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Updated: June 20, 2025
The suburbs of the town fell to the rear, and left them in the fall and rise of the foothills that merged to the left in the wide, flat, shimmering plain of the Malpais, and on the other side in the saw-toothed range that notched the horizon from north to south. Somewhere in that waste of cow-backed hills, in that swell of endless land waves, the trail of the robbers vanished.
There were no passes nor cañons here the streams dropped over in waterfalls and precarious game trails offered the only chance for descent. The First Bench was a mere ledge, a mile or so wide. From it one looked down into the deep gorge of the Southern Guaso Nyero, and across to a tangle of eroded mountains and malpais that filled the eye.
Mile after mile we thundered along at a brisk rate of speed. Sometimes we dodged in and out among the mesquite bushes, alternately separating and coming together again; sometimes we swept over grassy plains apparently of illimitable extent, sometimes we skipped and hopped and buck-jumped through and over little gullies, barrancas, and other sorts of malpais but always without drawing rein.
"You'll sit down with us and have some tea, Jim," she told him. "Me? I'm no society Willie. Don't know the game at all, Phyl. Besides, I'm carrying half of Arizona on my clothes. It's some dusty down in the Malpais." Nevertheless he sat down, and, over the biscuits and jam, told the meagre story of what he had found out.
Whenever I say "Bill said" or "I said," I imply that we shrieked, for always through that great, still country we hustled enveloped in a profanity of explosions, creaks, rattles, and hums. Just now though, on a level, we travelled at a low gear. "Petrified wood," Bill added. I swallowed guiltily the request I was about to proffer. The malpais defined itself.
It was lying beside the dead cow in the park where your friends happened on me. I reckon the rustlers must have heard me coming and drove the calf away just before I arrived. In his hurry one of them forgot that knife. If you'll tell me the man who had it in his pocket yesterday when he left-home, I'll tell you who one of the Malpais rustlers is."
"Because of Phyl Sanderson. That's why. She put it up to me, and I played her game. But I ain't sure I'm going to keep on playing it. I'm a Malpais man. My father has a ranch down there, and I've rode the range all my life. Why should I throw down my friends to save a rustler caught in the act?" "You've already tried and convicted me, I see." "The facts convict you, seh."
He's got to come through with proofs he ain't a rustler, or he's got to pull his freight out of the Malpais country." "And if he won't?" "We'll finish that little business you interrupted," he told her, riding his triumph roughshod over her feelings. "You wouldn't, Brill! Not when there is a doubt about it. Jim says he is innocent, and I believe he is. Surely you wouldn't!" "You'll see."
And I want to tell you this, too, Mr. Keller. It doesn't make any hit with me that you're one of those thieving nesters. Moreover, there's another charge against you. In the Malpais country we hang rustlers. The boys claim to have you cinched. We'll see." "Who's that with Curly?" Pesky called out. "By Moses, it's a woman!" "It is the Sanderson girl," Weaver said in surprise.
I let him have it straight, and since then we haven't been friends." "I'm glad of that. It makes plain sailing for me. He's got to be run down and caged, Phil. Healy is at the head of all this rustling that has been troubling the Malpais country. His gang stuck up the Diamond Nugget stage, killed Sheriff Fowler, and robbed the Noches Bank."
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