'You wouldn't dare shoot,' he blustered.
Dale did not answer that challenge in words. She let the hard cold glitter in her eyes deny it.
Black caught the arm of the infuriated man and tried to pull him back. 'Let's get outa here, Jim,' he begged. 'You're drunk.'
'Lemme go!' Frawley cried. 'I'm gonna show this wench she can't run over me.'
He tore away from Black's tight grip, and in doing so threw himself back toward the car. Dale had lowered the gun, thinking the danger of attack past, but as his huge body plunged forward, due to his effort to free himself, her finger tightened on the trigger. The gun was discharged. Frawley fell back a step or two, amazement stamped on his bloated face. A hand caught at his thigh.
'My God, the little devil has shot me!' he cried.
A car had rumbled over the bridge and stopped. From it a man descended and ran toward the group. He was Tom Wall. He pushed past the men to join Miss Lovell.
'I've shot him!' Dale cried, white to the lips. 'I thought—' She stopped, appalled at what she had done.
'Think nothing of it,' Tom told her coolly. 'He asked for it, didn't he?' Already his quick eyes had read the situation. The car stopped in the middle of the road, the glimpse of the actual shooting he had seen, told him the story. Frawley had been charging toward her when she fired. That would be enough for any court, if the affair ever came to a trial.
Like many men who have never been ill, the big ruffian was very much frightened.
'I'm bleeding to death!' he cried. 'Get me to a doctor.'
'Let's take a look at your wound,' Wall said, and to the girl added a word, 'Wait here, Miss Lovell.'
The two men supported Frawley to the car he had been driving. They put him in the back seat and examined the wound, which looked to Tom not a serious one.
'Just ripped a slice of flesh off,' he said. 'Hold a handkerchief over it and get to town. A doc will fix you up in two shakes of a cow's tail.'
'We don't want to compromise Miss Lovell,' Black suggested. 'Better give it out that Jim shot himself by accident.'
Tom looked at the thin-lipped mouth in the foxlike face of the old man. 'You're mighty particular to shield Miss Lovell, aren't you, Tick?' he said, with dry irony.
'We wouldn't want a story to get out that she is going around shooting folks she don't like.'
'That is not quite the story people would tell,' Tom answered. 'I saw the shooting. If Frawley had been killed, nobody except himself would have been to blame. But I'll see how Miss Lovell feels.'
He rejoined Dale.
'Is it very bad?' she asked anxiously.
'Just a scratch, though he is making an awful fuss about it. Black suggests we give out a story that he shot himself. How about that? It might save some talk, though, of course, nobody would blame you.'
'If they want to tell that story, we need not deny it,' Dale replied. 'I'm so glad it isn't bad. I don't know how I came to do it. It sort of — happened — when he was jumping at me.'
'Don't ever make any apologies, Miss Lovell. He got what was coming to him. Just stand pat and say nothing. Let them think you knew what you were doing.'
'You mean — that I shot him on purpose?'
'Yes. When you covered him with the gun, you meant to shoot if he kept coming. Maybe you got a little goosey and shot when it wasn't necessary. We don't have to admit you got excited. So far we've had the breaks and come out on top in every tussle. That throws a jolt into them. Let 'em think we're too cold-blooded and smart for their game.'
'Tell them whatever you like. You are sure the wound isn't serious?'
'He'll be all right in a week.' Tom sauntered back to the enemy. He reported that Miss Lovell felt this ought to be taken to the sheriff, but, in view of the fact that Frawley had already been punished enough, she had decided to let it go pending good behavior on his part.
Frawley cut in, his voice angry and frightened. 'Don't stand jawing here, Tick. Get me to Doc Hinman, damn it.'
Black turned his car and headed for town.
Dale explained that she had been going to Big Bridge because she had heard from Helen that Fenwick was there making trouble. She did not like to do much telephoning because of listeners.
'All quiet on the Soledad,' Tom assured her. 'Brick did have an idea, but it fizzled out. Right now he is enjoying a little well-earned rest as the guest of Sheriff Elbert.'
'You mean he is in jail!' she said.
'Correct.' Wall gave her an account of the adventures of the previous night, and of the meeting at the restaurant an hour or two ago. 'Hal was on his way to Casa Rita when I last saw him,' he concluded.
There did not seem to be any point in continuing the trip to town, Dale thought, since she now had all the information she wanted. Wall drove behind her back to the Seven Up and Down. From there he got in touch with the M K ranch. Since everything was going well there, he decided to accept Dale's invitation to stay at the bunkhouse with her men for a few days. There might be repercussions from the Frawley shooting, and it would be just as well to be on hand.
Later in the day he telephoned Doctor Hinman and asked him as to Frawley's condition. 'I hear he shot himself,' Tom mentioned. 'Anything serious?'
Doctor Hinman thought not. The wound was a flesh one. Fortunately, no arteries had been in the path of the bullet.
It was always surprising to him, though by this time he ought to know better than to be astonished, how many men used to weapons accidentally shot themselves. Some day they would give up this fool custom of monkeying with pistols, the doctor fumed.
CHAPTER 24
Arnold Gets a Lesson on Brand-Burning
WHAT RANDOLPH ARNOLD had to tell Hal was nothing more definite than a suspicion. He had been at Phoenix trying to dig up some evidence and had fallen into talk with an oldtime cattleman named Jackson Selkirk in the lobby of the Adams Hotel. Arnold had been interested in his salty reminiscences and they had eaten dinner together. In his tales of the old days, Selkirk had naturally some stories to tell about rustling. Answering a question of the Easterner, he had sketched on the back of an old envelope examples of well-known brands that had been doctored to make quite different ones.
For instance, Goodnight's J A had become, by the touch of a running iron, D A. The addition of two strokes and a letter transformed the 3 C to B 0 B. Selkirk's own brand, the S Bar, which on the flank of a cow was S, had been changed to the Box S, burned into the hide 
'There's still a good deal of cattle-stealing, I'm told,' Arnold had ventured. 'Or is this exaggerated?'
'I dunno. I quit running cattle years ago. Now that the stock is under fence, the rustling is different. They do it with trucks. Cut the wires, load up the stuff, and run it fast clear out of the district.'
'They don't have to change the brands then now?'
'I wouldn't know about that. If they were going to beef the critters right away, they might not, but if they were going to feed the stuff, they probably would.' Selkirk cut himself a chew of tobacco and put it in his mouth. 'Funny thing. I was thinking about that the other day when I was down at Casa Rita. I moseyed round to the Gibson Packing Company, and I saw in the pens some good-looking steers branded 
. The mind of an old codger like me always runs back to the old days, so I got to figurin' that a thief could have made that Circle X by touching up the brand of the Seven Up and Down which looks just like a capital Z. 'Course I don't mean that was done. I was just letting my mind play tricks.'
Arnold repeated this conversation to Hal Stevens. 'So I ran over here to see what I could find out. There are no cattle in the pens now with that brand on them. But there is a big warehouse where they keep the hides before they send them to the tannery. Looking at those hides wouldn't tell me anything, but it might give you information I couldn't see.'