"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.