"What!" The girl had sprung to her feet, amazed, her dark eyes blazing indignation.
"Tha's what he said. He went on to tell how he done found a knife by the dead cow, an' 'twuz yore knife, an' you done loan it to Mr. Phil."
"He said that!" She was a creature transformed by passion. The hot blood of Southern ancestors raced through her veins clamorously. She wanted to strike down this man, to annihilate him and the cowardly lie he had given to shield himself. And pat to her need came the very person she could best use for her instrument.
Healy stood surprised in the doorway, confronted by the slender young amazon. The storm of passion in the eyes, the underlying flush in the dusky cheeks, indicated a new mood in his experience of this young woman of many moods.
"Come in and shut the door," she ordered. Then, "Tell him, 'Rastus."
The boy, all smiles gone now, repeated his story, and was excused.
"What do you think of that, Brill?" the girl demanded, after the door had closed on him.
The stockman's eyes had grown hard. "I think Keller's covering his own tracks. Of course we've got no direct proof, but----"
"We have," she broke in.
"I can't see it. According to Jim Yeager----"
"Jim lied. I asked him to."
"You--what?"
"I asked him to say that this man had come there to work for him. Jim was not to blame."
"But--why?"
She threw out a gesture of self-contempt. "Why did I do it? I don't know. Because he was wounded, I suppose."
"Wounded! Then I did hit him?"
"Yes. In the arm--a flesh wound. I met him riding through the mesquite. After I had tied up his wound, I took him to Jim's."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "So you tied up his wound?"
"Yes," she answered defiantly, her head up.
"That tender heart of yours," he murmured, with almost a sneer.
"Yes. I'm a fool."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well."
"And he pays me back by trying to throw it on Phil. Hunt him down, Brill. Bring him to me. I'll tell all I know against him," she cried vindictively.
"I'll get him, Phyl," he promised, and the sound of his laughter was not pleasant. "I'll get him for you, or find out why."
"Think of him trying to put it on Phil, and after I stood by him and kept his secret. Isn't that the worst ever?" the girl flamed.
"He rode away not five minutes ago as big as coffee on that ugly roan of his with the white stockings; knew what we thought about him, but didn't pay any more attention to us than as if we were bumps on a log."