Behind his live oak, Buck was so well protected that only a chance shot could reach him before his enemies should outflank him.  How long that would have taken nobody ever found out; for an intervention occurred in the form of a flying Diana, on horseback, taking the low fence like a huntress.

It was Phyllis, hatless, her hair flying loose—­a picture long to be remembered.  Straight as an arrow she rode for Weaver, flung herself from the saddle, and ran forward to him, waving her handkerchief as a signal to her people to cease firing.

“Thank God, I’m in time!” she cried, her voice deep with feeling.  Then, womanlike, she leaned against the tree, and gave way to the emotion that had been pent within her.

Buck patted her shoulders with awkward tenderness.

“Don’t you!  Don’t you!” he implored.

Her collapse lasted only a short time.  She dried her tears, and stilled her sobs.  “I must see my father,” she said.

The old man was already hurrying forward, and as he ran he called to his boys not to shoot.  Phyl would not move a single step of the way to meet him, lest they take advantage of her absence to keep up the firing.

“How under heaven did you get here?” Buck asked her.

“Mr. Keller came to meet me.  I took his horse, and he is bringing the buggy.  I heard firing, so I cut straight across,” she explained.

“You shouldn’t have come.  You might have been hit.”

She wrung her hands in distress.  “It’s terrible—­terrible!  Why will you do such things—­you and them?” she finished, forgetting the careful grammar that becomes a schoolmarm.

Buck might have told her—­but he did not—­that he had carefully avoided hitting any of her people; that he had determined not to do so even if he should pay for his forbearance with his life.  What he did say was an apologetic explanation, which explained nothing.

“We were settling a difference of opinion in the old Arizona way, Miss Phyl.”

“In what way?  By murdering my father?” she asked sharply.

“He’s covering ground right lively for a dead one,” Buck said dryly.

“I’m speaking of your intentions.  You can’t deny you would have done it.”

“Anyhow, I haven’t denied it.”

Sanderson, almost breathless, reached them, caught the girl by the shoulders, and shook her angrily.

“What do you mean by it?  What are you doing here?  Goddlemighty, girl!  Are you stark mad?”

“No, but I think all you people are.”

“You’ll march home to your room, and stay there till I come.”

“No, father."’

“Yes, I say!”

“I must see you—­alone.”

“You can see me afterward.  We’ll do no talking till this business is finished.”

“Why do you talk so?  It won’t be finished—­it can’t,” she moaned.

“We’ll attend to this without your help, my girl.”