“I think it ought to run now,” she said.
He tramped forward through the dust and peered at the thermometer. The crimson line had shrunk somewhat, although it still hovered near the danger-line.
“A few more minutes, anyway,” he told her.
Dust churned from under the wheels of the green coupé. Its engine was functioning’ wonderfully again.
Mulvaney had never seen ten such miles. That’s what a native of Lastwater had said it was. Lastwater was on the highway. Wereville was in the foothills of the mountains looming bluely ahead. In between were ten scorching miles. The road they were on—if it could be called a road—led to Wereville and a few isolated ranches in the mountain valleys.
They passed a cowboy cantering along on a paint pony—a thin, gray-faced man with the clean look of the open about him. A ten-gallon hat shaded his lean face. He reined to one side, waved as they passed. Then he inclined forward in his saddle, cut short the salutation and sat rigidly, staring. Mulvaney observed the dancing image in his rear-vision mirror and clucked.
“Almost friendly for a minute, wasn’t he?”
Already the cowboy was hidden in the dust that swirled behind them. The girl did not turn to look. She shrugged only slightly, and the expression of her eyes was singularly blank.
“You live on a ranch out this way?”
She shook her head.
If she didn’t live on a ranch, she must— He put the thought into words.
“Then you must live in Wereville.”
She turned her head quickly and stared full in his face. A faint expression of scorn curled her red lips, and her eyes were flashingly cold.
“Suppose I do? So what?”
The tone of her voice was sharp, combative. He recoiled from the fierce glow of her expression. A sterner man would have been tongue-tied. Mulvaney was completely stopped.
In spite of her sudden, wolfish ferocity, he felt that her attitude was not meant for him. Somehow, he realized vaguely that she directed it at the cowboy they had left sitting his paint pony by the roadside.
The question Mulvaney had been about to ask her was stilled on his tongue. Chance was, she couldn’t help anyway. Better to wait until he got to Wereville and make his inquiries there. Then he thought of the grim figure the cowboy had made after his initial gesture of friendliness. Something very like a chill prickled along his spine.
It was an eerie feeling he had that all was not well with the town of Wereville. He recalled vaguely things he had read about range wars. Could he be getting into something like that here? If so, the girl and the cowboy evidently belonged to opposing factions. That would explain this slight incident—or would it? He shrugged dismally and scanned the road ahead.
They were skirting the shoulder of a tan hill. In front of them the dusty green foliage of a clump of cottonwoods glimmered in the sun. A small herd of cattle browsed on the grass that grew sparsely. A creek tumbled out of a ravine here, spanned by a wooden bridge. The girl laid her hand on his arm. The touch electrified him.
“Stop here,”’ she commanded.
He eased in the clutch and let the green coupé roll to a halt at the approach of the bridge.
The road continued straight ahead, angling across the desert.
“Wereville is that way,” the girl said, pointing across the bridge, toward the ravine. “I'll walk in from here. You better go back to Lastwater—or stop at one
