Square Deal Sanderson Part 20

And now he turned from the girl and spoke to Dale:

"You go right back to Okar an' tell Maison an' Silverthorn what has happened here tonight. Show them how the fear of G.o.d has got into your heart an' made you yearn to practice the principles of a square deal.

Tell them that they'd better get to goin' straight, too, for if they don't there's a guy which was named after a square deal that is goin'

to snuff them off this hemisphere middlin' rapid. That's all. You'd better hit the breeze right back to Okar an' spread the good news."

He stood, a grim smile on his face, watching Dale as the latter walked to the door. When Dale stepped out on the porch Sanderson followed him, still regarding the movements of the other coldly and alertly.

Mary heard them--their steps on the boards of the porch; she heard the saddle leather creak as Dale climbed on his horse; she heard the sound of the hoofbeats as the horse clattered out of the ranchhouse yard.

And then for several minutes she stood near the little table in the room, listening vainly for some sound that would tell her of the presence of Sanderson on the porch. None came.

At last, when she began to feel certain that he had gone to the bunkhouse, she heard a step on the porch and saw Sanderson standing in the doorway.

He grinned at her, meeting her gaze fairly.

"Dale told you a heap of truth, ma'am," he said. "I feel more like a man tonight than I've felt for a good many days--an' nights."

"Then it was true--as Dale said--that you are not my brother?" said the girl. She was trying to make her voice sound severe, but only succeeded in making it quaver.

"I ain't your brother."

"And you came here to try to take the ranch away from me--to steal it?"

He flushed. "You've got four thousand of my money there, ma'am.

You're to keep it. Mebbe that will help to show what my intentions were. About the rest--your brother an' all--I'll have to tell you.

It's a thing you ought to know, an' I don't know what's been keepin' me from tellin' you all along.

"Mebbe it was because I was scared you'd take it hard. But since these sneaks have got to waggin' their tongues it'll have to be told. If you sit down by the table there, I'll tell you why I done what I did."

She took a chair beside the table and faced him, and, standing before her, speaking very gently, but frankly, he related what had occurred to him in the desert. She took it calmly, though there were times when her eyes glowed with a light that told of deep emotion. But she soon became resigned to the death of her brother and was able to listen to Sanderson's story of his motive in deceiving her.

When he related his emotion during their first meeting--when he had told Dale that he was her brother, after yielding to the appeal in her eyes--she smiled.

"There was some excuse for it, after all," she declared.

"An' you ain't blamin' me--so much?" he asked.

"No," she said. She blushed as she thought of the times she had kissed him. He was thinking of her kisses, too, and as their eyes met, each knew what the other was thinking about. Sanderson smiled at her and her eyes dropped.

"It wasn't a square deal for me to take them, then, ma'am," he told her. "But I'm goin' to stay around here an' fight Dale an' his friends to a finish. That is, if you want me to stay. I'd like a straight answer. I ain't hangin' around where I ain't wanted."

Her eyes glowed as she looked at him.

"You'll have to stay, now," she said. "Will is dead, and you will have to stay here and brazen it out. They'd take the Double A from me surely, if you were to desert me. You will have to stay and insist that you are my brother!"

"That's a contract," he agreed. "But"--he looked at her, a flush on his face--"goin' back to them kisses. It wasn't a square deal. But I'm hopin' that a day will come----"

She got up, her face very red. "It is nearly morning," she interrupted.

"Yes," he smiled; "things are only beginnin'."

"You are impudent--and imprudent," she said, looking straight at him.

"An' hopeful," he answered, meeting her eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, stretched out on his bed, Sanderson saw the dawn breaking in the east. It reminded him of the morning he had seen the two riders above him on the edge of the arroyo. As on that other morning, he lay and watched the coming of the dawn. And when later he heard Mary moving about in the kitchen he got up, not having slept a wink, and went out to her.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked.

"How could I," he asked, "with a new day dawnin' for me?"

CHAPTER XVI

THE HAND OF THE ENEMY

When in the bunkhouse the next morning Sanderson informed Barney Owen of what had occurred during the night, the latter looked fixedly at Sanderson.

"So she didn't take it hard," he said.

"Was you expectin' her to? For a brother that she hadn't seen in a dozen years--an' which she knows in her secret heart wasn't any good?"

retorted Sanderson. "Shootin' your face off in Okar--or anywhere else--don't go any more," added Sanderson. "She's pretendin', publicly, that I'm her brother."

"I'm through talking," declared Owen.

"Or livin'. It's one or the other," warned Sanderson.

Sanderson took the seven thousand dollars that Mary gave him, rode to Lazette--a town fifty miles eastward from the basin---and deposited the money in a bank there. Then he rode eastward still farther and in another town discovered a young engineer with a grievance against his employers.

The result of this discovery was that on the following morning the young engineer and Sanderson journeyed westward to the basin, arriving at the Double A late in the afternoon of the next day.

On the edge of the plateau after the engineer and, Sanderson had spent three or four days prowling through the basin and the gorge, the engineer spoke convincingly:

"It's the easiest thing in the world! A big flume to the point I showed you, a big main ditch and several laterals will do the trick.

I'm with you to the finis.h.!.+"

Sanderson smiled at the engineer's glowing enthusiasm and told him of the opposition he would meet in developing the project.

"There'll be a heap of schemin', an' mebbe shootin', Williams,"

Sanderson told him. "Puttin' through this deal won't be any p.u.s.s.y-kitten affair."

"So much the better," laughed the engineer; "I'm fed up on soft snaps and longing for action."

The engineer was thirty; big, square-shouldered, lithe, and capable.

He had a strong face and a level, steady eye.