.

"You gotta tell me what's on your chest, you transparent kid."

He knew she could keep a secret like a well. Looking round guardedly,
his voice fell to a whisper. "If I'd reached town ten minutes earlier
I'd 'a' beat him in and showed him up. Threewit won't hear to it, of
course, but the man that held me up was Chad Harrison. Take it or leave
it. Just the same it's a fact."

Daisy nodded rapidly several times. "I take it, Steve. Always did know
there was something shady about the big stiff. And I'll tell you
something else you don't know. It's through that wild young colt brother
of hers that he's got a strangle hold on Ruth."

Yeager set his lips to a noiseless whistle. "You mean--?"

She flung his question aside with an impatient wave of her hand. "I
can't tell you what I mean. I've got no evidence. But it's true. She's
ridiculously fond of that young scamp Phil. Somehow--in some
way--Harrison has got the whip hand over him."

His eyes fell on the slender girl waiting on the table at the other end
of the room. Her look met his. It almost seemed as if she knew they had
been talking about her, for the milky cheek took on a shell-pink tinge.
The long lashes fluttered down and she busied herself at once about her
work.

"If she was my sister--"

Daisy did not need a completed sentence to understand his meaning. "Can
you beat it?" she asked with a shrug. "Any gink that knows enough to
come in out of the rain could tell that Chad Harrison is a bad egg. Give
him the once over and you can see that."

After Ruth had arranged the tables for dinner she stole out to the porch
for a breath of fresh air. Already the approach of an Arizona summer was
beginning to make itself felt during the middle of the day. Yeager sat
beneath the wild cucumber vines pleating a horsehair hatband for Daisy
Ellington.

Ruth liked this brown, lithe cowpuncher, all sinew and bone and muscle.
His smile was so warm and friendly, his manner so boyish and yet so
competent. To look into his kind, steady eyes was to know that he could
be trusted.

She moved in his direction shyly, a touch of pink blooming in her soft
cheeks. Ruth was charmingly unsure of herself. It was always easy to
disturb her composure. Even a casual encounter with the slim,
brown-faced range-rider was an adventure for her. N