"No proof," admitted the other.
"Well, then." Phil chewed on it for a moment before he broke out again: "I reckon you cayn't talk away the facts, Mr. Keller. We caught you in the act--caught you good. By your own story, you're the man we came on. What's the use of you trying to lay it on me and Brill?"
"Am I trying to lay it on you?"
"Looks like. On Brill, anyhow. There's nothing doing. Folks in this neck of the woods is for him and against you. Might as well sabe that right now," the lad blurted.
"I sabe that some of them are," the other laughed, but not with quite his usual debonair gayety. For he did not at all like the way things looked.
But though Phil had undertaken to do all the nursing that needed to be done by the family, he was too much of an outdoors dweller to confine himself for long to the four walls of a room. Besides, he was often called away by the work of looking after the cattle of the ranch. Moreover, both he and his father were away a good deal arranging for the disposal of their sheep. At these times her patient hoped, and hoped in vain, that Phyllis would take her brother's place.
Came a day when Keller could stand it no longer. In Becky's absence, he made shift to dress himself, bit by bit, lying on the bed in complete exhaustion after the effort of getting into each garment. He could scarce finish what he had undertaken, but at last he was clothed and ready for the journey. Leaning on a walking stick, he dragged himself into the passage and out to the porch, where Phyllis was sitting alone.
She gave a startled cry at sight of him standing there, haggard and white, his clothes hanging on his gaunt frame much as if he had been a skeleton.
"What are you doing?" she cried, running to his aid.
After she had got him into her chair, he smiled up at her and panted weakly. He was leaning back in almost complete exhaustion.
"You wouldn't come to see me, so--I came--to see you," he gasped out, at last.
"But--you shouldn't have! You might have done yourself a great injury. It's--it's criminal of you."
"I wanted to see you," he explained simply.
"Why didn't you send for me?"
"There wasn't anybody to send. Besides, you wouldn't have stayed. You never do, now."
She looked at him, then looked away. "You don't need me now--and I have my work to do."
"But I do need you, Phyllie."