A Texas Ranger Part 14

There were other women on the street now, most of them Mexicans, so that Margaret attracted little attention. She moved up opposite the house that had become the scene of action, expecting every moment to hear the shots that would determine the fate of the victims.

But no shots came. Lights flashed from room to room, and presently one light began to fill a room so brilliantly that she knew a lamp must have been overturned and set the house on fire. Dunke burst from the front door, scarce a dozen paces from her. There was a kind of lurid fury in his eyes. He was as ravenously fierce as a wolf balked of its kill. She chose that moment to call him.

"Mr. Dunke!"

Her voice struck him into a sort of listening alertness, and again she p.r.o.nounced his name.

"You, Miss Kinney--here?" he asked in amazement.

"Yes--Miss Kinney."

"But--What are you doing here? I thought you were at Fort Lincoln."

"I was, but I'm here now."

"Why? This is no place for you to-night. h.e.l.l's broke loose."

"So it seems," she answered, with s.h.i.+ning eyes.

"There's trouble afoot, Miss Margaret. No girl should be out, let alone an unprotected one."

"I did not come here unprotected. There was a man with me. The one, Mr.

Dunke, that you are now looking for to murder!"

She gave it to him straight from the shoulder, her eyes holding his steadily.

"Struve?" he gasped, taken completely aback.

"No, not Struve. The man who stood beside Lieutenant Fraser, the one you threatened to kill because he backed the law."

"I guess you don't know all the facts, Miss Kinney." He came close and met her gaze while he spoke in a low voice. "There ain't many know what I know. Mebbe there ain't any beside you now. But I know you're Jim Kinney's sister."

"You are welcome to the knowledge. It is no secret. Lieutenant Fraser knows it. So does his friend. I'm not trying to hide it. What of it?"

Her quiet scorn drew the blood to his face.

"That's all right. If you do want to keep it quiet I'm with you. But there's something more. Your brother escaped from Yuma with this fellow Struve. Word came over the wire an hour or two ago that Struve had been captured and that it was certain he had killed his pal, your brother.

That's why I mean to see him hanged before mo'ning."

"He did kill my brother. He told me so himself." Her voice carried a sob for an instant, but she went on resolutely. "What has that to do with it? Isn't there any law in Texas? Hasn't he been captured? And isn't he being taken back to his punishment?"

"He told you so himself!" the man echoed. "When did he tell you? When did you see him?"

"I was alone with him for twelve hours in the desert."

"Alone with you?" His puzzled face showed how he was trying to take this in, "I don't understand. How could he be alone with you?"

"I thought he was my brother and I was helping him to escape from Fort Lincoln."

"Helping him to escape! Helping Wolf Struve to escape! Well, I'm darned if that don't beat my time. How come you to think him your brother?" the man asked suspiciously.

"It doesn't matter how or why. I thought so. That's enough."

"And you were alone with him--why, you must have been alone with him all night," cried Dunke, coming to a fresh discovery.

"I was," she admitted very quietly.

A new suspicion edged itself into his mind. "What did you talk about?

Did he say anything about--Did he--He always was a terrible liar. n.o.body ever believed Wolf Struve."

Without understanding the reason for it, she could see that he was uneasy, that he was trying to discount the value of anything the convict might have told her. Yet what could Struve the convict, No. 9,432, have to do with the millionaire mine-owner, Thomas J. Dunke? What could there be in common between them? Why should the latter fear what the other had to tell? The thing was preposterous on the face of it, but the girl knew by some woman's instinct that she was on the edge of a secret Dunke held hidden deep in his heart from all the world. Only this much she guessed; that Struve was a sharer of his secret, and therefore he was set on lynching the man before he had time to tell it.

"They got away, didn't they?" she asked.

"They got away--for the present," he answered grimly. "But we're still hunting them."

"Can't you let the law take its course, Mr. Danke? Is it necessary to do this terrible thing?"

"Don't you worry any about it, Miss Kinney. This ain't a woman's job.

I'll attend to it."

"But my friends," she reminded him.

"We ain't intending to hurt them any. Come, I'll see you home. You staying at the hotel?"

"I don't know. I haven't made any arrangements yet."

"Well, we'll go make them now."

But she did not move. "I'm not going in till I know how this comes out."

He was a man used to having his own brutal way, one strong by nature, with strength increased by the money upon which he rode rough-shod to success.

He laughed as he caught hold of the rein. "That's ridiculous!"

"But my business, I think," the girl answered sharply, jerking the bridle from his fingers.

Dunke stared at her. It was his night of surprises. He failed to recognize the conventional teacher he knew in this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman who fronted him so sure of herself. She seemed to him to swim brilliantly in a tide of flushed beauty, in spite of the dust and the stains of travel. She was in a shapeless khaki riding-suit and a plain, gray, broad-brimmed Stetson. But the one could not hide the flexible curves that made so frankly for grace, nor the other the coppery tendrils that escaped in fascinating disorder from under its brim.

"You hadn't ought to be out here. It ain't right."

"I don't remember asking you to act as a standard of right and wrong for me."

He laughed awkwardly. "We ain't quarreling, are we, Miss Margaret?"

"Certainly I am not. I don't quarrel with anybody but my friends."

"Well, I didn't aim to offend you anyway. You know me better than that."

He let his voice fall into a caressing modulation and put a propitiatory hand on her skirt, but under the uncompromising hardness of her gaze the hand fell away to his side. "I'm your friend--leastways I want to be."