Buck Weaver, fighting the government reserve policy with all his might, resented fiercely the attitude of Sanderson.  A sharp, bitter quarrel had resulted, and had left a smoldering bad feeling that flamed at times into open warfare.  Upon the wholesome Malpais country had fallen the bitterness of a sheep and cattle feud.

The riders of the Twin Star outfit had thrice raided the Sanderson flocks.  Lambing sheep had been run cruelly.  One herd had been clubbed over a precipice, another decimated with poison.  In return, the herders shot and hamstrung Twin Star cows.  A herder was held up and beaten by cowboys.  Next week a vaquero galloped home to the Twin Star ranch with a bullet through his leg.  This was the situation at the time when the owner of the big ranch brought Phyllis a prisoner to its hospitality.

Nothing could have been more pat to his liking.  He was, in large measure, the force behind the law in San Miguel county.  The sheriff whom he had elected to office would be conveniently deaf to any illegality there might be in his holding the girl, would if necessary give him an order to hold her there until further notice.  The attempt to assassinate him would serve as excuse enough for a proceeding even more highhanded than this.  Her relatives could scarce appeal to the law, since the law would then step in and send her to the penitentiary.  He could use her position as a hostage to force her stiff-necked father to come to terms.

But it was characteristic of the man that his reason for keeping her was, after all, less the advantage he might gain by it than the pleasure he found in tormenting her and her family.  To this instinct of the jungle beast was added the interest she had inspired in him.  Untaught of life she was, no doubt, a child of the desert, in some ways primitive as Eve; but he perceived in her the capacity for deep feeling, for passion, for that kind of fierce, dauntless endurance it is given some women to possess.

Miss Weaver took charge of the comfort of her guest.  Her manner showed severe disapproval of this girl so lost to the feelings of her sex as to have attempted murder.  That she was young and pretty made matters worse.  Alice Weaver always had worshipped her brother, by the law of opposites perhaps.  She was as drab and respectable as Boston.  All her tastes ran to humdrum monotony.  But turbulent, lawless Buck, the brother whom she had brought up after the death of their mother, held her heart in the hollow of his hard, careless hand.

“Have you had everything you wish?” she would ask Phyllis in a frigid voice.

“I want to be taken home.”

“You should have thought of that before you did the dreadful thing you did.”

“You are holding me here a prisoner, then?”

“An involuntary guest, my brother puts it.  Until the sheriff can make other arrangements.”

“You have no right to do it without notifying my father.  He is at Noches with my brother.”