Yet for all his debonair ease the man had an air of quiet competence.
His strong, bronzed face and neck, the set of his shoulders, the light
poise of him in the saddle, the steady confidence of the gray eyes, all
told her as much. She was aware of a curiosity about what was hidden
behind that stone-wall face of his.
“You didn't finish telling me about that enemy in Texas,” she suggested
suddenly.
“Oh, there ain't much to tell. He broke out from the pen, where I had
put him when I was a kid. He was a desperado wanted by the authorities,
so I arrested him again.”
“Sounds easy.”
“He made some trouble, shot up two or three men first.” Fraser lifted
his hand absently.
“Is that scar on your hand where he shot you?” Arlie asked.
He looked up in quick surprise. “Now, how did you know that?”
“You were talking of the trouble he made and you looked at your hand,”
she explained. “Where is he now? In the penitentiary?”
“No. He broke away before I got him there.”
She had another flash of inspiration. “And you came to Wyoming to get
him again.”
“Good gracious, ma'am, but you're ce'tainly a wizard! That's why I came,
though it's a secret.”
“What is he wanted for?”
“Robbing a train, three murders and a few other things.”
As she swung from her pony in front of the old-fashioned Southern log
house, Artie laughed at him over her shoulder.
“You're a fine officer! Tell all you know to the first girl you meet!”
“Well, you see, the girl happened to be--you!”
After the manner of the old-fashioned Southern house a wide “gallery”
bisected it from porch to rear. Saddles hung from pegs in the gallery.
Horse blankets and bridles, spurs and saddlebags, lay here and there in
disarray. A disjointed rifle which some one had started to clean was on
the porch. Swiftly Arlie stripped saddle, bridle, and blanket from her
pony and flung them down as a contribution to the general disorder, and
at her suggestion Fraser did the same. A half-grown lad came running to
herd the horses into a corral close at hand.
“I want you when you've finished feeding, Bobbie,” Arlie told the lad.
Then briefly to her guest: “This way, please.”
She led him into a large, cheerful living room, into which, through big
casement windows, the light streamed. It was a pleasant room, despite
its barbaric touch. There was a grizzly bear skin before the great
open, stone fireplace, and Navajo rugs covered the floor and hung on
the walls. The skin of a silver-tip bear was stretched beneath a
writing desk, a trophy of Arlie's rifle, which hung in a rack above.
Civilization had furnished its quota to the room in a piano, some books,
and a few photographs.
The Texan observed that order reigned here, even though it did not
interfere with the large effect of comfort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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